CAT'S TUMBLE STARTS NEW TRADE.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 210, 21 September 1937, Page 6

CAT'S TUMBLE STARTS NEW TRADE.

Sixty years ago, in the workshop of a Bradford, Yorkshire, ckeinist, an accident occurred with results that have already created a new .and thriving industry. What happened in that chemist's shop was not in itself very startling. A cat upset some aeid over a piece of cheese hanging in a mouse-trap. When the chemist went to the trap next morning, he found the cheese had changed to a solid substance somethjng like celluloid. That wbs tlie beginning of synthetio resins and the making of plastic mouldings, an industry which, seven years ago employed some 40,000 workers in the United Kingdom. Now there a ro more than 200,000 people in the industry which is still rapidly developiug. What the present generation owes to this remarkable new process, is lllustralod by a fascinating range of products made from plastic material and displayed in the recent British ludustries Fair. Consider the viariety of purposes illustrated by goods pressed from plastic mouldiags— fireplaces, banisters, door-fittings, radio cabinets, sinks, trays, cups, table lamps, ashtrays, telephones, bedsteads. The list is almost inexhaustible. Manufacturers of synthetic mouldings believe that in ten years time, plastics will be used for building houses, car-bodies, and aoroplane wings. Another significant application of plastic materials was introduced at the British Industries Fair — lenses made from synthetic glass. This invention delivers from specially designed machines lenses already polished and ready for mounting into cameras, binoculars, opera-glasses, telescopes, spectacles, and scientific instruments of many. kinds. For all practical purposes these lenses are unbreakable as well as being half the weight of glasa, All the long and expensive grinding and polishing processes necessary for the making of glass lenses are eliminated in the manufacture of lenses made from plastics. Plastics must take their place among the notable achievements of contemporary research. It is difficult to imagine any department of our focial hud. workaday Jife ,wbieji will aot be effected by this new process.