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This story was originally published by Undark and reproduced here as part of a collaboration with the Climate Station.
In the last few months of World War II, Americans kept talking about how and when the war would end and how lives would change. Germany will soon fall, and people agree. There are different opinions on how long the Pacific War will last.
In the geopolitical turmoil, a few people and the newspapers chatted endlessly about the dawn of another new era. A subtle change is about to change the structure of people's lives: cork is about to lose its dominant position as the cornerstone of consumer manufacturing and will be replaced by a little-known synthetic plastic.
In 1939, the future came to the New York World's Fair with the slogan: "Tomorrow's World". The fairgrounds in Queens attracted 44 million visitors in two seasons, and two competitors claimed to be the most modern industrial materials: cork and plastic.
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Cork has been the most flexible material for decades. Plastic is just an interesting possibility. Various forms of cork products can be seen everywhere, from the International Paris Exhibition to the Queens Expo, this material is embedded in the future roads of Ford.
At the same time, the debut of plastic is very promising, and visitors see nylon, plexiglass and plexiglass for the first time. Souvenirs include colored plastic (phenolic resin) pencil sharpeners molded in the form of the exposition’s iconic Obelisk-shaped Trylon building. Visitors also received celluloid badges and pen sharpeners, as well as Remington electric shavers made of bakelite, as well as plastic ashtrays, pens and coasters.
In the months after the exhibition, as the United States entered the war became inevitable, the government began to worry about the United States’ dependence on cork, which came entirely from European forests. The United States imports nearly half of the world's production.
People in their 50s today remember when the bottle cap includes a cork strip insert to seal it. But in 1940, the use of cork stoppers went far beyond bottle caps. It is the industrial sealant of choice for automotive windshields, insulating materials, refrigerated containers, engine gaskets and aircraft. In defense, cork is essential to tanks, trucks, bombers, and weapon systems. With the Nazi blockade of the Atlantic Ocean, the fragility of the supply of this general-purpose item became obvious, and the government placed cork under "allocation" or restricted priority use for national defense. Information about the supply of cork is under review.
In October 1941, the Ministry of Commerce issued a detailed report describing the situation in detail, with the title: "Cork Goes to War". In addition to an overview of the growing industrial use of cork, the report also emphasized Hitler's efforts for the European cork harvest and the need for a systematic response from the United States.
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Part of this reaction is an intensive research and development machine that accelerates the nascent synthetic industry to fill the gap in the defense pipeline. Some are synthetic materials that were first developed by the enemies of the United States: chemists from the industry leader Armstrong Kirk used German material research to make new products. Many synthetic materials were developed during the frenzied scramble to replace the blockade of expensive organic items. In order to pay for research and offset rising material costs, Armstrong reduced the use of carbon paper and paper clips by employees; the company’s accountant pointed out that 95,000 clips were used every month in 1944, a decline since the beginning of the war. By 40%.
In 1944, a book titled "Plastic Horizon" co-authored by BH Weil and Victor Anhorn documented the future of plastics. The chapter titled "Plastics in the World of War" begins with a hymn to the bloody casualties caused by the war. But then the author traced how the war shifted science to the need for new lethal and life-saving products: physicists turned to aircraft inspection, chemists turned to explosives. "The nylon used for stockings has become the nylon used for parachutes. The rubber used for tires has almost disappeared and desperate measures need to be taken to replace it with artificial elastic materials." The conclusion of this section is that "plastics have indeed gone to war." "
In a dramatic example, the author described how plastic eliminated Germany’s secret weapon: a magnetic landmine designed to be laid on the seabed and detonated by the magnetic field surrounding any ships passing by it. To counteract this effect, Allied scientists created plastic-coated cables, wrapped the hull and "demagnetized" it, thereby rendering the mine ineffective. Thanks, PVC!
The book received enthusiastic reviews in the "New York Times", which pointed out that the United States is undergoing a chemical revolution.
As explained in the book, early plastics covered a wide range of natural or semi-synthetic materials, such as celluloid and synthetic resins, which could be molded by heating and pressing.
After the war, the chronic shortage of commonly used materials such as rubber, cork, linseed oil, and paint forced chemists to scramble to find alternatives, further accelerating the popularity of plastics. Profitable bottling innovations include the LDPE squeeze bottle introduced by Monsanto in 1945, which paved the way for plastic bottles for soap and shampoo, and the "Crowntainer," a seamless metal cone-top beer can.
There is also a shortage of tinplate with metal lids. Industry is quickly adapting to finding alternatives. Giles Cooke is an in-house chemist at the manufacturing leader Crown Cork & Seal. He has been involved in the research of synthetic resins for container sealants in the 1940s. In beverage bottling, the quality of cork is still unparalleled. You can taste the difference between cork airtight bottles and plastic airtight bottles. Cook and his colleagues realized that it would take decades to replace cork as a sealant, so they obtained patents on silicone film container linings and rubber hydrochloride to hedge their bets.
Finally, Plastic Horizons underestimated its theme. Its last chapter seems to have hardly anticipated the ubiquity of plastic we see today and its terrible waste problem. "In the future, plastics will supplement rather than replace traditional structural materials such as metal, wood, and glass," the author wrote.
"There may not be an age of plastics, but this shouldn't stop anyone; applications will multiply over the years," they continued. "Plastics is indeed a versatile material. With the help of science, the industry will continue to increase its quantity and improve its performance. Reasonable optimism is a priority, and a peaceful return will enable the plastics industry to fulfill its promises for the future."
By 1946, the transition to plastic had reached a new threshold. That year, New York hosted the National Plastics Expo, exhibiting for the first time a series of sturdy new materials and consumer products for American households. One observer pointed out that “the public must be full of enthusiasm for plastics.”
Tomorrow's world is indeed so.
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