Plastic

Already, bowling balls, golf balls, sports equipment, and waterproof cotton balls have been made of nanocarbons. The Unicode standard defines 8 characters for card suits in the Miscellaneous Symbols block, from U+2660 to U+2667:

. In addition, nanocarbon manufacturing is low to nonpolluting. The standard 54-card deck is also commonly known as a poker deck or—in Japan—a Trump deck, to differentiate it from "dedicated" card games such as UNO, or other dynamic card decks like Hanafuda and Kabufuda. Nanocarbons are very cheap, 100 times stronger than steel, slicker than Teflon, lightweight, and can be made very thin, made to stretch, and built into any shape—all the things plastic can do. Among the games played with this deck are: el mus (a very popular and highly regarded vying game of Basque origin), la brisca, el tute (with many variations), el guiñote, la escoba (a trick-taking game), el julepe, el cinquillo, las siete y media, la mona, el truc (or truco), and el cuajo (a matching game from the Philippines). All three of these are made of nanocarbons, products of the new nanotechnology. The Spanish deck is used not only in Spain, but also in other countries where Spain maintained an influence (e.g., the Philippines and Puerto Rico) 1.

The most promising alternatives to plastic are graphene, carbon nanotube, and carbon nanofoam. Many Spanish games involve forty-card decks, with the 8s and 9s removed. Some are many times stronger than plastic, but crack if made thin like cellophane. The three court or face cards in each suit are as follows: la sota ("the knave", jack or page, numbered 10 and equivalent to the Anglo-French card J), el caballo ("the horse", horseman, knight or cavalier, numbered 11 and used instead of the Anglo-French card Q; note the original Tarot deck has both a cavalier and a queen of each suit, while the Anglo-French deck dropped the former, and the Spanish deck dropped the latter), and finally el rey ("the king", numbered 12 and equivalent to the Anglo-French card K). Some of these alternatives are too expensive or not malleable enough, but can be used in some plastic applications. The cards (naipes or cartas in Spanish) are all numbered, but unlike in the standard Anglo-French deck, the card numbered 10 is the first of the court cards (instead of a card depicting ten coins/cups/swords/batons); so each suit has only twelve cards. Some plastic alternatives are: graphite, fiberglass, carbon fiber, graphene, carbon nanotubes, diamond, aerogel, carbon nanofoam, cellulose soybean plastic (bioplastic), and other carbon-based, non-petroleum materials. Apart from its characteristic icon, each suit can also be identified by a pattern of interruptions in the horizontal sections of the quadrangular line that frames each card (this pattern is known as la pinta): none for oros, one for copas, two for espadas and three for bastos.

Scientists are seeking cheaper alternatives to plastic. Being a Latin-suited deck (like the Italian deck), it is organized into four palos (suits) that closely match those of the Tarot deck: oros ("golds" or coins, cf. the Tarot suit of pentacles), copas (cups), espadas (swords) and bastos (batons or clubs, cf. the Tarot suit of wands). Thus, even if alternative sources are used, costs will continue to rise. However, like most other decks derived from it, the Spanish deck kept only the minor arcana (with the exception of the 10s and the queen of each suit, which were dropped), while all of the major arcana from the Tarot deck were discarded. Alternate reserves such as oil shale and tar oil (tar sand) do exist, but the cost of production is much higher than with current sources. The traditional Spanish deck (referred to as baraja española in Spanish) is a direct descendant of the Tarot deck. Fears of dwindling petroleum supplies are becoming very real, with publications such as USA Today reporting that current oil reserves will only last 40 years. Example: "Triestine" playing cards manufactured by Modiano.

In 2004, the higher price of plastic drove a number of plastic-toy manufacturers out of business. The cards' value is determined by identifying the face card or counting the number of suit characters. As the cost of plastic hinges on the cost of petroleum, should petroleum prices continue to rise, so will the cost of plastic. Unlike Anglo-American cards, Italian cards do not have any numbers (or letters) identifying their value. The cause of the increase is the sharply rising cost of petroleum, the raw material that is chemically altered to form commercial plastics. The face cards are:. However, in recent years the cost of plastics has been rising dramatically. The suits are coins (sometimes suns or sunbursts), swords, cups and clubs (sometimes batons), and each suit contains an ace (or one), numbers two through seven, and three face cards.

One of the great appeals of plastics have been their low price as compared to other materials. Hundreds of different designs are in use in different parts of the country (about one per province). Tencel has many superior properties over rayon, but is still produced from "biomass" feedstocks, and its manufacture is extraordinarily clean by the standards of plastic production. Italian playing cards most commonly consist of a deck of 40 cards. The Courtauld concern, the original producer of rayon, came up with a revised process for the material in the mid-1980s to produce "Tencel". Explanations of these games can be found at The Card Games Website. There have been some success stories. Games that are played with this deck including Ulti, Snapszer (or 66), Zsírozás, Preferansz and Lórum.

In this regard, though, plastics are no worse than food or paper, which also fail to degrade in landfills. Interesting that he have chosen the characters of a Swiss drama as his characters for his over and under cards, however if he would have chosen Hungarian heroes or freedom fighters, his deck of cards would have never made it into distribution, due to the heavy censorship of the goverment at the time. When such plastic materials are dumped into landfills, they can become "mummified" and persist for decades even if they are supposed to be biodegradable. It was long believed that the card was invented in Vienna at the Card Painting Workshop of Ferdinand Piatnik, however in 1974 the very first deck was found in an English Private Collection, and it has shown the name of the inventor and creator of deck as Schneider József, a Master Card Painter at Pest, and the date of its creation as 1837. So far, these plastics have proven too costly and limited for general use, and critics have pointed out that the only real problem they address is roadside litter, which is regarded as a secondary issue. The characters of the Under and Over cards were taken from the drama, William Tell, written by Schiller in 1804, that was shown at Kolozsvár (today Cluj-Napoca) in 1827. The disadvantage of biodegradable plastics is that the carbon that is locked up in them is released into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide when they degrade, though if they are made from organic material there is no net gain in emissions. The Aces show the four seasons: the ace of hearts is spring, the ace of bells is summer, the ace of leaves is autumn and the ace of acorns is winter.

