• Three jars of different colored resin are sitting next to a pile of resin.

    Vestiges: The Natural History of Technical Change

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Thoughts gathered from the Polymers Center, by Philip S. Shoemaker

“In reflecting on them, every one must be struck with astonishment; for the same reasoning power which tells us that most parts and organs are exquisitely adapted for certain purposes, tells us with equal plainness that these rudimentary or atrophied organs are imperfect and useless.” 

-Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859



In May 1848, Henry Bewley, of the Gutta Percha Company of London, patented a process for making flexible syringes and tubes of gutta percha. He described the process as one that involved “filling a suitable mold with a substance in a granular state,” after which he would “subject these molds to a heat sufficient to liquefy the gutta percha, which on subsequent cooling will be found to retain the exact shape or figure of the molds.”

A coat of arms with two lions and a horse


A (Very) Quick History of Injection Molds

One might think that 3D printing started with Chuck Hall’s patent for stereolithography in 1986, but the roots of antecedent inventions extend remarkably deep into the past, starting with a French sculptor, François Willème. Sometime in the mid-1850s, while he was attending art school in Paris and making models for manufacturers of art bronzes, Willème learned of photography and realized its potential as an aid for making silhouettes. 

A black and white drawing of a woman sitting in a room


From Sculpting to Printing—Technical Dead-Ends of the 3D Revolution

In searching for a way to register how the consumer culture of post-war Great Britain differed from that of the other English-speaking victor, British artist Richard Hamilton decided to incorporate plastics into the art that he created—the thought being that the synthetic materials would reflect the increasingly synthetic life of Americans. Enter “Pin-up” a mixed composition of a molded plastic breastplate and paint, all adhered to a plywood background. 



In Praise of Impermanence

A sculpture of a woman 's face is sitting on a table

We think of mistletoe in terms of Christmas celebrations, but for centuries it was associated with an adhesive thread derived from its berries, called viscin, proving that even parasites may provide some measure of utility. [1] To the ancients, viscin was related to viscosus, which referred to anything sticky and was also related to that which melts or flows, especially a malodorous or foul fluid. [2] That, of course raises questions of fluid flow. 



Newton And The Water Clock

A large bowl with arabic writing on it sits on a wooden stand

We now live among synthetics—so much so that we hardly notice them. But that was not always so, nor was the term plastic always endowed with the same meaning that it has today. Originally it meant sculpting, such as, “Painting, Carving and Plasticke are all but one and the same arte.”



Synthetic Vision And Synthetic  Reality

An old newspaper advertisement for mrs groshon 's benefit

I got my first writing assignment when I was in fifth grade. I was to use some prearranged sources and put together a report on Charles Goodyear. I remember it because it was so heroic a story—Goodyear, the lone inventor, patiently experimenting with various chemicals...



Antecedents—Rubber and the Birth of

Plastics Machine Technology

Rubber is being squeezed from a rubber tree in a rubber plantation.
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