An early synthetic plastic material created by combining phenol and formaldehyde, hard and heat-resistant, used for making electrical goods and household items.
Named after Leo Baekeland, a Belgian chemist who invented the material in 1907. The -lite suffix comes from Greek, meaning 'stone' or 'mineral.'
Bakelite was humanity's first fully synthetic plastic—before it, we either carved animal/mineral substances or used rubber; suddenly we could engineer materials from scratch, launching the plastic age.
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