Word: plastic
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...simple process for taking the salts out of sea water, for the recovery of valuable metals dissolved in mine wastes, until recently seemed too good to be true. But such jobs have now been done in the laboratory with cheap synthetic resin (i.e., a "plastic") which can be recovered, used over & over. These "Amberlite" resins are now made in quantity by Resinous Products & Chemical Co. of Philadelphia under patents owned by the British Government. Not for years have chemists seen such a big new field of research opened. They have huge potential uses. Examples...
...process was born in 1935 when Basil Albert Adams and Eric Leighton Holmes of the British Department of Scientific & Industrial Research (which has no counterpart in the U.S.) prepared L, phenol-formaldehyde resin which was more useful for its chemical properties than as a plastic. When immersed in "hard" water, which contains salts of calcium, it entered an exchange: it took calcium atoms from the water, replaced them with sodium, thus softened the water...
...Plastic petroleum, developed by Gulf Oil for business machines, now lubricates the magazines of the Oerlikon 20-mm. rapid-fire gun. Reason: it stays soft, sticks to metal at arctic and tropic temperatures...
...ersatz materials are often better than the products they replace. Samples exhibited at Chicago's National Chemical Exposition: an Army raincoat that weighs 1½ Ib. less than the old model, saves 1¾ Ib. of rubber; plastic buttons for uniforms; synthetic bristles, tetered like natural hog hairs, for paintbrushes...
...jets de Guerre. Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art opened a "Useful Objects in Wartime" exhibit. Featured: baking pans made of paper, a cornhusk doormat, an open-top hamper-cart for the free wheeling of groceries, a plastic sink stopper, a felt eyeglass case...