Made of a combination of phenol and formaldehyde, Bakelite is a type of plastic that became popular during the 1930s and 40s as a material not only for jewelry, but for other consumer goods like ...

Groot is an avid collector of Bakelite plastic products, with some 4,000 items in his collection. Karraker is the great-grandson of the inventor of Bakelite, Leo Hendrik Baekeland. They met at a ...

For plastics aficionados and others, the movie you’ve been waiting for arrives next month. It tells the story of Leo Baekeland, who in 1907 changed the world forever. Baekeland was a Belgian-American ...

In 1907, Belgian-born American chemist Leo Hendrik Baekeland made one of the most transformative discoveries of the 20th century: Bakelite. It was the first wholly synthetic plastic and ushered in an ...

An alternative to wood and metal, Bakelite took over kitchen drawers in the early 20th century, as manufacturers applied the hard, colorful plastic to the handles of beaters, dough blenders, ...