The first plastic: Bakelite®. Durable and versatile

When the burgeoning electrical industry at the beginning of the 20th century called for an inexpensive insulation material that was available in large quantities, it could not have been foreseen that it would develop into a success story that would extend far beyond this area of application and continue to this day. The Bakelite® created for this purpose proved to be not only impact-resistant, heat- and solvent-resistant, and extremely durable, but also astonishingly versatile, which is why its creator Leo H. Baekeland gave it the catchy advertising slogan "Material for a thousand purposes". Even if Baekeland, in his fatherly exuberance, may have set this figure a little too high, Bakelite® was used for decades in a wide variety of applications: sharpeners, pencil trays, blotting paper rolls, note boxes and telephones for the office, household articles such as hair dryers, lamps, laundry sprinklers and wet shavers, and leisure articles such as cameras, radios and ashtrays - they were all made of Bakelite®. A few of them are still being made or are being made again - and even today Bakelit® performs excellently in its original field - as a solation material for switches and lamp sockets. Bakelit® is a registered trademark of Momentive Specialty Chemicals GmbH.