How Wrappers Are Made?

By: Japelyn Catian

Plastics are artificial polymers; that is, they consist of gigantic molecules formed by combining thousands of small molecules of the same kind into a long chain. These small molecules are known as monomers, and the process of combining them is known as polymerization. Natural polymers include such familiar substances as silk, rubber, and cotton.

Wrappers

The first plastic was made by the British chemist Alexander Parkes in 1862, who produced a substance he called Parkesine from cotton, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, castor oil, and camphor. Two years later in the United States John Wesley Hyatt improved this product and named it celluloid. Celluloid was a tremendous success and was used to make many different products, but it was highly flammable.

 

The first completely artificial polymer (unlike celluloid, which was a derivative of the natural polymer cellulose was Bakelite, which was produced from phenol and formaldehyde by the Belgian chemist Leo Baekland in 1908. Many other polymers were developed during the 20th century, including such important products as artificial rubber and artificial fibers such as nylon.

The first plastic used for wrapping was cellophane, another derivative of cellulose invented by the Swiss chemist Jacques Brandenberger in 1911. It had the advantage of being transparent, and was used for packaging as early as 1924. Cellophane was the most common form of plastic film made until 1963, when it was overtaken by polyethylene.

Polyethylene was discovered by accident by research workers at the British company Imperial Chemicals Industries in 1933, when they mixed benzene and ethylene at high temperature and pressure. Polyethylene was first used chiefly for electrical insulating material. It was first made into a film in 1945 by the Visking Corporation in the United States, and has grown in popularity ever since.

 

Source:http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Plastic-Wrap.html