And the executive producer of the documentary all things bakelite which will be seeing a little clip from this evening. Bud micaterian awardwinning author and filmmaker whos currently doing research on leo bakerland and his journals and our moderator dr. Jeffrey michael professor of american studies at the university of texas at austin and the author of american plastic a cultural history. So please everybody join me in giving a great big march training house. Welcome to our guests this evening, please join us. It takes a moment for all them to get on camera and mike so here with us. Welcome and good evening, all of you. Thank you so much for being here with us tonight. Evening all the pleasure so jeff as our moderator when the time comes would you be so kind as to let me know when youd like me to come back up and help with the q a toward the end. I certainly do that. All right, i just like to add my welcome to everyone whos listening and also to say what an honor it is to be in this. I want to say a little bit about how i got into an interest in bakelite and then ask each of the members on the panel and say a little bit about it as a jennifer said im a professor of american studies university of texas at austin. Im a historian of design and technology and my first book was on industrial design. I wrote it long long time ago. It was my dissertation. And when i was doing i realized that the industrial designers of the 1930s. Were heavily involved invested in designing for plastic new materials, and i couldnt find a history of the plastics industry so i decided okay. Im going to write one. And that became my second book American Plastics of cultural history, which was published about 25 years ago. And i got heavily interested in leo bakeland looked at his diaries at the smithsonian. And made him the center of one of the chapters of the book. So thats how i got involved. In what we are discussing tonight bakelite plastic and leo bakelund the chemist who invented bakelite. But i guess id like to have yours say a little bit about how he got involved with with bakelite as we move forward. And hugh great grandson of leo bakel and then bud who was involved with the making of the film so yours sure. Thank you. Thank you, jeffrey, and thank you jennifer for the full introduction. So its a pleasure to be part of this panel. So ice became interested in in bakela bakelite and started to research on big glance and big light in the context of Research Project at gantt university in belgium. So about the century after the invention of bakelite in idaho seventh about in 2007 there started to be an interest on the part of the History Department against university and in the museum for the history of science against to to develop a joint projects relevant to the history of the city and also relevant or broadly and they ended up coming with the idea of having someone studied big ones not just as an inventor, but also as an entrepreneur and so i ended up becoming this the graduate students doing this research. I had the opportunity to kind of develop my own angle kind of focus on certain teams. I found a special interesting, but thats kind of of how it started and the revised version of my dissertation was published last year by the mit press and as jennifer encouraged me to show the copy of book. I was told to show it right here. So its called beyond big light so a little vehicle and business of science and invention. Thank you yours and hugh karriker. Everybody i live in relationship. Whereas a famous marked when library is and my wife and i support the library. A very close to but then when he was living here at the turn of the century. As he died here actually. But his library is wonderful. And i showed my movie. As a library and it was a very wonderful experience. My movie was produced and directed by john marr was with us tonight. And my mother wanted to write the biography of my father. But never had to it. So thats just the baton. And services over the finish line. We have a wonderful movie with cellular flip of latin a little bit. Pleasures to others to be here with the others. And jeffrey and so the island of the show. Thank you hugh. And and bud. How about you you have all these images of bacon behind you there . Right. Were you coming live from the studios of the edit room where all things bakelite was was put together really . I am thrilled to be here actually more than you know, my daughter when she was in High School Received an award for writing which she which she received at the mark twain house and i was so jealous. I have been ever since but now i have something to brag about. Being here with with you folks here. It was really john maher who got me interested in this whole subject he and my brother craig and i have been colleagues for a long time working on each others projects and when he came to us to help with that production, especially craig who edited the film we certainly recognized this great story and john is a master storyteller. So we were easily on board with that. And of course in the process i met you and what i was impressed with was hughes sincerity and his more importantly his determination not only to celebrate his greatgrandfather. Which present the story . With a certain socially conscious perspective. That helps us understand where our plastic world came from. And perhaps where its going. And so along the way i learned more about hugh and actually some of the initiatives of the lh bacon project that he started. And i worked closely with Mark Huberman the projects media manager. And the two of them really inspired me to get to know who lhb was more deeply and i became enthralled with this guy. One of the first things i did was as you folks have done is read all his personal diaries and boy that did it. Thats his diaries are just an amazing window into the into the soul of a genius really and in them also is is quite a picture of the revolutionary time that he lived in. So thanks to you were currently developing ideas for some kind of literary expression of that. I dont know what thats going to be. But im just so excited