BASF make Ecoflex, a fully biodegradable polyester for food packaging applications. The numbering includes VII, VIII, IX, X, Under, Over, King and Ace. Some researchers have actually genetically engineered bacteria that synthesize a completely biodegradable plastic, but this material is expensive at present. It is a 32 card deck, its four colors include hearts, bells, leaves and acorns. Starch can be mixed with plastic to allow it to degrade more easily, but it still does not lead to complete breakdown of the plastic. The Hungarian Card was born in the times before the 1848-49 Hungarian Freedom Fights, when revolutionary movements were awakening all over in Europe. Research has been done on biodegradable plastics that break down with exposure to sunlight. example Old German playing cards as produced by Altenburger Spielkartenfabrik.

Even so the American Plastics Council spends about US$20 million a year on an ad campaign that tries to convince the public to recycle. Therefore, many "French" decks in Germany now have yellow or orange diamonds and green spades. is very small, somewhere around 5%. After the reunification a compromise deck was created, with French symbols, but German colors. Currently, the percentage of plastics recycled in the U.S. In the game Skat, Eastern Germany players used the German deck, while players in western Germany mainly used the French deck. These unrecyclable wastes can be disposed of in landfills, incinerated or used to produce electricity at waste-to-energy plants. Many southern Germans and Austrians prefer decks with hearts, bells, leaves, and acorns (for hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs), as mentioned above.

For example, polystyrene is rarely recycled because it is usually not cost effective. German and Austrian suits may have different appearances. Recycling certain types of plastics can be unprofitable, as well. Tens may be either abbreviated to T or written as 10. In a case like this, the resources it would take to separate the plastics far exceed their value, though complex items made of many types of plastics are not disposed of frequently. Shorthand notation may list the rank first "A♠" (as is typical when discussing poker) or list the suit first (as is typical in listing several cards in bridge) "♠AKQ". While containers are usually made from a single type and color of plastic, making them relatively easy to sort out, a consumer product like a cellular phone may have many small parts consisting of over a dozen different types and colors of plastics. When giving the full written name of a specific card, the rank is given first followed by the suit, e.g., "Ace of Spades".

Other recyclable materials, such as metals, are easier to process mechanically. Some decks use four colors for the suits in order to make it easier to tell them apart: the most common set of colors is black (spades ♠), red (hearts ♥), blue (diamonds ♦) and green (clubs ♣). Typically, workers sort the plastic by looking at the resin identification code, though common containers like soda bottles can be sorted from memory. Many decks have large indices, largely for use in stud poker games, where being able to read cards from a distance is a benefit and hand sizes are small. The biggest problem with plastics recycling is that it is difficult to automate the sorting of plastic waste, and so it is labor intensive. Many casino decks and solitaire decks have four indices instead of the usual two. Unfortunately, recycling plastics has proven difficult. Casino blackjack decks may include markings intended for a machine to check the ranks of cards, or shifts in rank location to allow a manual check via inlaid mirror.

A recyclable plastic container using this scheme is marked with a triangle of three "chasing arrows", which enclose a number giving the plastic type:. Some decks include additional design elements. To assist recycling of disposable items, the Plastic Bottle Institute of the Society of the Plastics Industry devised a now-familiar scheme to mark plastic bottles by plastic type. 44mm × 66mm) for solitaire and larger ones for card tricks. There are methods by which plastics can be broken back down to a feedstock state. Other sizes are also available, such as a smaller size (usually 1¾in × 2⅝in, approx. Thermoplastics can be remelted and reused, and thermoset plastics can be ground up and used as filler, though the purity of the material tends to degrade with each reuse cycle. Interestingly, in most casino poker games, the bridge sized card is used.

By the 1990s, plastic recycling programs were common in the United States and elsewhere. 56mm × 87mm), the latter being more suitable for games such as bridge in which a large number of cards must be held concealed in a player's hand. For example, plastics make cars lighter, thus saving oil and reducing CO₂ emissions. The most common sizes for playing cards are poker size (2½in × 3½in; 62mm × 88mm, or B8 size according to ISO 216) and bridge size (2¼in × 3½in, approx. Furthermore, it can be claimed that the use of plastics helps the environment by saving water and oil. They merely differentiate one court card from another and have also become distorted over time. However, it should be noted that plastics only consume 4% of the world's oil production. Similarly the objects carried by the court cards have no significance.

Also, the manufacturing of plastics often creates large quantities of chemical pollutants, and requires use of the Earth's limited supply of fossil fuels. The King Of Hearts did originally have a moustache but it was lost by poor copying of the original design. In some cases, burning plastic can release toxic fumes. Other oddities such as the lack of a moustache on the King of Hearts also have little significance. Plastics are almost too good, as they are durable and degrade very slowly. However the Rouen cards were so badly copied in England that the current designs are gross distortions of the originals. Although plastics have had a remarkable impact globally, it has become increasingly obvious that there is a price to be paid for their use. In these early cards the Jack of Spades, Jack of Hearts and the King of Diamonds are shown from the rear, with their heads turned back over the shoulder so that they are seen in profile.

Kevlar was so remarkable that Du Pont officials actually had to release statements to deny rumors that the company had received the recipe for it from space aliens. They stem from designs produced in Rouen before 1516 and by 1540-67 these Rouen designs show well-executed pictures in the court cards with the typical court costumes of the time. Du Pont developed "Kevlar", an extremely strong synthetic fiber that was best known for its use in bullet-proof vests and combat helmets. However the Kings, Queens and Jacks of standard Anglo/American cards today do not represent anyone. General Electric introduced "lexan", a high-impact "polycarbonate" plastic, in the 1970s. The United States Playing Card Company suggests that in the past, the King of Hearts was Charlemange, the King of Diamonds was Julius Caesar, the King of Clubs was Alexander the Great, and the King of Spades was the Biblical King David. Plastics continue to be improved. For example, the Queen of Hearts is believed by some to be a representation of Elizabeth of York - the Queen consort of King Henry VII of England.

