Not only electrical engineering but also machine manufacturing, the optical industry, the furniture industry, automotive, airplane and measuring instrument production discovered phenolic resin for their operations. Moulding compounds also came to be used more and more for the production of household goods and other everyday commodities and/or the housings for them (Schrader 1962, 34). The following alphabetical list is perhaps the best illustration of the amazing variety of different applications: ashtrays, billiard balls, brake pads (bonding agent), buttons for textiles, cameras, clothes irons, coffee machines, distributor caps, food processors, fountain pens, gramophone records, hair dryers, handles for pots and pans, ignition coils, ink pads, knobs, lamp sockets, laundry sprayers, light switches, loudspeakers, pencil sharpeners, plugs and plug sockets, radios, sewing machines, slide viewers, steering wheels, telephones, vacuum cleaners, welding tongs, etc. etc. etc. …
The versatility of Bakelite was due to an unparalleled property profile: quite apart from its high hardness level, heat & acid resistance, phenolic resin has the not inconsiderable advantage of lower weight than metals. “Bakelite is a substance that in its different forms has the benefits of hard rubber, Japanese lacquerware and celluloid and has even better properties than these products in some respects”: this is what General Bakelite Company said in an information brochure that appeared in March 1912 (quoted from Fiell and Fiell 2009, 14). As Baekeland’s patent specification already stated, the properties of the material can be improved decisively by incorporating filling agents, “as phenolic resin alone is very brittle: asbestos improves heat resistance, sawdust prevents water absorption, fabric increases pressure resistance” (Schäfke 1987, 14). Rock flour, mica, fibreglass and cellulose papers also proved effective (Domininghaus 1969, 58). “These additives turn the resins into moulding compounds. The resin acts as a bonding agent and is homogenised with the fillers on hot mixing rollers or in continuously operating kneaders. In this context, the degree of condensation increases from the resol stage to the resitol stage” (ibid., 58). In the initial decades, sawdust was the filler of choice (Brandenburger 1938, 21-23). The problem: “Products containing sawdust are less durable than ones with glass or asbestos filling. Mould or bacterial growth can also occur when organic filling agents are used” (Waentig and Ludwig 2012, 11).
Bakelite was a welcome challenge to designers. They created entirely new shapes for commodities that had no historical precedents. Although phenolic resin is similar in colour to amber, its colour can be changed by incorporating pigments. Soot guarantees black colours. “Interesting colour nuances” can also be “achieved” (Schäfke 1987, 15) by high pressure distributing the colourants in the moulding press. Objects made out of Bakelite have visual appeal, not least of all because of their surface gloss.
The “Volksempfänger” (VE 301), an inexpensive radio in a Bakelite cabinet, which was presented at the Berlin Radio Show in August 1933 and double-digit millions of which were commissioned by the Nazi authorities, became the most well-known and by far the most common phenolic resin product. It consisted of a phenolic resin fast-moulding compound filled with sawdust that was based on novolacs with a hexamethylentetramine setting agent, produced primarily by Bakelite Erkner and at the Essen moulding plant of Gesellschaft für Teerverwertung mbH, Duisburg-Meiderich, that was a Rütgers competitor (Collin 2003, 158, and Collin 2007, 17).
Because competition had in the meantime begun: Baekeland’s patents had expired on 31. January 1930, when Bakelite GmbH’s monopoly ended (Retzlaff 2010, 32). More than 30 other factories now produced phenolic resin compounds in Germany alone (Raubach 1960, 40). Bakelite continued to be protected as a trademark, on the other hand, because it was possible to extent this right every ten years in exchange for payment (ibid., 40). Before 1930, Baekeland had faced repeated patent infringements and had taken legal action against them:
“Baekeland generally won the numerous court cases against plagiarists. In the end, practically all of Baekeland’s rivals co-operated with him and most of them were soon among his best friends. In 1922, Baekeland merged Condensite Company of America (with a production location in Bloomfield, N. J,) and Redmanol Chemical Products Corporation (with a plant in Chicago) with his own company to form a holding company known as ‘Bakelite Corporation’” (Collin 2007, 14).
In 1919, a settlement was, incidentally, reached with Hermann Römmler AG (based in Spremberg/Lower Lusatia), which manufactured phenolic resins with a heat-and-pressure setting process that was developed independently from Baekeland and which marketed them under the name “Hares” (see Raubach 1960, 40, and Braun 2013, 214).
Germany continued to be the leading manufacturer of Bakelite. In the mid-1930s, it accounted for some 30 per cent of global phenolic resin production (Brandenburger 1938, 21): “It has eight large factories, which manufacture about 30,000,000 kg of moulding powder per year that is processed into mouldings at about 1,500 different plants” (ibid., 21). Leo Hendrik Baekeland was therefore “one of the very few who […] fate allowed to enjoy the benefits of their work” (ibid., 19) – in contrast, for example, to the PVC pioneer Fritz Klatte (see Topic of the Month Jan./Feb. 2018: “A man who was 20 years ahead of his time”). A judgement that cannot be restricted to economic success alone: Baekeland was president of important chemical associations, while many scientific societies in Europe made him an honorary member (summary at Collin 2007, 15). In 1939, when he was 76 years old, the “father of Bakelite” sold General Bakelite Company to Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation and retired (ibid., 14). On 23. February 1944, he died in a sanatorium in Beacon/New York from the after-effects of a stroke. Baekeland’s grave is in the cemetery of Sleepy Hollow/New York. “He left his heirs a large inheritance, but his innovative skills were not passed on to them” (Schmutzler 1993, 25).
In the year Baekeland – and, incidentally, Max Weger too – died, global phenolic resin production amounted to 175,000 tonnes, to which the German Bakelite company in Erkner contributed 13,000 tonnes or about eight per cent. All in all, some 250,000 tonnes of plastics were produced in Germany in 1944 (Collin 2007, 17), most of them thermosetting phenolic resin and urea-formaldehyde moulding compounds. Hermann Römmler AG in Spremberg was the primary source of the latter, which it marketed under the brand names Alboresin and later Resopal and Sprelacart. This meant that Germany was the second-largest plastics manufacturer in the world in the penultimate year of the Second World War, right after the United States.
On 8. March 1944, only a good two weeks after Baekeland’s death, air raids by the Allies destroyed parts of the Bakelite plant and the Erkner tar refinery. Some of the production equipment and skilled personnel were transferred to the Rütgerswerke facilities in Munich-Pasing and Dohna near Dresden, so that the phenolic resin production that was vital to the war effort could continue (Collin 2007, 18). On 21. April 1945, the Red Army marched into Erkner and production there was stopped. The remaining equipment was dismantled to some extent.