Posted by Ronan on Apr 19, 2005 in Uncategorized | 0 comments
just in case you are wondering what bakelite is … its a plastic.. kinda off..
from wiki:
A chemist named Leo Hendrik Baekeland, a Belgian-born American living in New York state, was searching for an insulating shellac to coat wires in electric motors and generators. Baekelund found that mixtures of phenol (C6H5OH) and formaldehyde (HCOH) formed a sticky mass when mixed together and heated, and the mass became extremely hard if allowed to cool and dry.
Baekelund built pressure vessels to force out the bubbles and provide a smooth, uniform product. He publicly announced his discovery in 1909, naming it “bakelite“. It was originally used for electrical and mechanical parts, finally coming into widespread use in consumer goods in the 1920s. When the Bakelite patent expired in 1927, the Catalin Corporation acquired the patent and began manufacturing Catalin plastic using a different process that allowed a wider range of coloring.
Bakelite was the first true plastic. It was a purely synthetic material, not based on any material or even molecule found in nature. It was also the first “thermoset” plastic. Conventional “thermoplastics” can be molded and then melted again, but thermoset plastics form bonds between polymers strands when “cured”, creating a tangled matrix that cannot be undone without destroying the plastic. Thermoset plastics are tough and temperature resistant.
Bakelite was cheap, strong, and durable. It was molded into thousands of forms, such as radios, telephones, clocks, and, of course, billiard balls. The U.S. government even considered making one-cent coins out of it when World War II caused a copper shortage.
I have an old bakelite philips phone – I will take a photo of it and post it .. maybe tomorrow..