WHAT MEN ARE DOING TO THINGS

Nowadays we wear Orlon sweaters that look like wool, Dacron shirts that resemble cotton, and nylon blouses that remind us of silk. At night we snuggle under blankets whose comforting warmth does not owe anything to the fleece of a sheep.

Our shoes are soled with rubber that comes out of a factory instead of from a plantation. We walk on nylon or Acrilan carpets that are startling in their similarity to wool. The chairs we sit on are cushioned with a plastic foam, covered with an imitation of fabric or leather. The bottom of the wet glass does not leave a ring on the table when we set it down carelessly. The table top only looks like wood; it is really plastic. Our food is stored in transparent bags, instead of paper.

We are living in the age of chemicals. Sometimes it seems that everything from the frames of our eyeglasses to the fillings in our teeth are made of synthetics. This is the word commonly used to describe man-made or artificial products.

The development of synthetics is a perfectly natural thing. It is human nature to want something better. Better than what, you may ask? Better than the things we have, is the answer.

The caveman kept warm by covering his nakedness with the coarse skin of an animal. His descendants began to look for ways of improving on this. They discovered that they could shear sheep, take the wool, weave it and fashion the material into warm coats and suits. As time passed, people became dissatisfied with this solution, too.

"How about a coat that is both warm and light in weight?" asked one.

"Or a material that is waterproof?"

"Perhaps some fabric could be found that will not be eaten by moths."

"It would be nice to have clothes that can be washed and worn again without ironing."

The desire to improve on nature brings us to the laboratory. If nature does not provide a fiber that can do all the things we, want it to, let us make one ourselves.

This refusal to accept the shortcomings of natural products has led to attempts to change almost everything we use. A glass bottle breaks; perhaps, said scientists a few years back, an unbreakable substance could be found that would work as well as glass. Toys made of metal are heavy and expensive; maybe something lighter in weight and less costly could be developed. Most of us like to take pictures of the people around us. Tintypes and daguerreotypes and other early forms of photography were beyond the talents of the teen-age camera enthusiast. An easier way of snapping pictures of friends and family had to be found.

"So far the motive behind the search for synthetics has been a wish to produce better things... for less money ... for more people," a scientist sums it up neatly. "We are fast reaching the point, however, where these discoveries will become a matter of necessity, too."

The population of the globe is growing by leaps and bounds. The same cannot be said for our natural resources. There is just so much iron, copper, coal or oil, and no more. These products will eventually be used up. Then, too, the more people there are in the world, the more space they occupy. This means that there is less room for forests, plantations or farms. Our descendants will find life cold, hard and desolate, unless substitutes are found for wood, rubber, cotton and steel. One look at the artificial world around you shows that mankind is already meeting this problem head-on.

The modern age of synthetics began nearly one hundred years ago as a result of a shortage of ivory. At least this is the story that scientists like to tell.

"Shortly after the Civil War ivory became very scarce," they report. "At that time the game of billiards was extremely popular and the balls used to play it were made of ivory. Rather than give up billiards, men went hunting - not big-game hunting in Africa, but synthetic hunting in the laboratory. The object of their search was a substitute for ivory."

In the year 1868, a young man named John Wesley Hyatt tried his hand at mixing solid camphor with "pyroxylin," a chemical made out of nitric acid and the cellulose in cotton. The result was a hard, solid substance. Perhaps you recognize the name that was given it: "Celluloid."

This early plastic was used in making billiard balls and for parts of dental plates. It appeared as a primitive version of today's "wash-'n-wear" fabrics. Removable collars and cuffs for men's shirts were made out of celluloid. These were wiped clean with a damp cloth and worn again. In the 1880's, the problem of how to capture Aunt Susan's fleeting smile for posterity was solved when it was discovered that a thin form of celluloid could be used to make photographic film, both for snapshots and for movies.

That was about as far as plastics went at the start of the present century. The world around our grandparents was still a pretty natural one. If an object looked as if it were made of wood or rubber or steel it was indeed made of one of those products.

Then in 1909, the second great plastics discovery was made by a scientist named Dr. Leo Hendrik Baekeland. The synthetic he produced was particularly hard and strong. It belonged to a group of plastics that has come to be known as "phenolics." The first member of that family bears the name of its inventor, changed so as to be a little easier to pronounce: "Bakelite."

From that time to the present, many different plastics were developed, and things were no longer necessarily what they seemed. The world became a bewildering mixture of the true and the false. The cabinet of the television set looks like wood. But is it really? Better go up close to make sure. The suitcase you pack for a weekend visit to a friend certainly seems to be cowhide. A second or even a third look is needed to prove whether the "leather" comes from an animal or a factory. The tire must be made of rubber, and so it is - a rubber that is exactly the same in chemical structure as the natural, but. that was produced by the chemist, not by the tree.

What has happened to the solid objects in the world around you is as nothing compared to what has happened to the things you wear. You are the first generation to grow up clothed in test-tube materials. The only manmade fiber your grandmother knew was rayon, which was discovered in 1910. In its early days it was called "artificial silk," and that was the only natural fiber it replaced.

Fewer than thirty years ago it seemed that nothing could ever substitute for cotton, wool, linen and fur.

The clothing revolution began on a day in 1938 when a completely new kind of synthetic fiber was discovered. Chemists took oxygen and nitrogen from the air, hydrogen from water, and carbon from petroleum, and put them together to form the product we know as "nylon." It sounds easy, but it took many years of research by a group of scientists, headed by Dr. Wallace R. Carothers. Nylon was the first of a series of discoveries. One synthetic after another followed it out of the test tubes - bringing us such fibers as Orlon, Dacron, Acrilan, Saran, Teflon and Lycra.

You can see the result of this research wherever you go. If you were to stop one thousand men and women on the street today, you would not be likely to find a single one with clothing made out of natural products only. The lady's stockings and lingerie are almost surely nylon; her shoes may be plastic; her uncrushable dress with its permanently pleated skirt contains at least some nylon, Orlon, Dacron or Acrilan. Even the "fur" on her coat may never have sheltered a mink or a beaver. Her husband's drip-dry shirt and underwear owe these qualities to synthetics. His sweater and socks are a result of good laboratory techniques, not good farming.

Everywhere you look today you will find synthetics: the bristles on your toothbrush; the comb you run through your hair; the buttons on your coat; the raincoat that shields you from the storm; the baby's bottle; the little boy's toy airplane; the dishes that cannot be broken; the squeeze bottles for ketchup or cologne; the delicate white curtains at the window; the film in the camera; the television cabinet; the telephone.

All of these, however, make up only a part of the story of synthetics today. They are the obvious things, the ones everybody knows about. You are surely not surprised to find that stockings which look like silk are made of nylon, and that the "wood" paneling is really plastic. Nonetheless, there are many other synthetics that are not generally recognized. Few of us realize just how artificial the world around us has become.

You go to visit a modern factory. Is the hammer being used in the shop made of metal? The conveyor belt on the assembly line? You go window-shopping past the best stores in town. Did the breathtakingly beautiful star sapphire in the jewelry store window once lie buried in the earth? You sit down to dinner. What do you really know about the food you are eating? Is it the natural color? The natural smell? The natural taste? Is it even food?

Artificial products are slowly but surely taking the place of things that we still think of as natural. The story of these little-known synthetics will be told in this book. Some are already in use today; others will be here tomorrow. We live in a world that is constantly changing and that is full of surprises.

"The only thing you can be sure of in these artificial times," says a chemist, with a devilish twinkle in his eye, "is that you can be sure of nothing."

(From The artificial world around us, by Lucy Kavaler)