Leo Baekeland

In 1978, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
. Baekeland's great-grandson, Anthony Baekeland spent several years in a psychiatric hospital after murdering his mother, Barbara Daly Baekeland; ironically, he suffocated himself with a plastic bag in 1981.
. Baekeland is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in a sanatorium in Beacon, New York.
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He sold the General Bakelite Company to Union Carbide in 1939, at his son's prompting, retired, and eventually became a recluse, eating all of his meals from cans and becoming obsessed with developing an immense tropical garden on his Florida estate. He died in Lexington and was interred in Lexington Cemetery. As Baekeland got older, he became more eccentric, getting into fierce battles with his son (and presumptive heir) over salary and other issues. He became vice president of the Elizabethtown, Lexington, and Big Sandy Railroad Company. Baekeland appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine on September 22, 1924. While turning down suggestions that he become active in politics again, he spoke out strongly against the Ku Klux Klan. Baekeland made Swinburne the chairman of the new Bakelite Limited, his British subsidiary. He returned to Lexington in March 1869 after being granted amnesty and resumed the practice of law.

Baekeland visited England in 1916 and met James Swinburne, who almost ten years earlier had coincidentally experimented with and created a material identical to Bakelite only to find that Baekeland had been awarded the patent the day before. He continued to England, Canada, and England again. Baekeland became a multimillionaire as a result of the explosion in the manufacture and use of Bakelite. In an epic journey, filled with bizarre adventures, he and a small band made their way down the east coast of Florida, eventually sailing across the sea in a tiny boat to reach safety in Cuba. The official name of Bakelite was polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride. Breckinridge feared that he would be put on trial for treason by the United States government and resolved to flee the country. By controlling the pressure and temperature applied to phenol and formaldehyde, he could produce his dreamed hard moldable plastic: bakelite. Eventually, the two became separated in the confusion of the journey.

Then he turned to developing a binder for asbestos, which at that time was molded with rubber. Breckinridge continued to try to persuade Davis that further resistance would only lead to greater loss of life, but he also felt honor bound to protect the President from harm. He first produced a soluble phenol-formaldehyde shellac (called "Novolak" that never became a market success). Sherman. Baekeland began to investigate the reactions of phenol and formaldehyde. Johnston in his surrender negotiations with William T. Chemists had begun to recognize that many of the natural resins and fibers were polymers. Breckinridge went with Davis during the flight from Virginia as the Confederacy collapsed, while also assisting General Joseph E.

His first objective was to find a replacement for shellac (at that time made from the shells of lac beetles). By so doing, he ensured that a full account of the Confederate war effort would be preserved for history. When asked why he entered the field of synthetic resins, Baekeland answered "to make money". During the chaos of the fall of Richmond in early April, 1865, Breckinridge saw to it that the Confederate archives, both government and military, were not destroyed but rather captured intact by the Union forces. Soon it penetrated nearly all branches of industry. Breckinridge saw that further resistance on the part of the Confederacy was useless and worked to lay the groundwork for an honorable surrender, even while President Jefferson Davis fiercely desired to continue the fight. Radios, telephones and electrical insulators were made of Bakelite due to its properties of insulation and heat-resistance. In early 1865, Breckinridge was made Secretary of War in the Cabinet of the Confederate States of America, a post he would hold until the end of the war.

Bakelite was the first plastic invented that held its shape after being heated. He led the famous charge of the VMI cadets at the Battle of New Market on May 14, 1864. Bakelite took the industry by storm after 1907. He returned east in 1864, during the Overland Campaign, and was wounded again in the Battle of Cold Harbor. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry winning German Adolf von Baeyer had experimented with this material in 1872, but did not complete its development. He fought in many battles in the Western Theater, including the Battle of Shiloh, in which he was wounded. These can be mixed, heated, and then either molded or extruded. He entered the Confederate Army during the American Civil War as a brigadier general and soon became a major general, originally commanding the First Kentucky (Orphan) Brigade.

Bakelite was made from phenol (then known as carbolic acid) and formaldehyde. He was elected to the United States Senate and served from March 4, 1861 until expelled by resolution of December 4, 1861, for support of the rebellion. The invention of Bakelite is considered the beginning of the Age of Plastics. Douglas, the Northern Democrats' nominee. Baekeland sold his patent for Velox photographic paper to the president of Kodak, George Eastman, for $750,000. Breckinridge was an unsuccessful candidate for President in 1860, losing to Abraham Lincoln, and receiving more electoral votes than the other 2 major candidates, John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party, and Stephen A. After completing his doctorate at the university of his native city, he emigrated to America in 1889, inspired by the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. He was the youngest Vice President in US history at age 35, the minimum age required under the US Constitution.

Born in Ghent, Belgium, Baekeland was the son of a cobbler and a maid. He was elected Vice President in 1856 on the Democratic ticket with James Buchanan as President. Leo Hendrik Baekeland (November 14, 1863 - February 23, 1944) was a Belgian-born American chemist who invented Velox photographic paper (1893) and Bakelite (1907), an inexpensive, nonflammable, versatile, and popular plastic. Breckinridge did not run for reelection, and instead was nominated as Minister to Spain by President Franklin Pierce, but declined. He was a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1849 as a Democrat, and was then elected to the Thirty-second and Thirty-third Congresses (March 4, 1851 – March 3, 1855). Breckinridge was a major of the Third Kentucky Volunteers during the Mexican-American War in 1847 and 1848.

He was married to Mary Cyrene Burch in 1843. He was admitted to the bar in 1840 and moved to Burlington, Iowa, but soon returned and began practice in Lexington. He graduated from Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, in 1839, later attended the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), and then studied law at Transylvania University in Lexington. Senator and Attorney General John Breckinridge, was born at "Cabell's Dale," near Lexington, Kentucky.

Breckinridge, grandson of U.S. Representative, Senator from Kentucky, the fourteenth Vice President of the United States, and a Confederate general in the American Civil War. John Cabell Breckinridge (January 16, 1821–May 17, 1875) was a lawyer, U.S.