Polyurethane foam was used to fill mattresses, and Styrofoam was used to line ice coolers and make float toys. There are theories about who the court cards represent. Composite materials like fiberglass came into use for building boats and, in some cases, cars. The Queen of Spades appears to hold a scepter and is sometimes known as "the bedpost queen.". With Formica, a very attractive and well-built table could be built using low-cost and lightweight plywood with Formica covering, rather than expensive and heavy hardwoods like oak or mahogany. The Ace of Spades, unique in its large, ornate spade, is sometimes said to be the death card, and in some games is used as a trump card. It was particularly useful in kitchens, as it did not absorb, and could be easily cleaned of stains from food preparation, such as blood or grease. The king of Diamonds is sometimes referred to as "the man with the ax" because of this.

Formica was durable and attractive. The King of Diamonds is armed with an ax while the other three kings are armed with swords. Another prominent element in 1950s homes was "Formica®", a plastic laminate that was used to surface furniture and cabinetry. The king of hearts is shown with a sword behind his head, leading to the nickname "suicide king". Thin-film "plastic wrap" that could be purchased in rolls also helped keep food fresh. Another such variation, "deuces, aces, one-eyed faces," is used to indicate aces, twos, the jack of hearts, the jack of spades, and the king of diamonds are wild. The Tupperware line of products was well thought out and highly effective, greatly reducing spoilage of foods in storage. When deciding which cards are to be made wild in some games, the phrase, "acey, deucey, one-eyed jack," is sometimes used, which means that aces, twos, and the one-eyed jacks are all wild.

One of the most visible parts of this plastics invasion was Earl Tupper's "Tupperware", a complete line of sealable polyethylene food containers that Tupper cleverly promoted through a network of housewives who sold Tupperware as a means of bringing in some money. The jack of spades and jack of hearts are drawn in profile, while the rest of the courts are shown in full face (the exception being the King of Diamonds), leading to the former being called the "one-eyed" jacks. American consumers enthusiastically adopted the endless range of colorful, cheap, and durable plastic gimmicks being produced for new suburban home life. Though specific design elements of the court cards are rarely used in game play, a few are notable. New manufacturing were developed, using various forming, molding, casting, and extrusion processes, to churn out plastic products in vast quantities. The packs were also sealed with a government duty wrapper. After the war, the new plastics that had been developed entered the consumer mainstream in a flood. Until August 4, 1960, decks of playing cards printed and sold in the United Kingdom were liable for taxable duty and the Ace of Spades carried an indication of the name of the printer and the fact that taxation had been paid on the cards.

GoreTex is also used for surgical implants; Teflon strand is used to make dental floss; and Teflon mixed with fluorine compounds is used to make "decoy" flares dropped by aircraft to distract heat-seeking missiles. The fanciful design and manufacturer's logo commonly displayed on the Ace of Spades began under the reign of James I of England, who passed a law requiring an insignia on that card as proof of payment of a tax on local manufacture of cards.
Teflon was later used to synthesize the breathable fabric "Gore-Tex", which can be used to build raingear that in principle "breathes" to keep the wearer's moisture from building up. Modern playing cards carry index labels on opposite corners (rarely, all four corners) to facilitate identifying the cards when they overlap.
. Two (sometimes one or four) Jokers, often distinguishable with one being more colorful than the other, are included in commercial decks but many games require one or both to be removed before play. By the early 1960s, Teflon "nonstick" frying pans were a hot consumer item. Each suit includes an ace, depicting a single symbol of its suit; a king, queen, and jack, each depicted with a symbol of its suit; and ranks two through ten, with each card depicting that many symbols (pips) of its suit.

During the war, it was used in gaseous-diffusion processes to refine uranium for the atomic bomb, as the process was highly corrosive. The primary deck of fifty-two playing cards in use today, called Anglo-American playing cards, includes thirteen ranks of each of the four French suits, spades (♠), hearts (♥), diamonds (♦) and clubs (♣), with reversible Rouennais court cards. A Du Pont chemist named Roy Plunkett discovered Teflon by accident in 1938. The context for these stories is sometimes given to suggest that the interpretation is a joke, generally being the purported explanation given by someone caught with a deck of cards in order to suggest that their intended purpose was not gambling (Urban Legends Reference Pages article). The polyfluoroethylene surface layer created by exposing a polyethylene container to fluorine gas is very similar to Teflon. Popular legend holds that the composition of a deck of cards has religious, metaphysical or astronomical significance: typical numerological elements of the explanation are that the four suits represent the four seasons, the 13 cards per suit are the 13 phases of the lunar cycle, black and red are for day and night, and finally, if the value of each card is added up - and 1 is added, which is generally explained away as being for a single joker - the result is 365, the number of days in a year. One of the most impressive plastics used in the war, and a top secret, was "polytetrafluoroethylene" (PTFE), better known as "Teflon", which could be deposited on metal surfaces as a scratchproof and corrosion-resistant, low-friction protective coating. An example of what the old cardboard product was like is documented in Buster Keaton's silent comedy The Navigator, in which the forlorn comic tries to shuffle and play cards during a rainstorm.

PET films, trade named "Mylar®", are used to make recording tape. In the twentieth century, a means for coating cards with plastic was invented, and has taken over the market, producing a durable product. PET is also strong and abrasion resistant, and is used for making mechanical parts, food trays, and other items that have to endure abuse. Many manufacturers use them to carry trademark designs. PET is more impermeable than other low-cost plastics and so is a popular material for making bottles for Coca-Cola and other "fizzy drinks", since carbonation tends to attack other plastics, and for acidic drinks such as fruit or vegetable juices. Unlike face cards, the design of jokers varies widely. Two chemists named Rex Whinfield and James Dickson, working at a small English company with the quaint name of the "Calico Printer's Association" in Manchester, developed "polyethylene terephthalate" (PET or PETE) in 1941, and it would be used for synthetic fibers in the postwar era, with names such as "polyester", "dacron", and "terylene". The two jokers are often differentiated as "Big" and "Little," or more commonly, "Red" and "Black." In many card games the jokers are not used.

