Word: shellacing
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...initial tease for Baekeland--"Doc Baekeland" to many--was the rising cost of shellac. For centuries, the resinous secretions that Laccifer lacca beetles deposited on trees had provided a cottage industry in southern Asia, where peasants heated and filtered it to produce a varnish for coating and preserving wood products. Shellac also happened to be an effective electrical insulator. Early electrical workers used it as a coating to insulate coils, and molded it into stand-alone insulators by pressing together layers of shellac-impregnated paper...
When electrification began in earnest in the first years of the century, demand for shellac soon outstripped supply. Baekeland recognized a killer ap when he saw one. If only he could come up with a synthetic substitute for shellac...
...others aiming to find commercial opportunities in the nascent electrical industry, that gunk was a signpost pointing toward something great. The challenge for Baekeland and his rivals was to find some set of conditions--some slippery ratio of ingredients and heat and pressure--that would yield a more workable, shellac-like substance. Ideally it would be something that would dissolve in solvents to make insulating varnishes and yet be as moldable as rubber. Starting around 1904, Baekeland and an assistant began their search. Three years later, after filling laboratory books with page after page of failed experiments, Baekeland finally developed...
BAKELITE Leo Baekeland was hoping to create a synthetic shellac when he mixed together carbolic acid and formaldehyde in his Yonkers, N.Y., lab in 1907. Instead he created the first totally synthetic plastic-phenolic resin and changed the world. Some mistake...
...between, the show was impressive: liverock in the afternoon could've been awkward, butShellac's energy and enthusiasm (for the music, ifnot the crowd) carried the day. Unfortunately, asthe concert wore on, I remembered why I didn'thaul out the ol' Shellac LP that often; theirsongs are too long on record, and played live,they often stretched out to unfortunate lengths.Too, the songs tend to be remarkably similar toone another, especially when they're all reallyloud. Shellac played for about an hour and a half;I was bored silly by the end, but I'd gotten myfive bucks worth. Shellac...