really to be at just the beginning stages of that work. Unlike my esteemed colleagues here on the panel who have already produced incredibly comprehensive and exciting really books on the subject. Im honored to be here and tonight. I expect to learn a lot. Well, thank you, but i regarding bake villains diaries. I just like to i just like to second that and say that those diaries are a storehouse of information about what it was like to be working in the sciences in business and industry what it was like to be a member of the emerging upper middle class the the industrialist class at the turn of the century. Theres a wealth of information there and i hope you do manage to put it together in a literary way. That will give people sense not just of bacon does the inventor of the first synthetic plastic but as a representative example of somebody alive and observing and writing about the world that was emerging at that time. Anyway, so the film that bud has been talking about and that she was involved with us as executive producer is all things bakelite the film itself opens with this wonderful series of shots of people being interviewed in times square. You know, do you know what bagel it is and none of them do and then come up with these incredibly funny guesses as to what bakelite might be and id like to start our discussion tonight with with that that series of little interviews and following up from it because nobody today really knows what bakelite was unless they happen to be collector of retro jewelry, but at the back in the day 1930s and 1940s. I think bakelite was a household word. And so id like to ask our people on the panel. What happened . How did bakelite move from being a household word . To being something that random folks in times square have never heard of that really have any ideas about that. Yes, i had. Okay, i will start. Yes that that is a very very notable development that like how badly little bit like, this is today compared to the situation in the 20s and especially in attorneys, i think part of it is has to do with all of these other plastics that were developed in the following decades from the late 30s 940s. Onward plastics like pvc polyethylene etc, which had certain advantages compared with bakelite. In fact, even a larger number of applications like big lights was sometimes advertised as the material of a thousand uses and thats wasnt wasnt even a real overstatement. It did have an amazing applications, but those newer plaque plastics that started coming out did have an even wider range of applications. So i think thats important part of the story and and of course the reputation of plastics has changed very much in the in the 1930s. Its still an example of just this kind of new technology that generates sort of excitement. It kind of generates. It kind of illustrates the possibilities of chemistry like synthesizing a new new chemical chemical compounds etc, and we did not have those kind of the Environmental ConcernsPublic Health concerns we have today related to to plastic. So thats i think another part of the story at least for like why we are our general views about plastics have changed. Today, we also like to comment on that at anything. Well, i think that also a big factor in that was when when the Bakelite Corporation was sold to dupont in 1939. I think they absorbed the Bakelite Corporation and at this at that point the marketing of bakelite the branding of it diminished. Before that it was every it was everywhere and and publicized well and branded well and it was a house as you say was a household word, but with the acquisition by dupont then even though the product kept being used in various had various uses in industry and and continue to be made for consumers. It wasnt in duponts interest really to promoted as bakelite as such as now a dupont product, but it is about im sorry. I meant human carbide, right . Right, right 1939 Union Carbide that yeah, thatd be that makes sense the sale of the corporation at that point, which kind of brings up the whole question of at that point bakelund was out of the picture leo baekeland. And im wondering to what extent. Leo bakelund and bakelite basically had to go together or how important that was in the creation of bakerlite as a substance that everybody was familiar with by the name bakelite leo bacon in his journals his diaries talks about an encounter. He had in 1918 with the proprietor of a general store on lake george in upstate, new york. On bacon was was on vacation up there. Hes watered into the store started talking to the guy. And the exchange names . Ellio baklen says well, youll have a youll have trouble remembering my name and then as he as baseline recorded his journal the storekeeper says, oh no, i have a way of remembering names for as an instance when i think of your name. I shall think of bakelite. It was a 1918 only 11 years after it after bakelan first the discovered this stuff and bacon didnt spoil. He didnt reveal who he was. But that was how this fellow was going to remember bacons name because he was well aware of bakelite. So how important was the connection of the fact that the stuff was known by a name that could be related to the inventor himself. Bake bakelen had two competing Organizations Companies that try to steal his patents and infringe on them one was called condensate one was called red menaul and they eventually combined to create the Bakelite Corporation. He absorbed them or they absorb each other. But what if the stuff being called red menaul or condensed site . Didnt make it didnt make a difference that that it was bacoland and bakelite. Right. I think that thats a really good point what ive gleaned so far from primary sources and and from your two solid histories there jeffrey and yours were it not for the high level of prestige that . That bacon enjoyed among his fellow scientists and industrialists academics and government officials this Great Network that he built. And were not for his reputation. As the inventor of bakerlite he was often called a genius. And that was not a little due to his own clever marketing of