Fiberglass is now often used to build sport boats, and carbon-epoxy composites are an increasingly important structural element in aircraft, as they are lightweight, strong, and heat resistant. In contemporary decks, one of the two jokers is often more colorful or more intricately detailed than the other, though this feature is not used in most card games. Composites using epoxy as a matrix include glass-reinforced plastic, where the structural element is glass fiber, and "carbon-epoxy composites", in which the structural element is carbon fiber. Although the joker card often bears the image of a fool, which is one of the images of the Tarot deck, it is not believed that there is any relation. After the war they would come into wide use for coatings, "adhesives", and composite materials. Created for the Alsatian game of Euchre, it spread to Europe from America along with the spread of Poker. Epoxies are a class of thermoset plastic that form cross-links and "cure" when a catalyzing agent, or "hardener", is added. The joker is an American innovation.

In 1939, IG Farben filed a patent for "polyepoxide" or "epoxy". This innovation required abandoning some of the design elements of the earlier full-length courts. It is also one of the components (in non-blown form) of the fiber spandex. Before this, other players could often get a hint of what other players' hands contained by watching them reverse their cards.
Polyurethane was invented by Friedrich Bayer & Company in 1937, and would come into use after the war, in blown form for mattresses, furniture padding, and thermal insulation. Reversible court cards meant that players would not be tempted to make upside-down court cards right side up.
. This was followed by the innovation of reversible court cards.

It is used in everything from plastic bottles to carpets to plastic furniture, and is very heavily used in automobiles. The use of indices changed the formal name of the lowest court card to Jack. Polypropylene is similar to its ancestor, polyethylene, and shares polyethylene's low cost, but it is much more robust. All Fours was considered a low-class game, so the use of the term Jack at one time was considered vulgar. Paul Hogan and Robert Banks, are now generally credited as the "official" inventors of the material. However, from the 1600s on the Knave had often been termed the Jack, a term borrowed from the game All Fours where the Knave of trumps is termed the Jack. Polypropylene managed to survive the legal process, and two American chemists working for Phillips Petroleum, J. Before this time, the lowest court card in an English deck was officially termed the Knave, but its abbreviation ("Kn") was too similar to the King ("K").

It was a patent attorney's dream scenario, and litigation was not resolved until 1989. Corner and edge indices appeared in the mid-1800s, which enabled people to hold their cards close together in a fan with one hand (instead of the two hands previously used). It is common in modern science and technology that the growth of the general body of knowledge can lead to the same inventions in different places at about the same time, but polypropylene was an extreme case of this phenomenon, being separately invented about nine times. Another dicing term, trey (3), sometimes shows up in playing card games. Polyethylene would lead after the war to an improved material, "polypropylene" (PP), which was discovered in the early 1950s by Giulio Natta. The term "Ace" itself comes from a dicing term in Anglo-Norman language, which is itself derived from the Latin as (the smallest unit of coinage). While PE has low resistance to chemical attack, it was found later that a PE container could be made much more robust by exposing it to fluorine gas, which modified the surface layer of the container into the much tougher "polyfluoroethylene". This concept may have been hastened in the late 1700s by the French Revolution, where games began being played "ace high" as a symbol of lower classes rising in power above the royalty.

LDPE is used to make films and packaging materials, while HDPE is used for containers, plumbing, and automotive fittings. However, as early as the late 1400s special significance began to be placed on the nominally lowest card, now called the Ace, so that it sometimes became the highest card and the Two, or Deuce, the lowest.
PEs are cheap, flexible, durable, and chemically resistant. In early games the kings were always the highest card in their suit.
. Oddly, the Parisian names have become more common in modern use, even with cards of Rouennais design. This material evolved into two forms, "low density polyethylene" (LDPE), and "high density polyethylene" (HDPE). Parisian tradition uses the same names, but assigns them to different suits: the kings of spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs are David, Charles, Caesar, and Alexander; the queens are Pallas, Judith, Rachel, and Argine; the knaves are Ogier, La Hire, Hector, and Judas Maccabee.

Another important plastic, "polyethylene" (PE), sometimes known as "polythene", was discovered in 1933 by Reginald Gibson and Eric Fawcett at the British industrial giant Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). The queens are Pallas (warrior goddess; equivalent to the Greek Athena or Roman Minerva), Rachel (biblical mother of Joseph), Argine (the origin of which is obscure; it is an anagram of regina, which is Latin for queen), and Judith (from Book of Judith). Plexiglas was used to build aircraft canopies during the war, and it is also now used as a marble replacement for countertops. The knaves (or "jacks"; French "valet") are Hector (prince of Troy), La Hire (comrade-in-arms to Joan of Arc), Ogier (a knight of Charlemagne), and Judas Maccabeus (who led the Jewish rebellion against the Syrians). Although acrylics are now well known for their use in paints and synthetic fibers, such as "fake furs", in their bulk form they are actually very hard and more transparent than glass, and are sold as glass replacements under trade names such as "Plexiglas" and "Lucite". Rouen courts are traditionally named as follows: the kings of spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs are David, Alexander, Caesar, and Charles (Charlemagne), respectively. By 1936, American, British, and German companies were producing polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), better known as "acrylic". It is likely that the Rouennais cards were popular imports in England, establishing their design as standard there, though other designs became more popular in Europe (particularly in France, where the Parisian design became standard).

Other plastics emerged in the prewar period, though some would not come into widespread use until after the war. A prolific manufacturing center in the 1500s was Rouen, which originated many of the basic design elements of court cards still present in modern decks. Ultimately, all large military rockets and missiles would use synthetic rubber based solid fuels, and they would also play a significant part in the civilian space effort. Early court cards were elaborate full-length figures; the French in particular often gave them the names of particular heroes and heroines from history and fable. Such solid fuels could be cast into large, uniform blocks that had no cracks or other defects that would cause nonuniform burning. Court cards have likewise undergone some changes in design and name. By the mid-1950s, large missiles were being built using solid fuels based on synthetic rubber, mixed with ammonium perchlorate and high proportions of aluminium powder. However this may be, it seems certain that the earliest cards commonly used in this country were of the same kind, with respect to the marks of the suits, as those used in Italy and Spain.".

