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Even before being invented, it already existed in nature. The word plastic – derived from the Greek plastikos, flexible – defines any material capable of being shaped with heat or pressure to create other objects. Thus, resins from certain trees known since antiquity are considered natural plastics, as well as ivory, molded since the 17th century. Artificial plastic, on the other hand, came about with the contribution of several inventors, each of them achieving a small advance. In 1839, the American Charles Goodyear (1800-1860) created the rubber vulcanization process, which transformed the natural material into a product that was more resistant to temperature changes. Decades later, in 1870, the American John Wesley Hyatt (1837-1920) produced celluloid from plant cellulose. The material was used, for example, to replace ivory in the production of billiard balls.
But the real revolution would come in 1907, when Belgian-born American chemist Leo Baekeland (1863-1944) created the first fully synthetic and commercially viable plastic, Bakelite. The era of modern plastics, made from petroleum, coal and natural gas, began. The key to this new process was polymerization, which consists of joining, through various chemical reactions, several smaller molecules into a large one, which does not break easily and gives the material greater durability. Since then, hundreds of plastics, or polymers, have been created by petrochemical companies for the most different uses, such as polyester (1932), PVC (1933), nylon (1938), polyurethane (1939), teflon (1941 ) and silicone (1943).