Polystyrene was discovered in 1839 by Eduard Simon, an apothecary from Berlin. From storax, the resin of the Oriental sweetgum tree Liquidambar orientalis, he distilled an oily substance, a monomer that he named styrol. Several days later, Simon found that the styrol had thickened into a jelly he dubbed styrol oxide (“Styroloxyd”) because he presumed an oxidation. By 1845 Jamaican-born chemist John Buddle Blyth and German chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann showed that the same transformation of styrol took place in the absence of oxygen. They called the product “meta styrol”; analysis showed that it was chemically identical to Simon’s Styroloxyd. In 1866 Marcellin Berthelot correctly identified the formation of meta styrol/Styroloxyd from styrol as a polymerisation process. About 80 years later it was realized that heating of styrol starts a chain reaction that produces macromolecules, following the thesis of German organic chemist Hermann Staudinger (1881–1965). This eventually led to the substance receiving its present name, polystyrene.
The company I. G. Farben began manufacturing polystyrene in Ludwigshafen, about 1931, hoping it would be a suitable replacement for die-cast zinc in many applications. Success was achieved when they developed a reactor vessel that extruded polystyrene through a heated tube and cutter, producing polystyrene in pellet form.
Otis Ray McIntire (1918-1996) a chemical engineer of Dow Chemical rediscovered a process first patented by Swedish inventor Carl Munters. According to the Science History Institute, “Dow bought the rights to Munters’s method and began producing a lightweight, water-resistant, and buoyant material that seemed perfectly suited for building docks and watercraft and for insulating homes, offices, and chicken sheds.”In 1944, Styrofoam was patented.
Before 1949, chemical engineer Fritz Stastny (1908–1985) developed pre-expanded polystyrene beads by incorporating aliphatic hydrocarbons, such as pentane. These beads are the raw material for moulding parts or extruding sheets. BASF and Stastny applied for a patent that was issued in 1949. The moulding process was demonstrated at the Kunststoff Messe 1952 in Düsseldorf. Products were named Styropor.
The crystal structure of isotactic polystyrene was reported by Giulio Natta.
In 1954, the Koppers Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, developed expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam under the trade name Dylite. In 1960, Dart Container, the largest manufacturer of foam cups, shipped their first order.
Excerpt from Wikipedia.
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