Article: Plastic: The Making of a Synthetic Century.(Brief Article)

PLASTIC: THE MAKING OF A SYNTHETIC CENTURY. By Stephen Fenichell. HarperBusiness; 356 pages; $25 and [Pounds] 16 ELEPHANTS suffered greatly during the billiards craze that swept America in the 1860s. Hunters had to gather as many as 50 tusks to find one with a grain even enough to supply the ivory from which the balls used for the game were crafted. Ivory prices rose sharply as a result, prompting Phelan & Collender, the largest supplier of billiards equipment in America at the time, to offer $10,000 in gold to whoever could invent a substitute. The reward sent countless amateur scientists to their garden sheds to tinker with wood chips, glues, shellac and strips of muslin. ...