After the war, the Caltech researchers began to investigate the use of synthetic rubbers instead of asphalt as the fuel in the mixture. "If cards were actually known in Italy and Spain in the latter part of the 14th century, it is not unlikely that the game was introduced into this country by some of the English soldiers who had served under Hawkwood and other free captains in the wars of Italy and Spain. This new solid fuel burned more slowly and evenly than nitrocellulose explosives, and was much less dangerous to store and use, though it tended to flow slowly out of the rocket in storage and the rockets using it had to be stockpiled nose down. This confusion of names and symbols is accounted for by Chatto thus:. During the war, California Institute of Technology (Caltech) researchers came up with a new solid fuel, based on asphalt fuel mixed with an oxidizer, such as potassium or ammonium percholorate, plus aluminium powder, which burns very hot. In England the French suits were used, and are named hearts, clubs (corresponding to trèfle, the French symbol being joined to the Italian name, bastoni), spades (corresponding to the French pique, but having the Italian name, spade=sword) and diamonds. Solid rockets used during World War II used nitrocellulose explosives for propellants, but it was impractical and dangerous to make such rockets very big. The trèfle, so named for its resemblance to the trefoil leaf, was probably copied from the acorn; the pique similarly from the leaf of the German suits, while its name derived from the sword of the Italian suits (alternative opinion: derived from the German word "Spaten", which is a tool like "Schüppe" and in optical sense similar to the Pique-sign; "Schüppe" is a German slang-name for Pique) [5].

Synthetic rubber would also play an important part in the space race and nuclear arms race. These suits have generally prevailed because decks using them could be made more cheaply; the former suits were all drawings which had to be reproduced by woodcuts, but the French suits could be made by stencil. GR-S remains the primary synthetic rubber for the manufacture of tires. The four suits (hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs) now used in most of the world originated in France, approximately in 1480. After the war, natural rubber plantations no longer had a stranglehold on rubber supplies, particularly after chemists learned to synthesize isoprene. This probably came about in the 1780s, when occult philosophers [http://autorbis.net/tarot/biography/tarot-history-researchers/court-de-gebelin.html mistakenly associated the symbols on Tarot cards with Egyptian hieroglyphs. By 1944 a total of 50 factories were manufacturing it, pouring out a volume of the material twice that of the world's natural rubber production before the beginning of the war. While originally (and still in some places, notably Europe) used for the game of Tarocchi, the Tarot deck today is more often used for cartomancy and other occult practices.

A principal scientist involved with the effort was Edward Robbins. It is likely that the Tarot deck was invented in Italy at that time, though it is often mistakenly believed to have been imported into Europe by Gypsies (see detailed studies, also the article Tarot). government launched a major (and largely secret) effort to develop and refine synthetic rubber. Later Italian and Spanish cards of the 15th century used swords, batons, cups, and coins. The U.S. The cards manufactured by German printers used in the later standard the suits of hearts, bells, leaves, and acorns still present in Eastern and Southeastern German decks today used for Skat and other games, in the very early time suits took many vary variations, however. Military trucks needed rubber for tires, and rubber was used in almost every other war machine. Suits also varied; many makers saw no need to have a standard set of names for the suits, so early decks often had different suit names (typically 4 suits, although 5 suits also habd been common and other structures are also known).

Worldwide natural rubber supplies were limited, and by mid-1942 most of the rubber-producing regions were under Japanese control. Throughout the 1400s, 56-card decks containing a King, Queen, Knight, and Valet were common. synthetic rubber production during World War II. In an early surviving German pack (dated in the 1440s), Queens replace Kings in two of the suits as the highest card. One such Buna rubber, known as "GR-S" ("Government Rubber Styrene), is a copolymer of butadiene and styrene, became the basis for U.S. Queens were introduced in a number of different ways. These were "copolymers", meaning that their polymers were made up from not one but two monomers, in alternating sequence. Europeans changed the court cards to represent European royalty and attendants, originally "king", "chevalier", and "knave" (or "servant").

In 1935, German chemists synthesized the first of a series of synthetic rubbers known as "Buna rubbers". The Europeans experimented with the structure of playing cards, particularly in the 1400s. Neoprene is highly resistant to heat and chemicals such as oil and gasoline, and is used in fuel hoses and as an insulating material in machinery. The German Brief maler or card-painter probably progressed into the wood engraver; but there is no proof that the earliest wood engravers were the card-makers. Bolton. However, in this period professional card makers were established in Germany, so it is probable that wood engraving was employed to produce cuts for sacred subjects before it was applied to cards, and that there were hand-painted and stencilled cards before there were wood engravings of saints. These studies led in 1931 to one of the first successful synthetic rubbers, known as "neoprene", which was developed at DuPont under the direction of E.K. No playing cards engraved on wood exist whose creation can be confirmed as early 1423 (the earliest-dated wood engraving generally accepted).

Practical synthetic rubber grew out of studies published in 1930 written independently by American Wallace Carothers, Russian scientist Lebedev and the German scientist Hermann Staudinger. Many early woodcuts were colored using a stencil, so it would seem that the art of depicting and coloring figures by means of stencil plates was well known when wood engraving was first introduced. The first synthetic rubber polymer was obtained by Lebedev in 1910. If the assumption is true that the cards of that period were printed from wood blocks, the early card makers or cardpainters of Ulm, Nuremberg, and Augsburg, from about 1418 to 1450 [4], were most likely also wood engravers. Another plastic that was critical to the war effort was "synthetic rubber", which was produced in a variety of forms. It is possible that the art of wood engraving, which led to the art of printing, developed because of the demand for implements of play. In its bulk form it is very wear resistant, and so is used to build gears, bearings, bushings, and other mechanical parts. However, this was quite expensive, so other means were needed to mass-produce them.

