The name is absent

294 Science and Human Welfare

synthetic rubber. So swift and efficient is the self-sealing
action of these linings that they lose only a few drops of
gasoline when pierced by bullets that leave jagged, fist-big
holes in ordinary metal tanks.

Government and transportation officials recently inspected
a special test car of the Pennsylvania Railroad which was
fitted with synthetic rubber bags containing oil. One of these
bags, when inflated, will hold about 13,000 gallons of liquid.
The development of these bags may convert freight cars into
rolling tankers, cargo planes into flying gas stations, thus
providing some relief to the present petroleum transportation
problem. Small filling stations that float on the sea like buoys
have been developed by Navy men for the quick refueling of
submarine-hunting seaplanes and other aircraft. The “filling
stations,” fuel-filled balloons, are lowered into the sea where
they float.

Medium sized tanks require around 500 pounds of rubber,
a pontoon for a bridge 1,000 pounds, each gas-mask uses
about a pound, and a battleship uses up to 150,000 pounds.

In its growth the Plastics industry has followed two paths
of endeavor: that toward the improvement and creation of
new thermoplastic materials, as typified by Hyatt’s celluloid;
and that toward the improvement and creation of thermo-
setting materials as typified by Baekeland’s plastics. Hyatt,
in 1868, discovered that nitrocellulose, combined with cam-
phor, gave celluloid which was a desirable substitute for
ivory. By the careful study of the illusive chemical reactions
involved, Baekeland succeeded in finding methods for con-
trolling the action of phenol and formaldehyde. He produced
a beautiful, hard, transparent material that looked very
much like natural amber.

Search for an ester of cellulose, more stable and less
flammable than the nitrate, led to the development of the

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