| Description |
1 online resource (xiv, 403 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations (some color) |
| Physical Medium |
polychrome |
| Description |
text file |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 307-380) and index. |
| Summary |
Jeffrey Meikle traces Americans' ambivalent involvement with plastic from Bakelite radios and nylon stockings to Tupperware and polyester suits. He moves easily from the rise of the plastics industry to plastic's symbolic hold on style and the popular imagination. Meikle shows how America's enthusiasm for everything plastic has been complicated by environmental doubts and by the plasticity of postmodern existence. Throughout this witty, compelling history of material and metaphor, Meikle raises crucial issues in science and technology, manufacturing and marketing, design and architecture, and American consumer culture. A provocative conclusion suggests that plastic, endlessly malleable in the face of material desire, merges into the immaterial reality of future electronic media. |
| Contents |
Celluloid: from imitation to innovation -- Bakelite: defining an artificial material -- Vision and reality in the plastic age -- An industry takes shape -- Nylon: domesticating a new synthetic -- Growing pains: the conversion to postwar -- Design in plastic: from durable to disposable -- Material doubts and plastic fallout -- Beyond plastic: the culture of synthesis. |
| Awards |
Society for the History of Technology Sidney Edelstein Prize, 1996. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Plastics -- History.
|
|
Plastics. |
|
History. |
|
Plastics industry and trade -- United States -- History.
|
|
Plastics industry and trade. |
|
United States. |
| Genre/Form |
Electronic books.
|
|
History.
|
| Other Form: |
Print version: Meikle, Jeffrey L., 1949- American plastic. New Brunswick, N.J. : Rutgers University Press, ©1995 081352234X (DLC) 95015187 (OCoLC)32389743 |
| ISBN |
0585206937 (electronic book) |
|
9780585206936 (electronic book) |
|
081352234X (cloth ; alkaline paper) |
|
0813522358 (paperback ; alkaline paper) |
|
