Bakelite: the world's first fully synthetic plastic

Earlier plastics like celluloid were built on natural materials. Bakelite was different: the first plastic synthesised entirely from molecules made in the laboratory, with nothing borrowed from plants or animals.

The chemist Leo Baekeland got there by carefully controlling the reaction between phenol and formaldehyde under heat and pressure. The result was a thermoset that, once moulded, held its shape permanently and resisted heat, solvents, acids and electricity. Baekeland made his first public announcement in a 1909 lecture before the New York section of the American Chemical Society.

Cheap, durable and a superb electrical insulator, it earned the slogan “the material of a thousand uses.”

Bakelite poured into radios, telephones, switches, car parts and jewellery, and its phenol-formaldehyde chemistry seeded the broader plastics industry. The American Chemical Society later named its development a National Historic Chemical Landmark, marking the moment modern synthetic materials began reshaping everyday life.