Bakelite Ltd., Cowley, Middlesex. 1911 – 1916. The first English Bakelite company.Ian Holdsworth. |
In 1911 Bakelite Gesellschaft, a German company jointly owned by Dr. Leo Baekeland and Rutgerswerke Aktein Gesellschaft of Berlin established a plastics materials manufacturing company in Cowley, Middlesex, to exploit the recent invention of Bakelite. For the next three years this company, Bakelite Ltd. operated what was by far the most advanced thermoset plastics materials manufacturing technology in England. This first Bakelite company had an interesting if somewhat chequered history, but unfortunately, over time, much information about it has been lost. There are no known photographs of the company; the original buildings were demolished in 1934 when the site was completely redeveloped. But its address is known, company documents stating that it was sited at Orb Works, which were also known, then as now, as Bridge Works. An Ordnance Survey map of 1913 shows the works buildings were north off Iver lane in Cowley, between Fray’s River and the Grand Union (then Grand Junction) canal. The site remains an area of light industrial use today. Previous writers on the history of plastics manufacture have occasionally mentioned this company – not always accurately. With the centenary of its establishment occurring this year it seems appropriate to try to set the record at least partially straight. Recently discovered Board of Trade collected documents found at the National Archives, Kew, have helped to put some detail on what scant information remains. In 1909, having secured the intellectual property right to his ‘Bakelite’ materials through his patents of February 1907, July 1907 and October 1908 Dr. Leo Baekeland came to Europe to try to raise interest in the commercialisation of his invention. ‘However, the sad fact is that no firm in the country was sufficiently convinced of the importance of Baekeland’s new resins to take up their manufacture’ (ICI. c1965. p21) and only in Germany could he find a company with the business acumen to exploit his patent rights. This company was Rutgerswerke Aktein Gesellschaft, a large producer of acid whose factory was located at Ecknerbei, Berlin. The new company created between Baekeland and Rutgerswerke was called Bakelite Gesellschaft mit Beschraenkter Haftung. This was a company licensed by Baekeland to manufacture using his patented processes, but it was Rutgerswerke AG of Frankfurt, ‘possibly the holding company for Bakelite Gesellschaft’ (Tilson. 1999. p24) that registered the Bakelite trade name on July 6th 1910, Trade Marks Register No. 325082. Bakelite Gesellschaft quickly established manufacturing facilities in Italy, France and England. Why Cowley was chosen for the English company site is not known. The factory was a two-storey building, each storey having a floor area of approximately 2,500 square feet. The managing director of the company was Dr. Hans Lebach, a talented German chemist who had made important contributions to research into the phenolic condensation process. Lebach was well known to Baekeland. He had filed patents in Germany for reinforced phenol formaldehyde moulding powders, trade-named Resol, Resitol and Resite, (corresponding to Baekeland’s A, B and C resin stages) after Baekeland’s 1907 patents and just months before Baekeland had filed his1908 American patent. An extensive patent litigation ensued between them during which Baekeland had declared of Resite that he was ‘firmly convinced of the technical worthlessness of this substance’. (Bijker. 1987). But this did not stop him adopting some of Lebach’s production processes once the litigation was over, especially those proposed by Lebach in 1908 ‘to prepare a phenolic resin in the presence of alkali and then achieve rapid hardening by adding an excess of acid’. (Robitschek & Lewin. 1950. p14). Baekeland headhunted the talented people of his day to work for him but the fact that Lebach was sent to England to start Bakelite Ltd is also a classic example of Baekeland choosing a management team ‘formed almost totally from the ranks of previous competitors who had been “defeated” in the patent struggles’. (Bijker. 1987) Or in other words, ‘Baekeland’s patents were subject to a great deal of litigation, but Baekeland won his cases and moreover persuaded his chief opponents to team up with him in his commercial ventures’. (Robitschek & Lewin. 1950. p15). The new factory building was equipped with very well designed and made state of the art (by German standards) plastics manufacturing technology, including the forerunner of a modern resin still, (see Fielding. 1958. p12). The still was steam heated and could be automatically loaded by means of a vacuum pump. The advantage of this design of still was that it made possible the production of solid resins. When manufacturing resins of the type then known, control of the reaction to produce an “A” stage resin was tricky and virtually impossible if dehydration was attempted in an open pan as the water had to be driven off by evaporation. Application of heat to achieve this also clearly had an effect on the resin and took it close to the “C” stage. By reducing the pressure, and hence the temperature inside the still during dehydration, the reaction was correspondingly easier to control. With the Cowley still, it became possible for the first time to carry out this stage of production in vacuo on any large scale. (Fielding. 