9 A Mysterious Macromolecule: Speculating about the Structure of Bakelite

Whether considered in terms of output, sales value, or number of employees, the production of phenolic plastic resins constituted only a minor industry until the mid-1920s. Its relative smallness encouraged historian Ludwig Haber to leave it out of his classic study on the international development of the chemical industry between 1900 and 1930. In line with the evidence discussed in this book's two previous chapters, Haber attributed the ostensibly slow diffusion of these synthetic compounds to patent disputes and monopolistic prices.1 Other scholars' views, however, are more supportive of the 1931 claim of Bakelite research director Lawrence Redman that it was more valuable to have “a monopoly of new knowledge” than to have “monopolies of existing patent rights.”2 According to economic historian Joel Mokyr, for example, the limited knowledge about the chemistry of Bakelite was a serious constraint. Mokyr writes that Bakelite, and celluloid, were “developed on a very narrow epistemic base.” In his opinion, the advance of the synthetic materials industry “into large-scale manufacturing of mass produced commodities such as nylon and polyester had to await the establishment of its epistemic base by [German chemist] Hermann Staudinger, who discovered the chemical structure of large polymers in the 1920s.”3