Word: soapless
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Frenchmen Dumas and Peligot in 1836. They began their concoctions with fatty alcohols extracted from whale oil, but the product was too costly to compete with that age-old detergent, soap. During World War I, when fats for soapmaking were scarce, German chemists again tried in earnest to concoct soapless soaps. Real success did not come until after the war, when they developed the sodium alkyl sulfates. Production of these substances was not practical until the 1930s, after techniques were developed which could convert fats to fatty alcohols under pressures...
Compared with soap, wetting agents have three advantages: they will work 1) in the presence of acids, 2) in hard water, 3) in cold water. Many a U.S. woman has long been washing her clothes, hair and teeth with these soapless soaps-e.g., Procter & Gamble's "Dreft," "Drene," etc., and Colgate's similar line, whose unusual chemistry has not been emphasized in their makers' advertising. Chemists are trying to put a soapless detergent into cake form. When they succeed, as they may any day now, its advantages-notably in the vast U.S. hard-water zones-will...