My home town....... & the discovery of Polythene

My home town Northwich sits right in the centre of the county of Cheshire.
The Chemical Industry is still a big employer in the town producing Soda Ash.

Founded by John Brunner and Ludwig Mond.
Brunner Mond was established in the 1870's  and eventually merged with other firms in the 1920's to form ICI

 An event happened in 1933 that changed the world at the ICI factory less than a mile from my home.

The River Weaver

The factory (producing Soda Ash) can be seen from my walks to my local woodlands.

It was the work of ICI's Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson who decided to experiment one morning  with gases under high pressure.

They spotted that part of their apparatus looked like it had been dipped in paraffin wax.

Gibson's simple notes made at the time at the company's base in my home town Northwich belied there importance.
 "Waxy solid found in reaction tube".

My little town had discovered Polythene.

Two years later ICI developed the means for making polythene on an industrial scale.

Shortly afterwards it was used for the first round- the-world telephone cable.

During the Second World War it won near heroic status as a vital radar component.
It is a wonderful product with a vast amount of uses.

Unfortunately it was also used to produce...

PLASTIC BAGS

 

Plastic bags have been banned from a lot of countries... but not in the UK.

We apparently still use over a billion a year despite continued efforts to have them banned.

My town is proud of it's industrial past and polythene is a product with many uses.

I would just like to add the plastic bag was invented elsewhere....