The word Polyethylene was probably first pronounced in a lecture which
M. P. E. Berthelot delivered on April,27, 1863 to the Chemical Society
in Paris, reporting on the "polymerization" of various simple organic
compounds (1). Much later this work appeared twice in the literature
before the classical ICI breakthrough in the 1930's which is so
colorfully described in Ballard's lecture. Once it came up at the end of
the last century when H. von Pechmann obtained "a white flocculant
material" from the decomposition of diazomethane which, one year later,
was termed to be "polymethylene" - (CH ) - from E. Bamberger 2 and F.
Tschiemer (1). At that time the investigators were disappointed about
this product because it was not what they had expected to find in their
experiments. As a result any further work was discontinued. The second
time that the word polyethylene appeared in the literature to describe a
"white solid powder" was in 1930 when C. S. Marvel and M. E. P.
Friedericks (2) attempted to prepare alkylated As compounds in which all
five valencies were covalently bonded to five monovalent-aTkyl groups.
They reacted Tetra-ethyl-arsenium bromide with butyllithium and expected
to get tetra ethyl butyl arsenium. Instead they obtained LiBr + AsEt3 +
gaseous products. Delicate and somewhat time-consuming analysis gave a
surprising result: ethane and C 's were there in the 4 expected
quantities but ethylene was missing - or almost missing - in the gas
mixture.
