Leo Hendrik Baekeland

Curriculum vitae:
1863 Gent, Belgium -1944 Yonkers, USA
At 17 years of age Chemistry Degree, Gent, Belgium with Friedrich August Kekulé.
At 21 years of age, Doctor of Chemistry.
Scholarship for travel to the USA.
Sale of Velox-patent for light-senstive photographic paper to Eastman Kodak for $750.000; worth about $25 million at today's values.
1910: Founding of his own company "General Bakelite Company”.
1939: Sale of the company to Union Carbide.
During the Second World War, advisor to the US Government.

Main Research Focus
School-boy fascination for photography: In order to obtain silver salts for photography development, the school-boy invented new-types of chemical procedures. Search for a material that has an insulating effect.

Invention
1907 / 1909: Bakelite phenolic resin made from phenol and formaldehyde. The first fully-synthetic plastic.

First Products
Distributor caps, circuit breakers, ignition coils, wire insulation, Casings for electrical devices such as telephones, radio engineering (coils, control knobs, insulation), aircraft instruments.

Manufacture
Sale of the first licenses to Germany.
1910: Founding of Bakelite GmbH, in Erkner near Berlin.
Various fillers were used for the manufacturing of an impact-resistant synthetic resin.

The possibilities of Bakelite
The electrical industry finally had a suitable insulation material. The car industry utilised Bakelite in the engine compartment as a material capable of withstanding heat, gases, oil and dirt. Bakelite also remains hard in the face of waste heat of the engine.

What has become of Bakelite?
Mass production of radios and loudspeakers. Designers develop revolutionary new shapes from the mouldable mass.
1930s In the USA there are hardly any households without a radio receiver. In Germany the Volksempfänger (people's receiver) appears, which was a reasonably priced radio with a Bakelite casing. The first 100.000 people's receivers costing 76 Reichsmarks were sold out after 8 hours.

Usage Today
Binding agent in brake-lining, sheathing of engine electrics, pan handles, corrosion protection, parts of the interior lining of the Airbus. Parts of the Euro-rocket Ariane are sheathed with Bakelite derivatives.

Bakelite: "The material with a thousand uses" (H. L. Baekeland, Advertising Slogan)