His
name was Dr. Wallace Carothers. In 1928 he was exploring a crazy idea while teaching
organic chemistry at the University of Illinois. His 'crazy' idea was to make
chemicals with two reactive ends react over and over again until they had formed a giant
molecule. Chemical giant, DuPont, hired Dr. Carothers and requested that he continue
his research inside the company. In 1930 Dr. Carothers noticed that the material he
was working with had become semi-rigid, but was still elastic. Dr. Carothers named
the new material "superpolymers". DuPont had envisioned using the new
material as a synthetic silk. But the "superpolymer" melted as a low
temperature and softened in water, obviously there was more work to be done.
Dr. Carothers turned
his attention to a different class of organic chemicals, the amides. By 1934, Dr.
Carothers was squirting a new "superpolymer" out of a syringe to form a thin
fiber. Much to his delight, the fiber had good thermal stability and withstood
washings.
After years of testing,
on October 27, 1938 DuPont announced the development of a new synthetic textile fabric
whose strength surpassed cotton, rayon, wool, and silk. The world went into a frenzy
and would never be the same. Thank you Dr. Carothers!
