Nylon

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture by Chris Routledge

A synthetic thermoplastic material, nylon was first introduced commercially by E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company in the form of toothbrush bristles in 1938. The process of condensation polymerization, by which nylon and the synthetic rubber neoprene are made, was discovered by Wallace Carothers, a chemist working for the du Pont company in the 1930s. The name "nylon" itself was originally a trademark of the du Pont company, but the material is now produced in many different forms, all of which belong to the chemical group known as polyamides. Although these nylons have different characteristics and can be used in different ways, they all share the same basic qualities. In general, nylon is useful because it is a light, strong, hard-wearing material that is resistant to corrosive chemicals and can be easily molded when heated and colored with pigments. Besides these qualities, nylon is also remarkably cheap and easy to manufacture. As a result, a huge variety of different uses have been found for it, and nylon is present in almost all areas of life. For example, it appears in the form of woven fabrics, thread, and rope, as plastic sheets, moldings, and netting. Because it is resistant to wear, nylon is also used as an alternative to conventional steel bearings and gears, and as insulation in electrical equipment.

Within two years of the introduction of the first nylon toothbrushes, nylon was being spun as a multifilament yarn to make hosiery. Being harder-wearing than silk, nylon stockings were much sought after when they first appeared in 1940. This was particularly true in Europe during World War II, where gifts of nylons made American servicemen as popular with local women as Hershey chocolate made them with children. More crucially, nylon parachutes were lighter and more reliable than silk, and in military slang a parachute descent became known as a "nylon letdown." In the 1960s and 1970s nylon was at the height of its popularity as a fabric material, perhaps because of its longevity and the fact that clothes made from colored nylon do not fade with washing. Because of their tendency to generate static electricity, however, nylon fabrics are not always comfortable to wear, and as dye and detergent technologies have improved, nylon's popularity has decreased. In the 1990s nylon fabrics were most often found in waterproof outer clothing and hosiery. The material also had an effect on modern healthcare, since nylon surgical sutures, splints, braces, and many other medical items, are cheap, and easy to sterilize and keep clean.

The versatility of nylon as a material means that, besides the multifilament yarns used in clothing and the monofilaments used as bristles, nylon can also be moulded into solid objects of many different sizes and shapes. Because of its resilience, nylon is a good material for making objects that need to resist wear and tear, such as plastic containers, stationery items, floor coverings, and bearings. Nylon bearings are particularly useful under extreme conditions, where lubrication is impractical or where the bearing is exposed to water. It can also be formed into objects that hold pressure, such as bicycle tires, inflated balls, certain pump cylinders, and valves. The invention of nylon, and the plastics technologies that followed, made possible the cheap mass production of high quality consumer objects, from children's toys and kitchen utensils to computers, cameras, televisions, and sound systems.

Despite his remarkable discovery, and despite receiving over 50 other patents, the inventor of nylon, Wallace Carothers, was an unhappy man, suffering from severe depression and alcoholism. Although nylon revolutionized life in the late twentieth century, Carothers did not live to enjoy the benefits of his work. He committed suicide in 1937, not long before those first bristles went into production