Nylon still remains an important plastic, and not just for use in fabrics. It is clear that the earliest cards were executed by hand, like those designed for Charles VI. After the war ended, Du Pont went back to selling nylon to the public, engaging in another promotional campaign in 1946 that resulted in an even bigger craze, triggering off "nylon riots". An early mention of a distinct series of playing cards is the entry of Charles or Charbot Poupart, treasurer of the household of Charles VI of France, in his book of accounts for 1392 or 1393, which records payment for the painting of three sets or packs of cards, which were evidently already well known. The production capacity that had been built up to produce nylon stockings, or just "nylons", for American women was taken over to manufacture vast numbers of parachutes for fliers and paratroopers. In the account-books of Johanna, duchess of Brabant, and her husband, Wenceslaus of Luxemburg, there is an entry dated May 14, 1379 as follows: "Given to Monsieur and Madame four peters, two forms, value eight and a half moutons, wherewith to buy a pack of cards". Nylon mania came to an abrupt stop at the end of 1941 when the USA entered World War II. A Paris ordinance dated 1369 does not mention cards; its 1377 update includes cards.

With such a major investment, it was no surprise that Du Pont spared little expense to promote nylon after its introduction, creating a public sensation, or "nylon mania". The first widely accepted references to cards are in 1371 in Spain, in 1377 in Switzerland, and, in 1380, they are referenced in many locations including Florence, Paris, and Barcelona [2] [3]. It took Du Pont twelve years and US$27 million to refine nylon and develop the industrial processes for bulk manufacture. In the late 1300s, the use of playing cards spread rapidly across Europe. However, Du Pont's real target was silk, particularly silk stockings. Regardless, the Indian cards have many distinctive features: they are round, generally hand painted with intricate designs, and comprise more than four suits (often as many as twelve). The first application was for bristles for toothbrushes. It is not known whether these cards influenced the design of the Indian cards used for the game of Ganjifa, or whether the Indian cards may have influenced these.

His work led to the discovery of synthetic nylon fiber, which was very strong but also very flexible. There is some evidence to suggest that this deck may have evolved from an earlier 48-card deck that had only two court cards per suit, and some further evidence to suggest that earlier Chinese cards brought to Europe may have travelled to Persia, which then influenced the Mameluke and other Egyptian cards of the time before their reappearance in Europe. He took some of the first steps on the road to "molecular design" of materials. Mayer in the Topkapi Sarayi Museum, Istanbul, in 1939 [1]; this particular complete pack was not made before 1400, but the complete deck allowed matching to a private fragment dated to the twelfth or thirteenth century. Carothers had been hired to perform pure research, and not only investigated new materials, but worked to understand their molecular structure and how it related to material properties. A complete pack of Mameluke playing cards was discovered by L.A. Bolton. The Mameluke court cards showed abstract designs not depicting persons (at least not in any surviving specimens) though they did bear the names of military officers.

In 1927, Du Pont had begun a secret development project designated "Fiber66", under the direction of a Harvard chemists Wallace Carothers and Chemistry Department director E.K. Each suit contained ten "spot" cards (cards identified by the number of suit symbols or "pips" they show) and three "court" cards named malik (King), nā'ib malik (Viceroy or Deputy King), and thānī nā'ib (Second or Under-Deputy). Nylon was the first purely synthetic fiber, introduced by Du Pont Corporation at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City. In particular, the Mameluke deck contained 52 cards comprising four "suits": polo sticks, coins, swords, and cups. The real star of the plastics industry in the 1930s was "polyamide" (PA), far better known by its trade name, "nylon". It is likely that the ancestors of modern cards arrived in Europe from the Mamelukes of Egypt in the late 1300s, by which time they had already assumed a form very close to those in use today. PVC can also be softened with chemical processing, and in this form it is now used for shrink-wrap, food packaging, and raingear. Passages have been quoted from various works, of or relative to this period, but modern research leads to the supposition that the word rendered cards has often been mistranslated or interpolated.

PVC in its normal form is stiff, strong, heat and weather resistant, and is now used for making plumbing, gutters, house siding, enclosures for computers and other electronics gear. Boccaccio, Chaucer and other writers of that time specifically refer to various games, but there is not a single passage in their works that can be fairly construed to refer to cards. PVC has side chains incorporating chlorine atoms, which form strong bonds. If cards were generally known in Europe as early as 1278, it is very remarkable that Petrarch, in his dialogue that treats gaming, never once mentions them.
. The 38th canon of the council of Worcester (1240) is often quoted as evidence of cards having been known in England in the middle of the 13th century; but the games de rege et regina there mentioned are now thought to more likely have been chess. Foam plastics can be synthesized in an "open cell" form, in which the foam bubbles are interconnected, as in an absorbent sponge, and "closed cell", in which all the bubbles are distinct, like tiny balloons, as in gas-filled foam insulation and floatation devices. The time and manner of the introduction of cards into Europe are matters of dispute.

It would also be the basis for one of the most popular "foamed" plastics, under the name "styrene foam" or "Styrofoam". The Chinese word pái (牌) is used to describe both paper cards and gaming tiles. Polystyrene is a rigid, brittle plastic that is now used to make plastic model kits, disposable eating utensils, and similar knickknacks. The designs on modern Mahjong tiles and dominoes likely evolved from those earliest playing cards. Among the earliest examples in the wave of new plastics were "polystyrene" (PS) and "polyvinyl chloride" (PVC), developed by IG Farben of Germany. Wilkinson suggests in The Chinese origin of playing cards that the first cards may have been actual paper currency which were both the tools of gaming and the stakes being played for. After the First World War, improvements in chemical technology led to an explosion in new forms of plastics. These were represented by ideograms, with numerals of 2-9 in the first three suits and numerals 1-9 in the "tens of myriads".