1958. p14) Plant also existed for the manufacture of moulding materials by both the wet and dry process. The wet process involved production of a liquid resin which was mixed with fine sawdust or asbestos filler and blended in an industrial mixer. The mixture was then dried and crushed to a coarse powder. In the dry process, solid resin was crushed, ground to fineness in a ball-mill with fillers and colourants added at the mixing stage. (Reboul. P. Tape-recorded interview with Potter. H.V. 1986). Bakelite Ltd. was incorporated as a private limited company on November 16th 1911, and given the Board of Trade company number 118614. The two directors were Dr. Hans Lebach, who was managing director and company secretary, and Dr. Fritz Noebe. Additional directors, including Dr. Max Weger, and a Col. J. M. Warrener J.P. (who shared a very elegant house with Lebach in London’s Maida Vale) were later added. The nominal company capital was £2000 divided into 2000 one pound shares. The shareholders were: Bakelite Gesellschaft 1000 shares This share division remained almost unchanged throughout the company’s short history. On July 27th 1912 a formal license agreement was drawn up between Bakelite Ltd. and Bakelite Gesellschaft giving Bakelite Ltd. rights to manufacture Bakelite materials against Baekeland’s 1908 patents, numbers 1921, 1922 and 21566. This agreement also included the rights to manufacture against Lebach’s Resinit patents of 1908 and 1911, numbers 27096, 28009, 6429 and 6430. Manufacturing rights were further granted for semi-plastic materials, including plasticised impregnated paper and cardboard, against other patents that Bakelite Gesellschaft owned. By 1912 the Bakelite Ltd. factory was selling a range of materials, both phenolic resins and moulding powders. One of its main customers for liquid resins was the Micanite & Insulators Co. of Blackhorse Lane, London E17. This company was arguably the earliest manufacturer of laminates in England. One of Micanite & Insulators Co’s main customers was the Admiralty, who found their insulating sheet essential for electrical purposes, Synthetic resins (resinoids) had become essential raw materials – especially for use in laminated insulating boards used in wireless telegraphy on board ships. (Reboul 1993 in Mossman S.T.I. & Morris P.J.T. (Eds). 1994. p33) Another customer was Henry Howell & Co. who were based in Old Street, Islington, London. With a workforce of nearly six hundred they were the world’s largest manufacturer of walking sticks and umbrellas. Henry Howell bought from Bakelite Ltd. (probably via a wholesaler called Pepperell) pre-cast stick and umbrella handles made of cast phenolic resin. These were cast in both steel and glass moulds. The use of glass moulds was a well-developed technology used in the nineteenth century in the manufacture of ebonite. It is customary now to cure … these … goods in chalk in the open, or, as in cases where one is concerned with the production of an absolutely true and smooth surfaced article, in glass or metal moulds, the inside walls of which are smooth. (Heil A. & Esch W. 1909. p214). Other cast goods were also made, for example pipe stems, and were supplied to the London trade. J.A.Press worked at Bakelite Ltd. in 1913, aged 16. His first job was to ‘clean out nickel pans and at times chip them after use by the men in charge, Mr. Ullrich and Dr. Lebach’. The company had a total staff of eight. ‘they also employed two men, two boys and one typist’. Press ‘started making “C” material, the transparent amber-like material which was used for casting pipe stems, cigarette holders, tea pot handles and fancy goods’. (Press. Plastiquarian. No.38. 2007) In 1914, four days before the outbreak of WW1 Dr. Lebach (who was an army reservist) left the Cowley factory, and attempted to return to Germany – but never made it. He was arrested as an enemy alien and interned on the Isle of Man. A 1915 letter from Thorn Murray, Bakelite Ltd’s chartered accountants of Moorgate, London, in response to the Registrar at Companies House who had requested an annual list and summary of shares states ‘The manager has been interned on the Isle of Man and there is no one capable of making out and filing the return in his absence. We understand that communication with interned prisoners is a rather slow process and under the circumstances we shall be glad to know if you will be good enough to let the matter stand over for a short time,’ Before Lebach left he had organised the dismantling and removal of the factory boiler, thereby disabling the plant. Lebach also left two cases of personal property that, some years later, were returned to him by the Admiralty. The Bakelite Ltd. factory then lay locked and deserted, apart from an elderly caretaker, for two years. In 1916, Micanite & Insulators Co. could not fulfil Admiralty orders for insulating sheet due to a shortage of phenolic resin. The Admiralty, in conjunction with the British Government’s Custodian of Enemy Property Department suggested that James Swinburne’s Damard Lacquer Company, located in Birmingham, take over the Cowley factory and use it to re-commence the manufacture of phenolic resins. Damard was the only other company in the country at this time that had some knowledge of working with phenolics, through Swinburne’s previous researches, although Damard had a primary expertise in lacquers, which were used in the brass bed trade to stop the brass oxidising. …..although trials were made under Swinburne’s direction, firstly at the Fireproof Celluloid Co. and later at Damard Lacquer Co. the Cowley works of the German company which Baekeland had licensed was evidently the only factory in Britain to make solid components before WW1. It was also making quantities of liquid resins for laminates manufacture one of its known customers being Micanite & Insulators Co. in London. (Tilson. 