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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a

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Speaker 1: show that discovers something new about history every day of

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Speaker 1: the week. I'm Gabe Bluesier, and today we're looking at

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Speaker 1: how a seemingly minor innovation helped democratize consumer goods and

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Speaker 1: culture and got the ball rolling on the so called

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Speaker 1: age of plastic. The day was October tenth, eighteen sixty five.

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Speaker 1: American inventor John Wesley Hyatt received a patent for an

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Speaker 1: imitation ivory pool ball. The composite ball consisted of a

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Speaker 1: wood fiber core encased in a mixture of shellac and

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Speaker 1: bone dust. It was meant to approximate the look and

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Speaker 1: feel of the traditional material used for making billiard balls,

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Speaker 1: but players didn't think it was as hard or durable

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Speaker 1: as the real thing. Hyatt didn't give up, though, and

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Speaker 1: three years later he hit upon an even better and

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Speaker 1: more groundbreaking ivory substitute, one that would not only give

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Speaker 1: rise to the modern plastics industry, but to motion pictures

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Speaker 1: as well. The game of billiards or pool played a

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Speaker 1: surprising role in launching the development of synthetic plastic. The

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Speaker 1: earliest recognizable form of billiards was a lawn game created

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Speaker 1: in France during the fourteenth century. Not unlike croquet, it

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Speaker 1: was played outdoors and involved pushing wooden balls across the

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Speaker 1: grass with a mallet. The game became a popular pastime

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Speaker 1: among French nobility and royals, and was gradually adopted by

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Speaker 1: the upper classes of Britain and the rest of Northern Europe.

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Speaker 1: By the late sixteen hundreds, billiards had evolved from an

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Speaker 1: outdoor game played on the law on to an indoor

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Speaker 1: game played on a wooden table with green cloth to

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Speaker 1: simulate grass. Around the same time, when Western colonialism was

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Speaker 1: in full swing, wealthy Europeans decided to ditch their old

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Speaker 1: wooden billiard balls in favor of a more exotic material,

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Speaker 1: ivories from the coast of Africa. The hard, smooth, creamy

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Speaker 1: white substance was carved from the tusks of wild elephants

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Speaker 1: and sent back to Europe in the form of fashionable

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Speaker 1: jewelry and other high end objects like piano keys and

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Speaker 1: billiard balls. The practice of fashioning billiard balls from ivory

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Speaker 1: caught on fast, as the material gave the balls the

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Speaker 1: ideal weight, roll and rebound needed for the game. For

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Speaker 1: the next two centuries, ivory was the material of choice

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Speaker 1: for serious pool players, but the result of that high

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Speaker 1: demand was that hunters had to slaughter tens of thousands

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Speaker 1: of elephants each year. They killed so many, in fact,

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Speaker 1: that some manufacturers began to worry that the animal would

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Speaker 1: soon be hunted to extinction. To be clear, the companies

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Speaker 1: weren't worried about the elephants themselves. They cared about the

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Speaker 1: shortage and raw materials that would result from their absence,

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Speaker 1: and as grossly unethical as that concern was, it was

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Speaker 1: also understandable given that a single tusk provided only enough

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Speaker 1: ivory for four or five billiard balls. That looming threat

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Speaker 1: to the industry coincided with the billiard's craze in the

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Speaker 1: United States, and it prompted Feelan and Colander, a billiard

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Speaker 1: equipment manufacturer in New York, to offer a ten thousand

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Speaker 1: dollars cash prize to anyone who could produce a suitable

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Speaker 1: replacement for ivory. The company didn't even make billiard balls,

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Speaker 1: it specialized in billiard tables, but the owners knew there

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Speaker 1: wouldn't be much demand for their product if no one

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Speaker 1: had the balls to play the game. Luckily for them,

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Speaker 1: a local printer named John Wesley High saw the company's

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Speaker 1: ad in eighteen sixty three and decided to take a

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Speaker 1: crack at it. His first attempt, the one he patented

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Speaker 1: on October tenth, eighteen sixty five, didn't turn out so well,

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Speaker 1: but after going back to the drawing board for several years,

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Speaker 1: he and his brother Isaiah finally found a workable alternative

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Speaker 1: to ivory. The main ingredient of this miracle substance was

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Speaker 1: something called nitro cellulose, an organic compound made from cotton

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Speaker 1: fibers dissolved in nitric and sulfuric acids. It was highly flammable,

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Speaker 1: as the nitro in the name suggests, but Hyatt found

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Speaker 1: that when it was mixed with a waxy resin called

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Speaker 1: camphor and heated under pressure, it produced a strong, lightweight

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Speaker 1: material that could be molded into any shape and dyed

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Speaker 1: any color. Then, once it was cooled, the material would

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Speaker 1: harden and retain its shape. Using camphor oil as a

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Speaker 1: plasticizer was a stroke of genius, but it's worth noting

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Speaker 1: that the Hyats weren't the first to produce an ivory

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Speaker 1: like plastic from nitro cellulose. In eighteen sixty two, an

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Speaker 1: English inventor named Alexander Parks created a hardened form of

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Speaker 1: the substance called park Scene, and several others later expanded