For example, some electronic circuit boards are made of sheets of paper or cloth impregnated with phenolic resin. Ancient Chinese "money cards" have four "suits": coins (or cash), strings of coins (which may have been misinterpreted as sticks from crude drawings), myriads of strings, and tens of myriads. Phenolic plastics have been largely replaced by cheaper and less brittle plastics, but they are still used in applications requiring its insulating and heat-resistant properties. The origin of playing cards is obscure, but it is almost certain that they began in China after the invention of paper. government even considered making one-cent coins out of it when World War II caused a copper shortage. . The U.S. In most games, the cards are assembled into a "deck" (or "pack"), and their order is randomized by a procedure called "shuffling" to provide an element of chance in the game.

It was molded into thousands of forms, such as radios, telephones, clocks, and, of course, billiard balls. One side of each card (the "front" or "face") carries markings that distinguish it from the others and determine its use under the rules of the particular game being played, while the other side (the "back") is identical for all cards, usually a plain color or abstract design. Bakelite was cheap, strong, and durable. Specialty and novelty decks are commonly produced for collectors, often with political, cultural, or educational themes. Thermoset plastics are tough and temperature resistant. They are also a popular collectible (as distinct from the cards made specifically for collectible trading card games). Conventional "thermoplastics" can be molded and then melted again, but thermoset plastics form bonds between polymers strands when "cured", creating a tangled matrix that cannot be undone without destroying the plastic. As a result, their use sometimes meets with disapproval from some religious groups (such as conservative Christians).

It was also the first "thermoset" plastic. Playing cards are often used as props in magic tricks, as well as occult practices such as cartomancy, and a number of card games involve (or can be used to support) gambling. It was a purely synthetic material, not based on any material or even molecule found in nature. A complete set of cards is a pack or deck. Bakelite was the first true plastic. A playing card is a typically hand-sized rectangular (in India, round) piece of heavy paper or thin plastic used for playing card games. When the Bakelite patent expired in 1927, the Catalin Corporation acquired the patent and began manufacturing Catalin plastic using a different process that allowed a wider range of coloring. Rodolfo, Gács Rezső.

It was originally used for electrical and mechanical parts, finally coming into widespread use in consumer goods in the 1920s. Jeff Wessmiller. He publicly announced his discovery in 1909, naming it "bakelite". Dai Vernon. Baekeland built pressure vessels to force out the bubbles and provide a smooth, uniform product. Juan Tamariz. The only problem was that the material tended to foam during synthesis, and the resulting product was of unacceptable quality. John Scarne.

Most of these compositions were strong and fire resistant. Darwin Ortiz. He continued his investigations and found that the material could be mixed with wood flour, asbestos, or slate dust to create "composite" materials with different properties. Jeff McBride. Baekeland found that mixtures of phenol (C₆H₅OH) and formaldehyde (HCOH) formed a sticky mass when mixed together and heated, and the mass became extremely hard if allowed to cool and dry. Ed Marlo. A chemist named Leo Hendrik Baekeland, a Belgian-born American living in New York state, was searching for an insulating shellac to coat wires in electric motors and generators. René Lavand.

The limitations of celluloid led to the next major advance, known as "phenolic" or "phenol-formaldehyde" plastics. Larry Jennings. It could also be produced in a transparent sheet form known as "cellophane". Ricky Jay. It is cheap and feels smooth on the skin, though it is weak when wet and creases easily. Guy Hollingworth. It still remains in production today, often in blends with other natural and artificial fibers. Brother John Hamman.

Art silk became well known under the trade name "rayon", and was produced in great quantities through the 1930s, when it was supplanted by better artificial fabrics. Lennart Green. The three men sold the rights for the new fabric to the French Courtauld company, a major manufacturer of silk, which put it into production in 1905, using cellulose from wood pulp as the "feedstock" material. Erdnase. In 1894, three British inventors, Charles Cross, Edward Bevan, and Clayton Beadle, patented a new "artificial silk" or "art silk" that was much safer. W. After some ghastly accidents, Chardonnay silk was taken off the market. S.

It was an attractive cloth, but like celluloid it was very flammable, a property completely unacceptable in clothing. Alex Elmsley. In 1884, a French chemist, the Comte de Chardonnay, introduced a cellulose-based fabric that became known as "Chardonnay silk". Daryl. While the men who developed celluloid were interested in replacing ivory, those who developed the new fibers were interested in replacing another expensive material, silk. Mike Caro. Cellulose was also used to produce cloth. David Blaine.

If the balls had been imperfectly manufactured, the paints might have acted as primer to set the rest of the ball off with a bang. Michael Ammar. These stories might have had a basis in fact, since the billiard balls were often celluloid covered with paints based on another, even more flammable, nitrocellulose product known as "collodion". Allan Ackerman. Ping-pong balls, one of the few products still made with celluloid, sizzle and burn if set on fire, and Hyatt liked to tell stories about celluloid billiard balls exploding when struck very hard. Aladin. However, celluloid still tended to yellow and crack over time, and it had another more dangerous defect: it burned very easily and spectacularly, unsurprising given that mixtures of nitric acid and cellulose are also used to synthesize smokeless powder. Jack - a younger man standing, without a crown.

By the year 1900, movie film was a major market for celluloid. Knight - a man sitting on a horse. Hyatt figured out how to fabricate the material in a strip format for movie film. King - a man standing, wearing a crown. Celluloid could also be used in entirely new applications. Such pretty trinkets were no longer only for the rich.

For example, celluloid combs made to tie up the long tresses of hair fashionable at the time are now jewellike museum pieces. Some of the items made with cellulose in the nineteenth century were beautifully designed and implemented. Celluloid proved extremely versatile in its field of application, providing a cheap and attractive replacement for ivory, tortoiseshell, and bone, and traditional products that had used these materials were much easier to fabricate with plastics. Corsets made with celluloid stays also proved popular, since perspiration did not rust the stays, as it would if they had been made of metal.

They did not wilt and did not stain easily, and Hyatt sold them by trainloads. Celluloid's real breakthrough products were waterproof shirt collars, cuffs, and the false shirtfronts known as "dickies", whose unmanageable nature later became a stock joke in silent-movie comedies. However, celluloid dentures tended to soften when hot, making tea drinking tricky, and the camphor taste tended to be difficult to suppress. One of the first products were dental pieces, and sets of false teeth built around celluloid proved cheaper than existing rubber dentures.

