Abstract
Rubber and celluloid were, at least in chemical terms, the first plastics to be manufactured industrially. Both have the same characteristics as all synthetic plastics. They are high-molecular polymers consisting of many regularly linked building blocks, i.e., monomers. Nevertheless, rubber and celluloid are strictly speaking not synthetic polymers but converted natural materials. In 1839, the American chemist Charles Goodyear vulcanized the dried sap of the Hevea tree to obtain a useful rubber, and the Hyatt brothers (USA) manufactured their celluloid in 1869 from collodion, which they obtained by nitration of cotton.
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© 2001 Springer Basel AG
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Heß, P. (2001). Plastics. In: Tegethoff, F.W. (eds) Calcium Carbonate. Birkhäuser, Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-8245-3_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-8245-3_10
Publisher Name: Birkhäuser, Basel
Print ISBN: 978-3-0348-9490-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-0348-8245-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive