Así se creó el primer plástico de la historia: la Baquelita

What I have in my hand is a material that has been key in the development of this world. In less than a century it captivated us completely. We use it to drink, to eat, to travel and to connect with those we love. It is present in every moment of our day to day. Every year we produce the same amount of it that weight has all humanity together.

Get ready to learn the story of the material that started an era and the experiment that freed us from the chains of nature. Today in Pontevata, the bakelite, the beginning of the plastic age.

There are several moments in history where humanity clicked, where we discovered an invention that changed our destiny forever. Two of those moments were agriculture and livestock, which allowed us to stop wandering and build cities with food and transportation. But without a doubt, my favorite moment was when we learned to take things out of the rocks.

In a matter of a few thousand years, our species had gone from sharpening stones to grinding them to then baking them and thus extracting the previous treasure they contained. First it was silver, gold, copper and mercury, but then it would come bronze and finally iron. Each one made us more precise, more dangerous and above all more capable. The age of metals had been born.

The development of metallurgy changed our way of living. Suddenly we have tools to mold the world, coins to trade with other civilizations, and weapons to... well...

You know. I have already talked about all this in more detail in previous videos of the channel. I recommend you especially see the ones I dedicated to silver and copper. The important thing now is that once we control metals, we realized something a little... disturbing. All the materials we used, everything that surrounded us, came directly from nature. We did not know how to create, only transform what already existed. During most of our history we lived limited to three great sources of materials. Three great kingdoms.

On the one hand we depended on the animal kingdom, where we obtained leather, ivory, wool or silk. The plant kingdom, on the other hand, provided us with a lot of fibres, wood and rubber. And finally we exploited the mineral kingdom in search of metals, ceramics and various stones. Each of these kingdoms had its own characteristics. Although there was an exception, there were rocks capable of producing a mysterious, almost magical wool, immune to fire. Although we will dedicate a video to it in the future.

Let's see if anyone can guess what rock I'm talking about. It seemed that everything that surrounded us was shared in these three natural kingdoms. From what could be deduced a very clear rule: if nature did not produce something, it simply did not exist. For centuries we lived under that invisible limit, centuries ignoring that there was a fourth kingdom, hidden.

that did not belong to animals, nor to plants, nor to minerals. One capable of releasing all the creative potential of the human species.

Today all our potential is in the network, and just as for centuries we did not see that fourth realm of materials, in the web there are also things you do not see. Open wifi network, tracking, fake websites and data traveling without protection. That's why I recommend Sursar, the sponsor of today's video. I use it when I'm traveling recording, where I have to be in airports, hotels, coffee shops and of course, even if I do not want, I end up pulling from public wifi, to upload material, talk to my editor, send scripts or review documentation or simply

And there is the problem, that you connect normal but you have no idea who else is looking at the network, who is tracking you or if you are entering a web that seems official but it is not. With Surzac I add an extra layer, the connection is encrypted and my IP is hidden, so I can move around the internet with quite peace of mind. And also for me it has two very top advantages.

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If it doesn't convince you, you have up to 30 days to return it. I'll leave you a link in the description and in a pinned comment. Thank you very much to the people of SurSarc for sponsoring the story of the Fourth Kingdom of Materials. We would have to wait until the Industrial Revolution to guess the first clues of this kingdom. Specifically, it was necessary for chemistry to come into play. And as usually happens in the history of science, it all started with a series of small accidents. Two in this case that were going to change absolutely everything.

We already talked about the first one briefly in the video about sulfur. In 1839, the inventor Charles Goodyear discovered that by burning a mixture of sulfur and rubber he obtained a new material. Sulfur is an element that tends to form chains and gave rubber superpowers. It was a sticky substance in summer and fragile in winter to a resistant and elastic material.

Perfect for the wheels of cars. Right now we are moving a visit to a rubber plant, so have a little patience that we will soon talk about it in another video with more detail. For the moment I would like us to get into the second accident, a small slip that was about to trigger an authentic revolution.

I present to you Christian Friedrich Schönbein, a German chemist who in 1838 experimented with electricity when he noticed a peculiar smell. Around his electrical appliances appeared a slightly sweet but very pungent smell, a similar smell to those described by those who had survived the fall of a lightning.

At that time it was simply known as the smell of electricity, but Christensen was convinced that it was a new substance that was formed in the electrical arches. He called it "ozon" from the Greek "ozén" .

During the following years, Christian Sonbein obsessed himself with isolating the ozone and understanding why it looks like oxygen. His obsession reached the point that he took his job home, for the sake of his wife Emily. Before the kitchen looked like a laboratory, Emily forbade him to do experiments in the house. Prohibition that, of course, Sonbein began to skip.

hiding, taking advantage of the afternoons that she left home. According to legend, one of those afternoons in 1846, a sulfuric acid mixture was spilled on her table. Scared, he cleaned it with the first thing he had: his wife's cotton forehead. Then, in order to eliminate the evidence of his crime, he put it to dry in the stove of the house. But immediately, to the horror of our protagonist, the forehead ... "We are already close to the point of self-induction and at any moment ..."

Disappeared with a detonation, without leaving any trace. He had discovered the nitrocellulose, the cotton powder.

Unfortunately, we will never know what was Millie's reaction when she got home, but I hope she understood that the accident of her husband had just changed forever the history of science. We are not only facing one of the first modern explosives, capable of burning at a brutal speed and without leaving residues, that was perhaps what was missing, what John Vane's cell phone and Goodyear's rubber came to tell us was something much more important.

that the products created by nature did not constitute the final point, but the starting point, that with chemistry we can make materials with which we would never have dreamed. The fourth kingdom had just manifested for the first time. The news of the discovery of Christensen Bain ran like the dust, or rather, like the cotton. Dust!

This, added to the ease with which it was synthesized, made that soon many chemists will launch to experiment with cellulose and nitrocellulose in order to see how many materials they could get out of them. Some historians call this moment the era of the precursors.

The first one appeared a few months later when French chemist Louis Ménard discovered that nitrocellulose dissolved in a mixture of alcohol and ether. The result was a thick and sticky liquid, similar to the glue of the time. He called it collodion, from the Greek kolodes, sticky. Perfect for healing wounds, it would also end up becoming the basis of the first photographs. But the collodion was just the beginning.

In 1855, while working with a copper and ammonia solution, the Swiss chemist Georges Audemars... J... Georges Audemars noticed something curious. That intense blue mixture, known as Schweitzer Reactive, was able to dissolve the nitrocellulose. It seemed like a simple curiosity of the laboratory, until he decided to throw the solution out of the water. With such bad luck in the end, a little of it fell into a glass containing sulfuric acid. At the moment, Audemars observed something strange.

a fine and solid filament had been formed. The first fiber created by the human being, the rayon, also known as artificial silk, had been born.

The rayon was not the only important discovery of that year. In England, the inventor Alexander Parkes registered his new patent, a material that he had made based on a nitrocellulose solvent with various oils. This material, which he called "Parkesina", could adopt the shape that was desired before hardening. The invention of Alexander Parkes could be used to make comb, buttons, knife handles,

or this beautiful Lego piece. It was such a moldable and versatile material that some started referring to it with a new word: "plastics". A word that means "moldable". It only had two stupid drawbacks:

One was that it was more expensive and less durable than the wood or leather they intended to replace. And the other, I'm sure you already imagine it, when based on cellulose, the parkesina was extremely flammable. Nobody wanted their comb, their clothes or their kitchen to jump out into the air. Without the commercial success that awaited, the park company closed shortly.

Now, don't get confused about his failure. The idea itself was very good, both for Alexander Parkes to be considered the father of the first plastic in history. The problem of the parkesina, like that of many other good ideas, was more than economic, it was time. It had arrived too soon. The world simply didn't need it. Not yet. It only had to lead to extinction the largest mammal that walked on this planet.

