BULLETIN FOR THE HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY
Volume 50, 2025
Culver, Evan W.; Rasmussen, Seth C., “From Regnault to Baumann: The Early History of Poly(Vinyl Chloride),”Bull. Hist. Chem., 2025, 50, 93-106.
https://doi.org/10.70359/bhc2025v050p093
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Abstract/Description: Various halo- and dihalo-ethylenes were observed to transform into solid white masses over the period of 1838 to 1872. The greatest contribution of Victor Regnault (1810-1878) to the chemistry detailed herein was the initial synthesis of vinyl halides and dichloroethylene. He was also the first to observe the "molecular transformation" of interest here, that is, a polymerization in the modern sense. This was the polymerization of dichloroethylene or vinylidene chloride, the first known example of the polymerization of a vinyl halide species and the earliest known example of photopolymerization. Eugen Baumann (1846-1896) observed the polymerization of vinyl chloride, the last observed of the transformations presented in the current article. While Baumann can be credited with the first observation of vinyl chloride polymerization, his more important contributions were the determination that this transformation was an action of light and that this reaction was a general aspect of vinyl halides as a class of compounds, rather than isolated examples of an interesting phenomenon.