Why Was Nylon Invented?

Step 1 of 5

Natural fibres all have limits.

Cotton is short and soaks up water. Wool shrinks. Silk is superb but a caterpillar has to make it. Every natural fibre comes with something you cannot change about it.

Step 2 of 5

A polymer is a chain of repeats.

Chemists learned to hook small molecules together end to end, thousands at a time, into one long chain. That chain is the fibre — and the chain can be made as long as you like.

Step 3 of 5

Stretching it is what makes it strong.

Fresh from the machine the chains lie in a tangle and the thread is weak. Stretch it hard and the chains all line up along its length — and it becomes several times stronger.

Step 4 of 5

It arrived in stockings and parachutes.

Nylon stockings sold out in hours in 1940. Within two years all of it was going into parachutes, ropes and tyres for the war, and no one could buy a pair.

Step 5 of 5

Not rotting cuts both ways.

A nylon rope left outdoors is still a rope years later, which is exactly what you want. A nylon fishing net lost at sea is also still a net years later, which is not.

Washing anything made of nylon or fleece sheds tiny fibres that pass straight through filters and end up in rivers and the sea.