It was introduced in 1863. Since cellulose was the main constituent used in the synthesis of his new material, Hyatt named it "celluloid". Hyatt was something of an industrial genius who understood what could be done with such a shapeable, or "plastic", material, and proceeded to design much of the basic industrial machinery needed to produce good-quality plastic materials in quantity. Parkes had failed for lack of a proper softener, but Hyatt discovered that camphor would do the job very nicely.

An American printer and amateur inventor named John Wesley Hyatt took up where Parkes left off. However, Parkes was not able to scale up the process to an industrial level, and products made from Parkesine quickly warped and cracked after a short period of use. The output of the process hardened into a hard, ivory-like material that could be molded when heated. Parkesine was made from cellulose treated with nitric acid and a solvent.

An Englishman from Birmingham named Alexander Parkes developed a "synthetic ivory" named "pyroxlin", which he marketed under the trade name "Parkesine", and which won a bronze medal at the 1862 World's fair in London. Ivory was a particularly attractive target for a synthetic replacement. Inventors were particularly interested in developing synthetic substitutes for those natural materials that were expensive and in short supply, since that meant a profitable market to exploit. The next logical step was to use a natural polymer, cellulose, as the basis for a new material.

All Goodyear had done with vulcanization was improve the properties of a natural polymer. Vulcanization creates sulfur bonds that link separate isoprene polymers together, improving the material's structural integrity and its other properties. Natural rubber is composed of an organic polymer named "isoprene". Vulcanization remains an important industrial process for the manufacture of rubber in both natural and artificial forms.

Compared to untreated natural rubber, Goodyear's "vulcanized rubber" was stronger, more resistant to abrasion, more elastic, much less sensitive to temperature, impermeable to gases, and highly resistant to chemicals and electric current. The rubber seemed to have improved properties; Goodyear followed up with further experiments, and developed a process known as "vulcanization" that involved cooking the rubber with sulfur. In 1839, the American inventor Charles Goodyear was experimenting with the sulfur treatment of natural rubber when, according to legend, he dropped a piece of sulfur-treated rubber on a stove. In 1834, two inventors, Friedrich Ludersdorf of Germany and Nathaniel Hayward of the U.S., independently discovered that adding sulfur to raw rubber helped prevent the material from becoming sticky.

Natural rubber was sensitive to temperature, becoming sticky and smelly in hot weather and brittle in cold weather. Eventually, inventors learned to improve the properties of natural polymers. A plant polymer named "cellulose" provides the structural strength for natural fibers and ropes, and by the early 19th century natural rubber, tapped from rubber trees, was widespread use. People have been using natural organic polymers for centuries in the form of waxes and shellacs.

. The development of plastics has come from the use of natural materials (e.g., chewing gum, shellac) to the use of chemically modified natural materials (e.g., natural rubber, nitrocellulose) and finally to completely manmade molecules (e.g., epoxy, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene). The first plastic based on a synthetic polymer was called Bakelite and was created by Leo Hendrik Baekeland in 1907. In the nineteenth century the discovered plastics based on chemically modified natural polymers: Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanization of rubber (1839) and Alexander Parkes discovered cellulose-based plastics in 1860s.

People experimented with plastics based on natural polymers for centuries. This customization by pendant groups has allowed plastics to become such an indispensable part of twenty first-century life by fine tuning the properties of the polymer. To customize the properties of a plastic, different molecular groups "hang" from the backbone (usually they are "hung" as part of the monomers before linking monomers together to form the polymer chain). (Some of commercial interest are silicon based.) The backbone is that part of the chain on the main "path" linking the multitude of monomer units together.

The vast majority of plastics are composed of polymers of carbon alone or with oxygen, nitrogen, chlorine or sulfur in the backbone. These chains are made up of many repeating molecular units, or "monomers". Plastics are polymers: long chains of atoms bonded to one another. Many plastics are partially crystalline and partially amorphous in molecular structure, giving them both a melting point (the temperature at which the covalent bonds dissolve) and one or more glass transitions (temperatures at which the degree of cross-linking is substantially reduced).

thermoset, elastomer, engineering plastic, addition or condensation, and Glass transition temperature or T_g. Other classifications include thermoplastic vs. Plastic can be classified in many ways but most commonly by their polymer backbone (polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene, acrylic, silicone, urethane, etc.). Plastic may also refer to any material characterized by deformation or failure under shear stress; see plasticity and ductility.

Combined with this adaptability, the general uniformity of composition and light weight of plastics ensures their use in almost all industrial segments. Plastics are designed with immense variation in properties such as heat tolerance, hardness, resiliency and many others. Their name is derived from the fact that many are malleable, having the property of plasticity. Plastics can be formed into objects or films or fibers.

There are few natural polymers generally considered to be "plastics". They are composed of organic condensation or addition polymers and may contain other substances to improve performance or economics. Plastic is a term that covers a range of synthetic or semisynthetic polymerization products. OTHER: Other - This plastic category, as its name of "other" implies, is any plastic other than the named #1–#6, Commonly found on: certain kinds of food containers and Tupperware.

PS: Polystyrene - Commonly found on: packaging pellets or "Styrofoam peanuts," cups, plastic tableware, meat trays, take-away food clamshell containers. PP: Polypropylene - Commonly found on: bottle caps, drinking straws. LDPE: Low Density Polyethylene - Commonly found on: dry-cleaning bags, produce bags, trash can liners, food storage containers. PVC: Polyvinyl Chloride - Commonly found on: plastic pipes, outdoor furniture, shrink-wrap, water bottles, salad dressing and liquid detergent containers.

HDPE: High Density Polyethylene - Commonly found on: detergent bottles, milk jugs. PETE: Polyethylene Terephthalate - Commonly found on: 2-litre soft drink bottles, cooking oil bottles, peanut butter jars.