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Speaker 1: on his work. Today, park Scene is widely considered to

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Speaker 1: be the first true plastic, although it never found success

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Speaker 1: as a commercial or industrial product. John Hyatt hoped to

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Speaker 1: have better luck by tweaking Park's formula and process and

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Speaker 1: claiming the Billiard Ball Prize. He patented his new composition

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Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty nine, calling it quote a good substitute

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Speaker 1: for ivory and the manufacture of billiard balls and balls

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Speaker 1: or articles of various descriptions wherein it is desired to

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Speaker 1: obtain toughness, hardness, and elasticity. Not long after, the Hyatt

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Speaker 1: brothers trademarked the name Celluloid, founded the Albany Billiard Ball

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Speaker 1: Company and started cranking out their own faux ivory pool balls.

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Speaker 1: The company remained in business all the way until nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty six, but for most of that time it didn't

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Speaker 1: make billiard balls from nitro cellulose. Due to the substance's combustibility,

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Speaker 1: the early pool balls that were made from it didn't

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Speaker 1: catch fire. But they did produce smoke and a loud

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Speaker 1: popping sound when struck together, and as you might imagine,

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Speaker 1: that was less than ideal for a product that was

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Speaker 1: intended to collide repeatedly, often in pool halls that were

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Speaker 1: teeming with liquor and itchy trigger fingers. John Wesley Hyatt

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Speaker 1: actually addressed the problem himself in nineteen fourteen, writing quote,

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Speaker 1: Occasionally the violent contact of the balls would produce a

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Speaker 1: mild explosion, like a percussion gun cap. We had a

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Speaker 1: letter from a billiard saloon proprietor in Colorado mentioning this

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Speaker 1: fact and saying he did not care so much about it,

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Speaker 1: but that instantly every man in the room pulled his gun.

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Speaker 1: The age of celluloid billiard balls was short lived, and

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Speaker 1: by the nineteen twenties, a new non exploding plastic called

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Speaker 1: bacolte had become the industry standard. Thankfully, the Hyatt brothers

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Speaker 1: hadn't put all their eggs in one basket. After patenting

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Speaker 1: their celluloid making process in eighteen sixty nine, they produced

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Speaker 1: a slew of early plastic products and ivory lookalikes, everything

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Speaker 1: from combs and shirt collars to piano keys and false teeth.

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Speaker 1: The Hyots found even more uses for celluloid in the

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Speaker 1: years ahead, and so did the rest of the world,

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Speaker 1: making it the first mass market synthetic plastic in history.

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Speaker 1: Their company helped make the case for the new material

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Speaker 1: by emphasizing how it could reduce the public's reliance and

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Speaker 1: impact on natural resources. Or is One of their promotional

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Speaker 1: pamphlets put it quote, celluloid has given the elephant, the tortoise,

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Speaker 1: and the coral insect a respite in their native haunts,

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Speaker 1: and it will no longer be necessary to ransack the

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Speaker 1: earth in pursuit of substances which are constantly growing scarcer.

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Speaker 1: Of course, other synthetic plastics would eventually replace celluloid, just

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Speaker 1: as bakeelite did in the realm of billiard balls. But

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Speaker 1: before that happened, the material had one more major impact

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Speaker 1: on life as we know it. In the eighteen eighties,

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Speaker 1: the Hyatts developed a method of creating thin, transparent sheets

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Speaker 1: of celluloid, otherwise known as film. In eighteen eighty nine,

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Speaker 1: Kodak founder George Eastman started using that film and cameras

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Speaker 1: as a replacement for glass plates, and then just a

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Speaker 1: few years later, celluloid film started to be manufactured in

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Speaker 1: long strips, making it possible to capture multiple images in

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Speaker 1: rapid succession. In that way, the age of plastics in

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Speaker 1: the age of movie making donned almost simultaneously. As for

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Speaker 1: John Hyatt, he continued inventing and patenting for the rest

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Speaker 1: of his life. Some of his other successes included juice extractors,

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Speaker 1: dental plates, roller bearings, and a multi stitch sewing machine.

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Speaker 1: He passed away in nineteen twenty at the age of

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Speaker 1: eighty four, but his contributions to modern life haven't been forgotten.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy four, he was inducted into the Plastics

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Speaker 1: Hall of Fame, and in two thousand and six he

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Speaker 1: took his place in America's National Inventors Hall of Fame.

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Speaker 1: That said, John Hyatt did get snubbed in at least

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Speaker 1: one regard. Remember that ten thousand dollars billiard Ball prize

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Speaker 1: he never got it. To talk about a tough break,

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Speaker 1: I'm Gabeluesier and hopefully you now know a little more

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Speaker 1: about history today than you did yesterday. If you have

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Speaker 1: a second and you're so inclined, consider following the show

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Speaker 1: on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You can find us at

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Speaker 1: TDI HC show, and if you have any comments or estions,

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Speaker 1: feel free to pass them along by writing to This

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Speaker 1: Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for

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Speaker 1: producing the show, and thanks to you for listening. I'll

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Speaker 1: see you back here again tomorrow for another day in

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Speaker 1: History class