In 1927, the company DU PONT started the basic research, which ran the development of revolutionary materials of 20th century. Thirty – two years old Wallace Hume Carothers was named into the researching center of this company. His branch was organic chemistry with the direction on polymerization, which is the basic reaction during production of plastic materials. When he was starting his work, there hasn’t been knowledge about polymers. His work contributed to knowledge of the structure of these molecules.

Wallace Hume Carothers
(from http://www.fgsd.winnipeg.mb.ca/vmc/topchem/caro.htm)

The basic research was the aim of the company DU PONT with possibility of industrial using, especially on the field of synthetic materials. The first success was neoprene, man- made India – rubber, Carothers got the patent for it and the company started to produce it in 1931.

After it searching man – made fiber followed. In 1934, Carothers made an important step: He made polymerization of hexamethylendiamin and adip acid. He got fibers! However, these were thin. The point of break started when he had dropped water, which was the side -product, back into the mixture and he found a way, how to produce a great deal of polymers.

Carothers got polyamide fibers that were long, firm, and very elastic. DU PONT named this product NYLON. Chemists called it NYLON 66 because hexamethylendiamin and adip acid contain by six atoms of Carbon. Each molecule is consisted of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen. Nylon fiber can have one million or more molecules this way.

Performing production of Nylon by a condensational polymerization in water.
(from  http://mse.iastate.edu/research/poly-comp/Polymer%20Demos/demos.htm)

Carothers created exactly this what the company DU PONT waited. Nylon was patented in 1935.

In 1939 Nylon became a hit at the trade fair for many years. It compensated silk, Nylons became a synonym for stockings and tooth- brushes, tubes for tooth pasts, fishing lines, under – pants, shirts but so yards for surgeons, parachutes and pipes it started to produce because it makes more firm tyres {so called cord’s silk]. Nylon became the beginner of modern material’s revolution. However, Carothers did not want to live to be able to see wide using of results of his work. He died from his own will 29 April 1937 of cyanide – poisoning.

Political, military and economical results leaded in some countries to it how to produce the same thing so it was not the same thing. In 1942, the group of Czech chemists worked up the technology of caprolactome. In this way there were put the basic stones to the producing of synthetic polyamide fiber, which was produced after the Second World War in Czechoslovakia this time under a business name silon.

(from  http://www.psrc.usm.edu/macrog/mpm/ipn/images/silon.jpg)