Hi everyone, He publicly showed his plastic invention to the outside world at the Invention of World Great International Exhibition, London in 1862 in London, England. His invention won him the bronze medal for best invention that year. Subsequently, in 1856, he started the world's first plastic manufacturing company in the name of 'Parkesine Company' and started manufacturing and selling plastic. As his process required a large amount of cellulose to produce plastic, his company was able to produce very little plastic, due to which his Parkesine Plastic was not commercially successful.

The next step in the manufacture of plastic was reached towards the end of the eighteenth century. At the end of the eighteenth century, the game of billiards in the United States was in the Utsapacha Jiram, just as the game of cricket in India is at Utsapacha Jirat. Back then, the balls needed to play billiards were made from elephant tusk. Over a thousand elephants were slaughtered to make billiard balls. American inventor John Wesley Hyatt (1837 – 1920 AD) who was saddened by the condition of elephants, desperately tried to find an alternative. Subsequently, John Wesley modeled Alexander Parks' discovery and found a new type of plastic production technology called celluloid by adding nitric acid and camphor to cellulose extracted from cotton in 1868.

Hearing about his invention, Alexander Parks Wesley entered into a memorandum of understanding and by the end of 1868, they began manufacturing billiard balls in celluloid plastic and selling them through the 'Parkesine Company'. It is noteworthy that even today table tennis balls are produced using the same technology that they produced. Subsequently, plastic was used in the production of many products including cameras, pens, and dolls. Also, the photo reel (Photo Reel) used in the world's first film production in 1882 by Motion Pictures (Motion Picture) was made using the plastic produced by them. Realizing the greatness of his discovery a little late, the American government honored him with the 'Perkin Medal', the highest award given to chemical discoveries in the United States in 1914.

Based on the inventions of Alexander Parks and John Wesley Hyatt, the 100% synthetic plastic we use today was discovered by Hendrik Baekeland, a chemist from Belgium, in 1907. His plastic, called Bakelite, contained cellulose, pheno-formaldehyde, and nitric acid.

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