Fifty Years of Nylon
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Fifty Years of Nylon A hot new item appeared on the market half a century ago this year. Nylon, the first successfully produced commercial polymer fiber, made its debut in a humble fashion, used as bristles for toothbrushes. Since then, nylon has become a generic term for synthetic textile fibers made from long-chain polyamides and is used widely for a variety of common items, including industrial and commercial fabrics, guitar strings, parachutes, fish line, netting, and ropes. After World War I, a great deal of industrial research focused on the properties and manufacture of various polymers. As early as 1913, German chemists were investigating the creation of synthetic fibers based on polyvinyl chloride, but the material properties of such fibers did not allow for textile applications. In 1928 the Germans spun fibers from a copolymer of vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate, but these also were not commercially viable. In 1927 E.I. Du Pont de Nemours & Co. in Wilmington, Delaware, established a fundamental research program to study the chemistry of polymers, how and why atoms or small groups of atoms would link together to form giant molecules such as those occurring naturally in rubber and silk. It was Du Pont's intention to develop and produce a completely new synthetic textile fiber different from rayon and acetate, the other manmade fibers on the market. Textile and industrial applications of synthetic fibers did not come about until research focused on polyesters and polyamides. Polyamides had been investigated almost 30 years before, by Gabriel in 1899, but the possibilities for producing polyamide fibers were not realized until a fortunate accident at the Du Pont polymer research lab under the direction of Wallace E. Carothers. As with many major discoveries, nylon fiber came about unexpectedly. The laboratory team had been investigating polymer chemistry for about two years when one of the researchers began work with a molten sample of a new polymer. In trying to remove a small sample from the preparation, he found that the polymer could be drawn out into a long fiber. Even after the fiber had cooled, the chemist was able to stretch the filament to several times its original length. In addition to its elastic properties, the silklike fiber was strong 38
and lustrous. Others soon realized its commercial potential for textile use. More years of research finally produced the first true nylon fiber in 1935, modified from the prototype condensation polymer and squirted through an improvised spinneret — a hypodermic needle! Nylon fibers first appeared on the market as toothbrush bristles in 1938. After a limited test marketing in 1939, the general U.S. public could purchase the first knitted nylon stockings on May 5,1940. Later that year, Du Pont exhibited other nylon items at nationwide fairs. Du Pont coined the term "nylon" in 1938. Originally, the marketers had intended to call the fiber "norun" because they thought that stockings knitted from it would be resistant to the runs that were such a bane to silk
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