wireless
telegraphy, electric lighting, etc.

Bakelite, however, is only one of an indefinite number of such
condensation products. As Baeyer said long ago: "It seems that all the
aldehydes will, under suitable circumstances, unite with the aromatic
hydrocarbons to form resins." So instead of phenol, other coal tar
products such as cresol, naphthol or benzene itself may be used. The
carbon links (-CH_{2}-, methylene) necessary to hook these carbon rings
together may be obtained from other substances than the aldehydes,
for instance from the amines, or ammonia derivatives. Three chemists,
L.V. Kedman, A.J. Weith and F.P. Broek, working in 1910 on the
Industrial Fellowships of the late Robert Kennedy Duncan at the
University of Kansas, developed a process using formin instead
of formaldehyde. Formin--or, if you insist upon its full name,
hexa-methylene-tetramine--is a sugar-like substance with a fish-like
smell. This mixed with crystallized carbolic acid and slightly warmed
melts to a golden liquid that sets on pouring into molds. It is still
plastic and can be bent into any desired shape, but on further heating
it becomes hard without the need of pressure. Ammonia is given off in
this process instead of water which is the by-product in the case of
formaldehyde. The product is similar to bakelite, exactly how similar is
a question that the courts will have to decide. The inventors threatened
to call it Phenyl-endeka-saligeno-saligenin, but, rightly fearing that
this would interfere with its salability, they have named it "redmanol."

A phenolic condensation product closely related to bakelite and redmanol
is condensite, the invention of Jonas Walter Aylesworth. Aylesworth was
trained in what he referred to as "the greatest university of the world,
the Edison laboratory." He entered this university at the age of
nineteen at a salary of $3 a week, but Edison soon found that he had in
his new boy an assistant who could stand being shut up in the laboratory
working day and night as long as he could. After nine years of close
association with Edison he set up a little laboratory in his own back
yard to work out new plastics. He found that by acting on
naphthalene--the moth-ball stuff--with chlorine he got a series of
useful products called "halowaxes." The lower chlorinated products are
oils, which may be used for impregnating paper or soft wood, making it
non-inflammable and impregnable to water. If four atoms of chlorine