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Fantastic, Its Plastic

Alexander appears to have started as a chemist sometime between 1855 and 1858, but then gone into manufacturing:
1858 Parkes Alexander, practical chemist and refiner, 7 and 8, Bath row and Liverpool st
1862 Parkes Alexander, tube manufacturer, 8 Bath Row.
He seems to have disappeared from the 1867 and 1868 Kellys, and in 1868 no 8 Bath row is Fielding Fletcher, plumbers brass founder. There is an A & F Parkes & Co , maker of spades, and tools, in Dartmouth St, but I don’t think that is the same one.
In the 1890 map below things may have changed a bit since 1860s, but no 9 is in red, and no 8 would have been to the east of it.
Mike

map_1890_no_9_bath_row.JPG
 
then knife and fork handles sure did ignite.and the eye burning and nose burning fumes,that they gave off
 
What about Bakelite?
Wasn't that a form of plastic?
It wasn't a British invention but there was a factory in Brum years ago called The Bakelite, at least I think that was the proper name
Our Dad worked there when I was a kid but I don't know to this day what they made
Anybody else know?

Indeed Jerry Bakelite was invented by a Belgian and is regarded as the birth of the plastic age. It was named after the inventor, Leo Baekeland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Baekeland
 
To the best of my Knoledge the Bakerlite factory in Tyseley only produced the resins wich were sent to other factorys to be moulded in to phones, radio and tv caseings ect. but they did produce plastic sheeting simular to formica. They had another factory in County Durham.
 
BXL Tyseley was another of my employer's (many) local customers. They made mostly sheet material for machining, and we supplied them with various insulating materials for their manufacturing processes. I'm not sure when they closed their doors, but I think it may have been shortly before I retired in 2011.

The 'bakelite' factory mentioned as being in Witton may well be Tufnol Ltd. They produce a reinforced phenolic-resin sheet material. As phenolic resin is something of a perceived health-risk these days, so perhaps they're now using a different resin.

One (possibly apocryphal) story of Bakelite dates from pre-WW1 days when Rolls-Royce were shown samples of the new wonder material. After due consideration and discussion, doubtless over a few glasses of after-dinner port, RR said they could see only one possible use for Bakelite - as gear-stick knobs. And it was duly used. Or so I've heard.

G
 
There is a museum of all things Bakelite in Somerset, never been so can't comment.
https://twitter.com/bakelitemuseum
I remember going on a school visit to the Tyseley factory around 1957 and seeing the Formica production facility.
Formica was very fashionable at that time.
 
In case anyone is interested, there is a lecture given to the Newcomen Society at the Thinktank at 7.00pm on Thursday 30th January entitled "Plastics – their origins and development from Parkesine to Bakelite"
 
In the BBC programme Hidden Killers of the Victorian Home, (by Doctor Susannah Lipscomb and first shown in 2013) Birmingham and MR. A Parkes, inventor of Parkesine and the “father of plastics” gets a mention.

Birmingham is referred to as the "City of a Thousand Inventions."
 
I now live in the Hackney borough of London where Parkes had his factory in Hackney Wick and it's sometimes quoted that it was here where plastic was invented - of course, being a Brummie first and foremost, it makes me quite cross!

Produced yes, invented no :laughing:
 
Hackney Wick the site of the dog and speedway track !

No longer I'm afraid - it all got swept away for the 2012 Olympic complex :(
Hackney Wick is getting to be a hugely redeveloped area now, lots of new flats.
There are still some of the old Victorian factories around, many of them used as artists workspaces.
I loved old Hackney Wick, I think because it reminded me of Brum, with the little factories and the canals :)

This was a great exhibition on plastics I went to last year at Bow Arts.

 
The BHF is a great source of learning, came across this forum and stopped and readit and learnt all about bakelie and other man made materials and then came across the word Xylonite and remembered the number of times at Cannings that I had crossed Gt Hampton Street with a Xylonite gear wheel from a plating tank or similar from the offices to engineering works to get it identified for replacement, often as it happens for another forum set of posts Ionic plating. and suddenly the smell of chemicals was in the air as I thought about it, strange what memory can do. Cannings were great users of man made materials for cogs, gear wheels and etc.

Bob
 
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