his personal brand as we would call it today. Remember, he was a prolific writer and he worked tirelessly to establish the primacy of his invention. He wrote, you know as we said so many diaries and and he wrote journals and scientific papers and he wrote for magazines popular magazines gave speeches and even testimony in his Patent Infringement lawsuits all of these things his paper trails and his his networking and and i guess i would say and this goes the joriss thesis i think is protective entrepreneurship. Um, he would not have had the leverage of of that high status to become the president and face of the Bakelite Corporation. Which as you say was the merger of of his two greatest rivals at the time . So had he not maneuvered this merger. Youre right. We may have come to know bakelite as condensed cider redmond all or some of their fabricated name. And that was 1923 in america was just as you point out and and describe beautifully in your book jeffrey. It was a it was a boom in radio sets at that time and and that brought bakelite among other things into the home and made and made it a household word because it was marketed as that. And it was basically make a lights i would say is crafty maneuverings that ensured bakelites prominence. Yours do anything to add to that . Yes, i do. So i agree with what but just just was saying but i i did want to add a big event became famous before bakelite so bacon really became known to the to larger audiences in the United States during world war one when he was a member of the naval and naval advice. We council led by Thomas Edison that was getting that was generating a lot of publicity at the time. So theyre looking at all kinds of war related problems that that the nations inventors and scientists had to address things like like having to would like submarines or or chemical Chemical Warfare arrange of different topics and bakelot is selected was selected by the American Chemical Society as one of their representatives on that comedy and this is really the time when the kind of the National Press kind of takes note of him before that time. He was already well known by the local community and Larger Community scientists and inventors in the United States, but then this is really a point where he acquires this National Profile and that helps also when it comes to to promoting bake lights as but well see so hes and another thing related to the use of his name was that to the Larger Community of scientists in us the fact that there was this this invention that in many ways was based on science that is had been made by by us based chemist was also something that could really be advertised and that was was being advertised by the Chemical Community which was kind of eager to show that hey, its not just those german chemists who are able to make those kind of break rooms with come up with a lot of new dies pharmaceuticals and other major inventions. So big lens also served as this kind of symbol of a usbased chemist who had made this this amazing breakthrough. I guess you could add that after world war one the chemistry industry in a larger sense was trying to defend itself against accusations that they were emergence of war creating poison gases in such and so i suppose a probably new plastics and bakelite most prominently. Gave them something to use to promote the industry itself as benefiting everyone rather than in some way hurting civilization. Um, can i i sort of like to get your take something jeffrey . I thought it was also interesting to note that it was the the use and application of bakelite that informed and evolved the actual meaning of the word plastic. And you you talk about in your book the etymology of the word, which i thought was fascinating going way back to the greeks and how its changed through the through the years to our modern meeting and interpretation of it, but i mean bacon. As i understand it didnt really. He didnt really know how to describe what he had them that well he at that time you didnt call it plastic as such because there was it was generally plastic side of at a more general meeting. It was it was later as the uses and and variants of the of the of the plastic material um kind of informed it and evolved its meaning um is you think thats true and and and it so it gave rise to a a more specific name like bake a light. I think thats a really good point. In fact yours referred earlier to all the new plastics that came in primarily at the end of the 30s and in the 40s and especially during World War Two and totally transformed the world of plastics that i experienced growing up in the 1950s. Bakelite was different from things like polyethylene polypropylene pvc, which are all thermoplastic. They can be remelted. You can stub a cigarette through them. But but bakelite was different it was infusible it was electricity. It could be used for electrical insulation. It was tough. And beyond that it lent itself to being molded in smooth shiny reflective curves unlike any natural material that people have been using up until that point. So it was different. Theres quote in the film. And this was a i forget who says it but someone says bakelite changed the way things look. Bakelite changed the way things looked and i guess my question is is there a plastics look . Is it similar to the bakelite . Look what it what is the plastics look . The bakelite influence the appearance of things in ways that are still with us. The material that but underground when is other places came up . So thats why nobody knows about it. Obvious in a lot of apply applications that nobody says about instead of being made today. Its still its not patented. But there is the trademark is owned by somebody. And its a german. Preparation pearl has actually and now its called visualized synthetic. And im always interested to know. How about trademark . Chapter and in time from the from years ago to today. And yes, i want to ask you. How was betrayed by now . Right right now i havent been looking at this lake. Yeah, i think i think youre right. Hexyl. The company was was a trademark holder. I im not entirely