For centuries, an animal-origin material had taken over the throne of materials: Marfil. Its color, texture and ease of making was what made it the most desired luxury material. Multiple items were made with it, from buttons, knives, pieces of art, to piano keys. But it had an obvious problem: most of it was obtained from elephant fangs. By the end of the 19th century, the demand for marfil had skyrocketed. Not to be a piano key or a jewel, but to be

billiard balls. And this game was so fashionable at the time that it caused a real crisis in the sector. To solve it, several manufacturers of the United States offered a reward of about 10,000 dollars in gold, about 250,000 today, to whoever found a substitute to make the balls. Be careful, it is not that the poor elephants will worry, but that the ivory began to reach prohibitive prices. John Wesley Hyatt was one of the many who accepted this challenge.

This New Yorker inventor had already worked with the parkesina and he had realized that by improving it he might be able to obtain that alternative that they were looking for so much. So he bought the patent of Alexander Parkes and was willing to work with it. The trick of Hyatt consisted of adding a wax known as Alcanfor to the parkesina, from which a much more resistant and durable material resulted. In 1869 he presented the patent of a material that was now going to be a market success. He called it celluloid.

John Hyatt never received the promised reward, but his invention had arrived at the perfect moment. Celluloid was not only an excellent substitute for ivory, you could dye and mold it to imitate natural materials of luxury, such as amber, ebony or turtle shells. They called it French ivory, the material of the future. No one seemed to care, since it was quite flammable. Of all the industries that benefited from it, none had such a profound impact as the film industry.

Celluloid turned out to be the perfect material to make something that didn't exist until then: a flexible photographic film. With it, you could make long, light and rollable strips capable of capturing one image after another. When we projected them quickly, they gave the illusion of movement.

Without the celluloid, cinema as we know it and therefore this video simply would not have existed.

A new material kingdom finally seemed to unfold between us, but there was a small problem. We were not really creating anything new. Rayon, parquecina, celluloid, all these materials were in essence slightly modified nitrocellulose, and nitrocellulose came from cotton. As much as we tried, we were still tied to the plant kingdom. A bad harvest, a plague or a drought were enough, and the price of cotton could be shot all over the world. And with it, the one of these supposed materials of the future,

Not to mention the other big problem: the mass production of cotton was linked to one of the darkest chapters of modern history. Industrial society needed a completely new material that would not depend on plants or animals.

A material born entirely in the laboratory and whose production was completely under our control. The protagonist of our story still had to arrive. A brilliant chemist, obsessive and with an idea that would change forever the world we live in. His name would go down in history as the person who opened the doors of the new kingdom. Leo Hendrick Bekelaar.

Our protagonist was not a chemical anyone, of Belgian origin, lived in the United States and was disgustingly millionaire. All thanks to the fact that in 1899 had sold the patent of Velox, a photographic paper that could be easily revealed with artificial light. That allowed photography to stop being exclusive of professionals and something new and unexpected was born: amateur photography. The patent, by the way, was bought by a small company. Maybe it sounds like that.

Eastman Kodak Company. They paid for Velox around a million dollars at the time. Today it would be about 40 million dollars. Anyone in his situation would surely have retired, but Leo Baekeland was made of another material. He invested his fortune in a mansion with a private laboratory of the last generation, with which he could try to investigate for simple love of chemistry. It was there when Baekeland came across a new challenge.

The challenge was called Selak or Gomalaka, a resin produced by this Asian insect.

The Kerrialaka. This little guy covered the branches of the trees with a resin secretion and ended up being one of the most valuable materials in the electrical industry. It was used as an insulator in motors, cables and coils, but it had an important defect: when the cables were heated, the rubber started to soften and in some cases it even burned. At a time when electricity was beginning to feed the big cities, that was a huge risk. The world needed a substitute.

