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| Time line |
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1860s: Celluloid is invented, and used to
make anything from billiard balls to false teeth |
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| 1839 |
Charles Goodyear’s discovery paves the
way for rubber tyres |
| 1860s |
Celluloid is invented, and used to make
anything from billiard balls to false teeth |
| 1966 |
South Africa’s government supports the launch of a plastics
industry in which Sasol will play a key role |
| 1991 |
Sasol starts production of polypropylene |
| 2001 |
Sasol’s annual production of ethylene reaches
420 000 tons |
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| Did you see the film, The Graduate?
The hero has just completed his four years at college and is
agonising over what to do with the rest of his life. A middle-aged
acquaintance tells him with great solemnity in which field he
should make his career: plastics. Back in 1967,when the film was
released, that advice seemed laughably crass. |
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| Plastics were widely regarded as tacky substitutes for good,
solid materials like glass, leather, wood, steel and natural
fibres. The advice also seemed trite. Whatever you thought
of them, plastics in the 1960s had become as commonplace
as computers have today. Which is why South Africa’s
government decided, in the 1960s, that a local plastics
industry should be launched, with Sasol providing its main
raw materials or feedstocks. |
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| The post-World War Two years had seen an explosion of
demand for plastics. Before the war, today’s most widely used
plastics - polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, polystyrene and
polypropylene - were hardly known outside chemistry
laboratories. Indeed, polypropylene was not known at all. But
then, the production of materials that were wholly synthetic
was barely half a century old. |
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| They were preceded by what would eventually be termed
"man-made" materials. These were produced by performing
chemical wonders on natural substances. The first of them
involved mixing rubber with a small amount of sulphur, which
strengthened the rubber while retaining its elasticity. The
surname of the man who had this inspiration in 1839, Charles
Goodyear, has since been carried on millions of vehicle tyres. |
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| His brother, Nelson, decided to push the envelope by mixing
far greater proportions of sulphur with rubber. The result was
a hard, black, mouldable substance he called Ebonite. He
used it to make furniture; others made buttons and machinery
parts from it. |
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