PVC History

Vinyl chloride was initially prepared in the lab by a French chemist (Regnault) in the early 19th century, and polymerized as a curiosity in the 1870's. By itself a hard, horny, intractable material that degraded with heat to give off HCl, poly(vinylchloride) had no commercial importance until about 1933, when a young chemist at B.F. Goodrich in Akron Ohio, Waldo Semon, dissolved PVC resin in hot dibutyl phthalate and hot tricresyl phosphate---and found upon cooling that the mixture gelled to a rubbery, elastomeric state that could be remelted and cooled!

With this discovery of plasticization, PVC became a commercially viable product, especially during World War II, and the shortage of rubber. PVC insulated wire & cable, coated fabric, waterproof
boots and shoes, self-sealing aircraft fuel tanks, and other flexible PVC products rapidly emerged as the war ended.

Over the ensuing 45-50 years, PVC's annual production grew from a few hundred million pounds to about 14 billion pounds (U.S., 2000) as new uses and markets were developed. As stated earlier, the largest volume applications for PVC in the earlier years were flexible, plasticized products such as vinyl asbestos floor tile (obsoleted), vinyl flooring, wire & cable insulation, calendered supported (Naugahyde) and unsupported film and sheeting, hose, footwear and the like. Quantum improvements in extrusion and injection molding machinery and extrusion die design, together with significant improvements in stabilizer and lubricant technology allowed for the rapid growth of rigid PVC applications, mainly for the building and construction industries.