THE UNIQUE HISTORY OF PLASTIC

Unknown to most people, plastic has been around since 1839. It was invented in the year 1813 by a Mr. Alexander Parks - who was born in Birmingham, England. Since then it has been used to create all kinds of things, from children's toys, telephones and radios to the high quality building materials we see around us today.

The roots of the invention of PVC go back over 100 years. German entrepreneurs were attempting to light people's homes with lamps fueled by acetylene gas. By the time the process was perfected new efficient electric generators were developed The price of electric lighting dropped to the point that the acetylene lamp system was too expensive, leaving a huge stock of acetylene.

In 1912 a German chemist, Fritz Klatte reacted acetylene with hydrochloric acid (HCl) - a reaction that produced vinyl chloride. At that time this had no particular use, so it was shelved, where it polymerized over time. Not knowing what to do with the PVC he had just invented, he told his bosses at his company, Greisheim Electron, who had the material patented in Germany. Greisheim Electron failed to find a useful way to develop the product, and in 1925 their patent expired.

In 1926 an American chemist, Waldo Semon was working at B.F. Goodrich when he independently invented PVC. Unlike the German chemists, it dawned on him that this new material would make a perfect shower curtain. He and his employers at B.F. Goodrich patented PVC in the United States (Klatte's bosses apparently never filed for a patent outside Germany) and entered mass production.

It wasn't until the 1950s that very large quantities of PVC-u were produced by manufacturers in Germany and the USA. In Germany huge steps were taken in the use of plastic in the manufacture of windows, and in 1940s Germany PVC windows were becoming commonplace.

Today the whole of Europe is fitting PVC-u windows to their buildings, and in North America large quantities of windows are now made this way, a quantity increasing rapidly year after year.