From Old School Magazines - 1945-46
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This extract is fascinating, as it was written 80 years ago - and has anything changed?
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Plastics: S.Hardy, Upper VA
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Plastics is the name given to a large number of new substances invented by chemists, to replace more traditional materials, and although the word plastics is relatively modern, substances of plastic nature have been in production for some fifty or sixty years.
An example of this is celluloid, used for toilet articles for many years. Plastics have been gradually introduced as a substitute for industrial and household goods of wood, metal, glass or porcelain. Scarcity of these materials during war years has caused a much wider use of plastics which are strong and tough, light in weight, smooth, attractive and resistant. They can be sawn, cut, turned and polished like any wood or metal, but can also be moulded into any required shape. They have already taken firm hold on the electrical markets as most plastics are very good insulators. Plastics are now widely used for cups and saucers, combs, tooth brushes, lenses, films, fountain pens, bicycle pumps, lamp shades and bathroom fittings.
With such examples as these to guide us, with the experience of the 1001 use of plastics, let us try to imagine a dweller in the Plastic world. The new-born baby will come into a world of colour and bright shining surfaces. The walls of his nursery, all the articles of his toilet, his bath, his toys, his cot, the moulded light perambulator in which he takes the air, the teething ring, the unbreakable bottle he feeds from, later all the equipment for his daily meals, the trays, spoons and mugs, all will be plastic, brightly coloured and patterned with every design likely to please his childish mind. As he grows up, his plastic toothbrush and hairbrush have plastic bristles, his plastic clothes are of synthetic silk and wool with plastic zips, wears plastic shoes, his pen is plastic and his books covered with plastics. His schoolroom has shining walls and the moulded desks are without angles or projections.
The windows of this school curtained, with plastic-faced cloth, are unbreakable, and the frames are of moulded plastic, light and easy to open. The plastic floors are silent and dustless too. The very blackboard is of unscratchable plastic, and if corporal punishment has survived in this plastic age, he may have the privilege of being beaten with a synthetic plastic cane.
Lampshades and stands, screens, bowls and vases of every shape and colour will be available in beautiful transparent glass-like materials in every imaginable form. Outside the home even the tennis racquets, golf clubs and fishing tackle will be entirely made of plastics. The “Plastic Man” will go boating and yachting in small vessels built of moulded plastic sections. In the office, the trays filing cabinets, loose-leaf books, telephone and even the desks will be made of this material. In the electrical industry, except for conductors, and magnets for which metals remain essential, almost everything will be plastic.
But now our “Plastic Man” is getting tired and old. He has a plastic denture, plastic spectacles with plastic lenses and a plastic comb. He still takes photographs on plastic films with a moulded plastic camera and plastic lens, listens to a plastic wireless set, sits in plastic seats in the cinema watching a plastic film, or stays at home playing with plastic playing cards and moulded chessmen on a plastic board. He finally sinks into his grave in a plastic coffin.
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