An artificial insulator, resistant to heat, easy to produce and completely independent of nature. A perfect material. And Leo Baekeland was going to give it to the world. Baekeland had the dream of any scientist. Infinite money and no pressure to publish absolutely nothing. He could investigate whatever he wanted. Any forgotten idea, any experiment discarded, any street without a way out of chemistry without having to give anyone any accounts. And that was

exactly what he did. For years he tried absolutely everything, any reaction that seemed minimally interesting. The young organic chemistry was full of them. It was a real mess of curious experiments, strange mixtures and results that no one knew very well how to take advantage of. It was there where Bekeland found something peculiar. An experiment abandoned decades before. A chaotic, unpredictable and apparently useless reaction.

The reaction that was going to change the world. Bekeland ignored this recommendation and of course we have followed his steps. For the first time in the reaction to explota laboratories we are going to recreate the experiment that opened the door to the fourth kingdom of materials.

In 1872, the German chemist Adolf von Bayer was looking for a blue tint when he mixed two very common substances in the laboratories. On the one hand phenol, called at the time carbolic acid, had been used for decades as a spray to disinfect surgical operations.

On the other hand, formaldehyde or formol, the preferred substance by excellence to preserve biological material. At first glance, they seem two fairly innocent compounds, but better not get too close, they are not very pleasant substances. It is a matter of saying it, but we are experts,

so don't try to repeat these experiments at home. Just limit yourself to enjoying and don't forget to subscribe. When we mix these two substances... actually nothing happens. They are quite stable so they don't react to each other, but just add a drop of chlorhydride acid to start the magic. Then the liquid starts to turn pink little by little, and suddenly... *crying*

Incredible, right? Acid has facilitated the reaction between phenol and formol. A solid resin of pink color has been formed out of nowhere. As you can see, the reaction itself is a chaos. The product appears without prior notice and quickly forms water vapor. The normal thing is that it jumps

all through the air, splashing around resin. It is no wonder that for Bayer it was a waste of time and money. The result was a nuisance, a simple annoyance that had to be undone. But Bakelán 20 years later knew how to see beyond. That sticky mass was not an annoyance. We are faced with the first material created completely by the human being.

It also had something very interesting: it was heat resistant. It could be the perfect alternative to the celac if it weren't for a small drawback: the reaction was violent, unpredictable and completely uncontrollable. The material appeared suddenly, without the possibility of molding it. If Leo Baekelhan wanted to create the perfect material, he had to domesticate the reaction first.

He started studying it in detail, repeating it over and over again. He tried to make it cold and improved a little, but almost nothing. He tried to add the acid at once, then more slowly. Nothing. It's still as chaotic, but then he had an idea. Instead of using acid following the Bayer recipe, he would go another way. He tried with a few drops of caustic soda.

The result was completely different, our protagonist had hit the nail on the head. Instead of being explosive, the reaction simply started with a little bubble, and the liquid began to change very, very slowly. So slowly that even Pepe Ami caught us totally out of guard the first time we did it. We were waiting 45 minutes, we got distracted for a moment and...

The liquid had become a dense and sticky resin, which immediately began to harden. Now, knowing the reaction and with some more practice, we managed to transfer the resin to the Lego molds before they hardened. After washing it well with plenty of water, we had this incredible collection of phenolic resin pieces, made completely by the Reacción Explota team. How cool!

Temporarily and limited, I'm going to put some of these pieces in the channel store. They are completely washed, so they are safe to collect. To celebrate this video, I have created the code "BEGELAN" that you can use to get these pieces and some of the scientific curiosities that we sell, with shipments to the whole world.

Remember that the benefits go directly to financing this project and my doctoral thesis. Beguelain had managed to tame the reaction, he could give his resin the shape he wanted. In his inventor's mind, a name began to be forged for what would soon be the material of the future.

a material with a thousand uses. But before I had to solve one last little problem. Look closely, the reaction between phenol and formaldehyde released water in the form of vapor, and this vapor was ruining everything, filling the resin with imperfections and holes. If you wanted to create a real material, one that could be manufactured in tons and in constant quality, something that chemists have been avoiding for decades needed to be faced with: the pressure of the reaction. For this it would cost a giant pressure pot,

The Bakelizer. Using the Bakelizer was a brilliant idea. Inside this device, the water didn't evaporate. The fennel and the formaldehyde could join together quietly forming small chains. The result was a solid resin. Compact, homogeneous and totally reproducible.

