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Some of the first synthetic materials were developed in the late. 1920s at Dupont Chemical Company in Wilmington Delaware Dupont was doing big business manufacturing materials like wood into popular products like cellophane. But chemical director Charles Stein thought the company could do better. There was very little understanding of the fundamentals. Of what they were doing. They only knew that things worked because they worked. And Stein had a real belief that if you try to understand it a more fundamental level what was going on. What's the chemistry that's going on in these processes that they would inevitably be able to improve what they were doing. Stein built a new research laboratory and recruited. Young Harvard chemistry instructor named Wallace Carruthers. Stein lowered Caruthers with the promise that he could continue his work on polymers. Polymers are long chains of repeating chemical units that are strong and durable. The goal was to create a cheaper synthetic version of the natural polymers and silicon rubber.

But scientists at the time. And agree about what polymers were. Brothers want to show the fee's natural materials were just longer chain molecules they weren't mysterious they can be understood by principles already then known. Carruthers set out to prove his position by creating a polymer in the lab. His team tried for more than a year and they seemed to stall. They seemed to be unable to reach beyond a certain chain line. They were very frustrated. Caruthers very good chemist that he was. Did some thinking about. Why the chemical reaction might be stopping. One of the major reasons was that when you react in acid and alcohol you get water slid out. And if that water starts to accumulate in the product the chemical reaction will stop.

Caruthers instructed his assistant Julian Hill to keep the experiment going until every water molecule that might interfere with the chemical reaction was extracted. Julian Hill waited for days and days until he thought the chemical reaction was completed. And then at the end of this period of time he broke open the apparatus carefully. He had a warm mass of resin. And he stuck into it a glass starring role. He pulled it out. And what he said was that I found I had a festoon of fibers. What a marvelous word festooned fibers. This was a fiber that had enough strength. To be a textile fiber like I. Said. No one had ever done this before. I don't think. It's hard to

say whether anyone even thought it was possible. These first fibers didn't stand up to heat or solvents but with more development and may of 1034. Caruthers came up with a strong elastic fiber that was very resilient. The spectacular super polymer was called. Brothers discovery was really the turning point. In the synthetic. Material revolution. Having done that fiber rubber and plastic became available to us by modifying the techniques that drove us first and then.