AT THE BEGINNING
John Wesley Hyatt was one of the seminal inventor-entrepreneurs associated with our modern plastics industry. Born in 1837 in a small hamlet, Starkey, on the west side of Seneca Lake in New York's Finger Lakes region, he became a successful developer of several diverse enterprise. Among them were the Embossing Company, the Albany Dental Plate Company, the Celluloid Manufacturing Company and the Albany Billiard Ball Company, all located in Albany, New York, in the late 1860s and early 1870s. His brothers, Charles and Isiah, were partners in these enterprises. John and Isiah reestablished the Celluloid Manufacturing Company in Newark, New Jersey in 1872, the year in which Celluloid was commercially marketed. Later, the two brothers founded the Hyatt Pure Water Company in 1881, and in 1891 John established the Hyatt Roller Bearing Company in Harrison, New Jersey. During the 1890s he tried to convert spent sugar cane, a waste byproduct of sugar refining, into fuel. And in 1900, at the age of 63, he created a new type of sewing machine that was capable of sewing fifty lockstitches at once. Hyatt was issued over two hundred patents, a remarkable total exceeded by few others including his fellow New Jersey inventor, Thomas Alva Edison. Hyatt received the Perkin medal in 1914. However, it is for his achievements as the first successful manufacturer of a plastic material that he is recognized today. Prompted by a prize of $10,000 for anyone who could create a substitute for ivory in billiard balls, Hyatt fabricated the first semi-synthetic material, Celluloid. This new material was a mixture of nitrocellulose and camphor to which heat and pressure had been applied. What resulted was somewhat flammable and thus is applications were limited. However, this limitation led others to develop new polymeric materials. Hyatt's pioneering plastics business, the Celluloid Manufacturing Company, was acquired by the Celanese Corporation in 1927, later to become part of the Hoechst-Celanese Corporation. Hyatt, himself, died in Short Hills, New Jersey in 1920.

Building a Great Modern Industry

Making billiard balls from an alternate material to ivory had been John Wesley Hyatt's goal. Later this new product, Celluloid, found a more pervasive application in men's shirt collars and cuffs. And in-Leominster, Massachusetts -- then the comb capital of North America -- Celluloid was to replace tortoise shells and animal bones as the basic material from which combs were crafted. Bernard W. Doyle, a Leominster entrepreneur, established the Viscoloid Corporation in 1900 to manufacture Celluloid, initially for the numerous comb manufacturers in and around the region. A quarter century later, Viscoloid was acquired by DuPont, which had also acquired the Arlington Company, then the main rival of Hyatt's Celluloid Co. in 1915. The other major pioneer in Celluloid manufacture was the Fiberloid Company, first of Newburyport and later, Springfield, Mass. It was acquired in the late 1930s by Monsanto. Thus Celluloid -- and its creator, John Wesley Hyatt -- can be credited as key factors upon which three great contemporary international chemical giants -- Hoechst-Celanese, DuPont, and Monsanto -- can trace much of their initial success in polymers and plastics. Since that quest for an ivory substitute a little over 125 years ago, Celluloid has given way to literally hundreds of modern plastic materials, each with special properties and applications. Ping Pong balls are among the few items still fashioned out of Celluloid today.

For more information, contact National Plastics Center & Museum, 210 Lancaster St., P.O. Box 639, Leominster, MA 01453, 508-537-9529.