Dr. Burkard Wagner
Retired Research Chemist, Union Carbide/Dow Chemical Bound Brook, New Jersey
One item that should make it into the blogs is to draw attention on a visceral basis how new and novel Bakelite was, and how it could fill needs that people until then had not realized they had. The NPR podcast “How Oil Got into Everything”
{http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/08/19/490408060/oil-4-how-oil-got-into-everything } got into that theme a little bit from the economic point of view (replacement of something unattainably expensive by something well in reach). I think we need to recreate the sense of wonder paralleling when we had the first iPod or iPhone in our hands – something that had not even existed before, but suddenly became not only totally desirable, indispensible – and totally in reach of everybody.