Then you simply had to grind it, put the powder in a mold with additives and heat it all at high temperature. There these chains ended up joining together, forming a gigantic network, a structure so intertwined that it could no longer be undone with the heat. The result was a material with a very beautiful finish, perfectly molded and incapable of melting, a thermostable plastic.

In 1907 he presented his discovery to the world. The first completely artificial plastic in history. He had been born entirely in a laboratory. He called it Bakelite. And with it, finally, the fourth kingdom of materials opened before humanity. The kingdom of synthetics.

Leo Baekeland marketed the cymbal with the motto "The material of the thousand uses" and it was accompanied with the symbol of infinity. With that hook it was a success instantly. It was cheap, easy to manufacture and very durable, which made it in a few years begin to meet the industrial and social needs of the 20th century. It was the perfect material for a new era. One of the first impacts of the cymbal was on phones and radio.

Before they were luxury objects, but thanks to the bakelite they became the majority of homes. The industry was used to manufacture almost everything, like these firecrackers, although they also began to be pieces of train or car. But the icing on the cake would be the world of fashion, designer Coco Chanel

fell in love with the bagel just by looking at it and incorporated it into several of its designs. Suddenly, plastic had stopped being an industrial material, it had become a symbol of modernity, something desirable. Everyone wanted to carry a piece of the material of the future on top, either on a watch, on the hanging bag, or in the bag.

The funny thing is that we still didn't know what was happening at the chemical level to make the special bakelite. Many theorized that it was small molecules grouped together, similar to milk, mayonnaise or gelatin, but a few brave people started to point to a much more radical idea, that plastics were giant molecules, huge chains known as macromolecules.

Whatever it was, the magic of plastic was undeniable. With his invention, Leo Baekeland had given the world the ability to create materials at will, and the chemical industry understood it right away. By that time, much of the chemical industry had been dominated by explosives and dyes, but the bakelite would have a whole new branch to explore. Little by little, new plastics inspired by Baekeland's work arrived.

PVC, nylon, polyethylene, polyurethane... And without realizing it, we had entered a new era: the plastic age.

Today everything that surrounds you, the world you live in is supported by them. It is one of the invisible pillars of history. It's in the kitchen, the clothes, the car, the cables that carry the electricity, in the device you see me in, or in the surgical materials that could someday save your life. The material of the future had fulfilled its promise of unlocking the dreams of humanity, but maybe we had opened the Pandora's box. Because when you invent a cheap material and capable of lasting forever, sooner or later you have to face the big question.

What do we do with them when we no longer need them? This is the big problem with plastics. They are too good at their job. We have designed them to resist water, heat and time, to last for centuries. And during those centuries they do not disappear. They change shape, they fragment, they scatter and finally they accumulate.

One of the great challenges of today's chemistry is finding a way to stop this. The bakelite and all the plastics that came after have given us the power to dream above the natural limits, to expand our creativity almost to infinity. But that power involves a great social and industrial responsibility, because opening this new kingdom was easy. The difficult thing now is to prove that we are worthy of governing it.

I never expected to be making my own plastics in a lab. I want you to leave me in the comments what you think about the history of the bakelite and if you still have at home some object made of this material.

Just to clarify, this is the first video of a series about plastic, and in this episode I wanted to convey all that hype and illusion that these materials brought to the world. In future videos I would like to touch other plastics such as nylon, PVC or expanded polyethylene, but also topics such as recycling or the problem of microplastics.

I know I've been a little absent with the video making, but it's just that life and my doctorate haven't given me much breath. That's why I want to thank you for watching us, especially the Patreons and members of the channel, whose list does not stop growing with each video. If you are one of them, be careful because soon we will give the indications for the gift we want to make them. This year we are closing some very beautiful trips to places with a great past in the history of chemistry. Subscribe so you don't miss them. And remember:

Ponte baza. See you in the next video.