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 enter the naphthalene molecule the product is a hard wax that rings like a metal.

Condensite is anhydrous and infusible, and like its rivals finds its chief employment in the insulation parts of electrical apparatus.  The records of the Edison phonograph are made of it.  So are the buttons of our blue-jackets.  The Government at the outbreak of the war ordered 40,000 goggles in condensite frames to protect the eyes of our gunners from the glare and acid fumes.

The various synthetics played an important part in the war.  According to an ancient military pun the endurance of soldiers depends upon the strength of their soles.  The new compound rubber soles were found useful in our army and the Germans attribute their success in making a little leather go a long way during the late war to the use of a new synthetic tanning material known as “neradol.”  There are various forms of this.  Some are phenolic condensation products of formaldehyde like those we have been considering, but some use coal-tar compounds having no phenol groups, such as naphthalene sulfonic acid.  These are now being made in England under such names as “paradol,” “cresyntan” and “syntan.”  They have the advantage of the natural tannins such as bark in that they are of known strength and can be varied to suit.

This very grasping compound, formaldehyde, will attack almost anything, even molecules many times its size.  Gelatinous and albuminous substances of all sorts are solidified by it.  Glue, skimmed milk, blood, eggs, yeast, brewer’s slops, may by this magic agent be rescued from waste and reappear in our buttons, hairpins, roofing, phonographs, shoes or shoe-polish.  The French have made great use of casein hardened by formaldehyde into what is known as “galalith” (i.e., milkstone).  This is harder than celluloid and non-inflammable, but has the disadvantages of being more brittle and of absorbing moisture.  A mixture of casein and celluloid has something of the merits of both.

The Japanese, as we should expect, are using the juice of the soy bean, familiar as a condiment to all who patronize chop-sueys or use Worcestershire sauce.  The soy glucine coagulated by formalin gives a plastic said to be better and cheaper than celluloid.  Its inventor, S. Sato, of Sendai University, has named it, according to American precedent, “Satolite,” and has organized a million-dollar Satolite Company at Mukojima.