1999. p122). It was not until 1914 that Damard’s chief research chemist, Howard V. Potter, was appointed with a brief which included investigating ‘the prospect of producing solid insulation products from phenol-formaldehyde reactions’ (Reboul. P. Tape-recorded interview with Potter. H.V. 1986). Damard did not sell resins to Micanite & Insulators Co. before this time as Damard’s minutes (in the PHS library) indicated in 1914 only that there were ‘prospects of selling products to Micanite Co. more particularly in USA.’ Doubtless the firm had discovered it ran the risk of infringing Baekeland’s patents for the patent position was described as ‘difficult’. (Tilson. 1999. p38). Remarkably, Damard did not even know up to this date that Bakelite Ltd. had a factory at Cowley. The company was not even aware at the outset of war that the Cowley firm existed, nor that it made ‘cast solid resin umbrella handles, pipe stems and things of that type’…… Damard’s ignorance of its existence was probably due to the two firms’ divergent activities, for Damard concentrated on liquid resins, while the Cowley firm handled the demand for solid phenolic resins. (Tilson. 1999. p27) The Damard acquisition of Bakelite Ltd., of August 8th 1916, was enabled through the Trading with the Enemy Amendment Act. A letter from the Board of Trade to the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies had already required Bakelite Ltd. to be wound up on the 20th June 1916. In this way Damard was, in effect, sold Bakelite Ltd. by the British government. Bakelite Ltd. was officially dissolved as a company on July 28th 1917. In 1986 H.V. Potter, later to become chairman of Bakelite Ltd. did a tape-recording about the 1916 takeover of the Bakelite Ltd. Cowley factory. It had an inauspicious start. He describes how on the appointed day Potter and his colleague, W.R. Cooper, arrived to find the factory gates firmly locked and an aggressive guard-dog inside. After some time an elderly caretaker appeared and told them to go away as he had been instructed by the Germans not to let anyone in. Eventually they did manage to gain access and found a very well designed and fitted out factory. As Potter remarks, When we finally got in, it was obvious that they had first-class equipment, clearly marked as to the function of valves and pipes with everything clean and tidy and polished – as though they thought the war would be over in a few weeks! (Reboul. P. Tape-recorded interview with Potter. H.V. 1986). Their first task was to find a boiler to fire up the plant. They eventually found a portable steam boiler and towed it into the factory on a horse and cart. They also found a retired engine driver to run the boiler as part of his war effort. Having got the plant going they did some test batches of resin but were not immediately successful. We did some test runs in the beautiful copper autoclave. We were not successful at once and made several hard, solid batches of resin which had polymerised (we called it in those days “a charge of biff”) which had to be chipped out before we got anywhere near the product needed by the Admiralty – that is a solid resin that could be dissolved in alcohol and not the liquid form we had been supplying. Inside the factory they also found the moulds which the Germans had been using for casting umbrella handles, pipe stems and the like. They were cast in lead moulds and the injection mould-making shop (discontinued during the war) consisted of a container for melting the lead and solid, polished metal dies which were dipped into the molten lead to form the mould into which the resin could be cast. There were a number of these moulds lying about the shop and the rumour got round that they were making bombs and it ought to be stopped! A local Police Inspector was called and was able, after we explained, to satisfy the locals that we were harmless…. (Reboul. P. Tape-recorded interview with Potter. H.V. 1986). After a shaky start, from 1916 onwards Damard staff ran the Cowley factory supplying insulating resin to the Admiralty and resins that acted as an impregnant for brake linings. In 1920 the prospects for the Damard Lacquer Co. looked good. They had developed considerable experience operating the Cowley factory and their product range had been broadened from lacquers and varnishes to include cast resins and moulding powders. James Swinburne, Chairman of Damard Lacquer and distinguished scientist had also developed a close working relationship with Baekeland including licensing rights to his patents. Damard decided to concentrate production in Birmingham at Warwick Road, Greet and a one acre site to develop a new factory had been purchased. In 1921, as soon as the Greet site was capable of production, the Cowley factory was closed.
Bibliography Bijker, W. The Social Construction of Bakelite: Toward a Theory of Invention. Fielding, T.J. History of Bakelite Limited. London. Bakelite Limited. 1958. Heil, A. & Esch, W. English Edition Lewis E. W. The Manufacture of Rubber Goods. London. Charles Griffin & Co. Ltd. 1909. ICI. Landmarks of the Plastics Industry. ICI. c1965. Reboul, P. Audiotape recordings on behalf of the Plastics Institute. 1986 Reboul, P. Bakelite and the Bakelite Revolution, in Mossman S.T.I. & Morris P.J.T. (Eds). The Development of Plastics. Cambridge. The Royal Society of Chemistry. 1994. Press, J.A. My 25 Years Plastiquarian No.38. London. Plastics Historical Society. 2007. Robitschek, P. & Lewin, A. Phenolic Resins. London. Iliffe & Sons. Ltd. 1950 Tilson, B. The Development of the British Plastics Industry 1855 to 1900. Birmingham. Centre for Urban and Regional Studies. University of Birmingham. 1999.
Ian Holdsworth 2008
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