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It's unusual that they specified "synthetic plastics". Natural plastics, in the sense of thermoplastic or thermosetting organic polymers, include birch tar, pi

by kragen 1y ago

It's unusual that they specified "synthetic plastics". Natural plastics, in the sense of thermoplastic or thermosetting organic polymers, include birch tar, pine rosin, natural latex rubber (sometimes vulcanized with morning-glory juice), beeswax, and the shellac mentioned in the article. A mixture of pine rosin and beeswax known as "sealing wax" played an important part in 19th-century information security and high-vacuum apparatus. And of course pine rosin played such a crucial role in naval power during the 18th and 19th centuries that the first federal product-purity law in the US was enacted to prevent fake rosin and turpentine from being sold; the current version of the law is https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-I/subchapter-F/part-160/subject-group-ECFRa50d63f7704784b/section-160.3 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-7/subtitle-B/chapter-I/su.... Cellophane/rayon/viscose is kind of a borderline case. The content of the finished polymer article is 100% natural cellulose, without even so much as a nitrate or acetate group affixed. But the process of dissolving that cellulose from plant matter so that you can form it into sheets or spin it into microfibers involves chemicals that are so nasty that nowadays they are used almost only for this purpose. In my childhood (the 01990s, not the 01890s) ping-pong balls were still made of explosive celluloid. My father, who attended a mining college, demonstrated by dropping one onto an electric stove burner, not hot enough to glow visibly. It disappeared in a puff of flame. I was disappointed to discover recently that this is no longer the case for the ping-pong balls I found.

IAmBroom 1y ago
> A mixture of pine rosin and beeswax known as "sealing wax" played an important part in 12th through 19th-century information security and 19th-century high-vacuum apparatus. I suspect you are referring to a different use of rosin and beeswax, but the mixture was used for centuries for sealing - which is for information security. It was mixed with either arsenic-based or copper-based minerals to both color it, and protect it from slow fungal attack, so seals (after about a century of colorful failures) were always red or green. A slightly different proportion was used as "code" (no relation to cyphers), a shoemaker's waterproofing glue for seams. AFAIK no coloring was added.
dredmorbius 1y ago
There's also a variant of latex (I realised this researching my reply), gutta-percha (from the tree of the same name, biological name Palaquium gutta), which was also instrumental in long-distance telecommunications as it was used to seal early undersea telegraph cables (themselves a fascinating rabbit-hole of electrical engineering). The use for cables resulted in dramatic overharvesting and a collapse of the gutta-percha supply, yet another caution in the Reliance on Markets for All Things. Modern-day cables are armoured with polyethylene (which resists seawater rot far better than simple rubber), mylar, steel cables, aluminium, polycarbonate, and petroleum jelly. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutta-percha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutta-percha> (James Burke's Connections, mentioned elsewhere in this thread, also describes this use and significance of gutta-percha.)
- kragen 1y ago
  Yes, thanks!

by kragen 1y ago

IAmBroom 1y ago

> A mixture of pine rosin and beeswax known as "sealing wax" played an important part in 12th through 19th-century information security and 19th-century high-vacuum apparatus. I suspect you are referring to a different use of rosin and beeswax, but the mixture was used for centuries for sealing - which is for information security. It was mixed with either arsenic-based or copper-based minerals to both color it, and protect it from slow fungal attack, so seals (after about a century of colorful failures) were always red or green. A slightly different proportion was used as "code" (no relation to cyphers), a shoemaker's waterproofing glue for seams. AFAIK no coloring was added.

dredmorbius 1y ago

There's also a variant of latex (I realised this researching my reply), gutta-percha (from the tree of the same name, biological name Palaquium gutta), which was also instrumental in long-distance telecommunications as it was used to seal early undersea telegraph cables (themselves a fascinating rabbit-hole of electrical engineering). The use for cables resulted in dramatic overharvesting and a collapse of the gutta-percha supply, yet another caution in the Reliance on Markets for All Things. Modern-day cables are armoured with polyethylene (which resists seawater rot far better than simple rubber), mylar, steel cables, aluminium, polycarbonate, and petroleum jelly. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutta-percha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutta-percha> (James Burke's Connections, mentioned elsewhere in this thread, also describes this use and significance of gutta-percha.)

kragen 1y ago
Yes, thanks!