WE TAKE IT FOR GRANTED that plastic is used in the making of so much - from the obvious, like packaging, to its less-apparent use in textiles. Really, it's difficult to imagine a time before the “plastic revolution”. Staggeringly, though, until 1862, when the first man-made plastic was invented and marketed as an alternative to popular ivory and horn products, our ancestors lived sans the stuff.
It wasn't until 1907 that the first completely synthetic plastic, Bakelite, was produced. Its advent marked the beginning of the modern plastics industry. From the 1920s, it became a popular material in machine parts and household items.