Did nylon reveloutionise the Textile world?

An insight to the invention of Nylon:

In 1920 E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company purchased 60% interest in Comptior des Textiles Artificiels, a French rayon company. The company combined its name and became DuPont Fibre Company.  In 1926 Charles M Stine director of the Chemical Department suggested to the committee that they where looking for innovation in the wrong place. Rather than looking at existing products as rayon or ammonia DuPont should fund "pure science work" instead of research that applied previously established scientific facts to practical problems.  This was not new to the industry as both General Electric and Bell Telephone had research laboratories, it was his insistence that the research be "pure or fundamental" this was such a radical idea to a company that was mainly focused on profit. However, in 1927 Stine was given a monthly grant of $25,000 plus funding for a new laboratory building which was dubbed "Purity hall". He was allowed to hire 25 of the best Chemist but this proved to be quite challenging as many of the academic scientist doubted whether they would be allowed to truly do pure research in such an industry setting.

Swines first break through was when he hired A young organic chemist lecturer from Harvard Wallace H Corothers. Corothers proposed to centre his research on Polymerisation, the process by which individual short molecules form long chain macromolecules.  Corothers success was almost immediate but it wasn't until 1930 when one of his associates Julian W Hill produced a long polymeric ester, resulting in the first polyester. Whilst Hills polyester was a significant break through as the fibres had a remarkable property: when cooled it could be pulled into an elastic thread four times its original length, sadly DuPont researchers realised that this first polyester was never going to succeed as a commercial fibre because of its low melting point making it impractical for laundering and ironing.

The problem of low melting point and high solubility in water where the two main problems that DuPont researched need to resolve in order to create a viable synthetic fibre. In 1934 Corothers was urged but the new Chemical Director Elmer Bolton to return to the problem only this time focusing on Polyamides rather than polyester.  A new break through happened in May 1934 when another member of the research team Donald D Coffman successfully pulled a fibre of polymer based on a aminoethylester, ultimately producing the first nylon.  This new nylon fibre was retained the remarkable elastic properties of polyester but with non of it draw back.  However, it was extremely difficult to produce and it took Corothers and his team a further year to develop two possible fields: polyamide 5,10, made from pentamethylene diamine and sebacic acid; and polyamide 6,6, made from hexamethylenediamine and adipic acid. (The molecules are named for the number of carbons in the starting materials.) Corothers and Bolton where split as to which line of possibility they should pursue. Corothers wanted to research further the 5, 10 whilst Bolton thought the 6,6 because the intermediates could be more easily precurred from benzene which was readily available starting material derived from coal tar. Due to Corothers increasing mental health problems that frequently kept him away from the laboratory Bolton was able to push the research down the 6,6 possibility.
chemheritage.org Joseph Labovsky, a chemical engineer working as a technician in the lab, later recalled that the lab workers were scaling up fibre 6,6 “from 1 ounce to 1 pound, 2 pounds, 50 pounds, 250 pounds, and eventually to 2,000 pounds.” During this time Paul Flory a young physical chemist helped researchers stabilise the reaction by developing a mathematical model for the kinetics of polymerisation reaction which later won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. 

DuPont started the construction of a nylon production facility in Seaford, Delaware in 1938 which would produce up to 12 million pounds of synthetic fibre per year. Finally he was ready to introduce nylon to the America. 

Fig 7: [LEFT] Photograph of a nylon tulle dress "glittering with brilliants" from a 1958 Christian Dior collection, circulated by DuPont's public relations department. [RIGHT] A 35-foot-high leg display advertising nylon in Los Angeles, California. The leg was modeled by movie star Marie Wilson, shown suspended from the crane.

In house the fibre was referred to as fibre 66, rayon 66 or Duparon a creative acronym for DuPont pulls a rabbit out of Nitrogen/nature/nozzle/naphtha. Another name for the new fibre was Nuron which cleverly read no run when the word were spelt backwards. Unfortunately due to trade mark conflict with other closely related words this name was not used. Eventually the company settled on the word nylon. However. the company decided not to trade mark the name in the hope of making the consumer think that nylon was as a generic preexisting material such as glass or wood.

The rise of Nylon stockings:

Nylons characteristics made it an ideal material suitable for a  number of uses so why did DuPont focus on a single market: Ladies fashioned hosiery. During this time the American woman bought on average eight pairs of stockings per year. The continuing rise of the hemline in the 1930s made silk and rayon stockings an essential part of every woman's wardrobe. However, DuPont never intended to produce stockings himself, his idea was to sell the nylon thread to mills that would knit and sell hosiery. 

The new fibre generated a lot of publicity and it was shroud in rumours and speculation. News articles claimed the new thread that DuPont had developed was just as good as silk if not even better and that stocking made from the fibre would never run. Such publicity claims may have unnerved DuPonts exectutives as being unrealistic expectations. It probably didn't help that the same year Corother committed suicide and the Washington News ran a story based on the new patent (U.S 2,130,948). In the article they claimed that cadaverine, a substances formed during the puterfacation of dead bodies could be used to make nylon.  After such morbid publicity DuPont regained control and maybe in an attempt to quash these rumours, his own publicity department stressed that nylon was made solely from coal, air and water. DuPont introduce nylon stockings publically on 27th October 1939 to a crowd of 4'000 enthusiastic middle class women but it would be another 18 months before they were available commercially. The life of the nylon stocking was short lived with the intervention of WWII and Dupont shifted the manufacturing of nylon into millitary production of parachutes, tie cords glider tow ropes, air craft fuel tanks, shoe laces, flak jackets, mosquito nets and hammocks. It wasn't until the end of the war that Dupont returned to manufacturing nylon stocking commercially.  

How nylon changed the world of fashion.  
Nylon opened the door to a revolution in the fashion industry. With the introduction of other synthetic fibres came the promise of cheap, colourful, easy-care, wash and wear, disposable future. By the 1950's nylon and other synthetic fibres could be found in most wearable garments such as underwear, socks, sweaters, fur coats, the list is endless. Women's fashion in particular was transformed by the new synthetic fibres. The introduction of Lycra girdles must have been extremely liberating for women as these were lighter and more comfortable to wear than the previous rubber girdles.