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Ahead to Silicone 12. Quiz:
Choosing Materials for Our New Products
Wallace
Carothers, Inventor of Nylon
The invention of the first
practical synthetic fiber, nylon, is a tale that
exemplifies how scientists work.
In the early 1930's at the DuPont
Company a young, brooding chemist by the name of
Wallace Carothers believed he could prove that
natural materials: silk, rubber, wood, were
composed of long chains of molecules.
He believed he could do so by
actually making long chains by an unambguous and
undisputed methods. If the products he made had
the properties of the natural materials, then he
could be certain the structures he proposed were
correct.
Carothers produced a synthetic
rubber, now called neoprene and a synthetic
fiber, nylon.
Carothers' human story ends
bleakly. The quiet, sensitive man, wracked with
consuming depression, drinking heavily, could not
focus on the value of his science or his life.
Two days after his 41st birthday he ended that
life by swallowing cyanide.
Since I was a young man, working
in the laboratory where Carothers made his
inventions, his story intrigued me. I did the
research to learn all that I could about this
tragic man and published his biography, Enough
for One Lifetime,
in 1996. You can read a bit more about Carothers
in Chemistry and Industry.
Matt Hermes
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Heat and Chemical
Resistant Silicone Rubber
11. Advances in Materials
If we look
at magnet wire today, we find even
Formvar® is no longer in wide use. We see the
words nylon, polyester, polyamide, polyurethane,
polyimide, polyamide-imide, Nomex® describing the wire
enamels allowing service up to 220 degrees Celsius.
Wire
enamel is a mundane product perhaps. Not a lot of
glamour, not much media coverage of wire enamel.
But try some of these. Nylon, polyurethane, polyester, polyimide, Nomex®. What you will access
is the world of specialized products and uses arising
from the materials revolution. The invention of the
silicones in 1940, of nylon in 1935 and of the other new
synthetics of the last 60 years has transformed the way
our society operates.
| And without these materials we would
have no Nike, Burton, Salomon, and many of the
products and devices that make our life more
exciting in the new century. |
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Consider the nylon parachute fabric
developed during World War II. In this balloon, supported by the
buoyancy of the warm air
in the lightweight nylon canopy, I can float noiselessly over a Colorado valley |
| The climber wears specially designed
shoes with synthetic soles. He depends,
should he choose, on a braided nylon rope. |
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Inside and on its exterior, modern
aircraft depend upon lightweight, strong
materials for interior furnishings and for
external structural members. |
And we might evaluate how to choose
materials to fill the product needs we define as we move
forward beyond the year 2000.
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