Nylon

Nylon is a family of synthetic polymers joined by amide links, first made as nylon 66 by Wallace Hume Carothers at the DuPont Experimental Station on 28 February 1935. It was the first commercially successful synthetic thermoplastic polymer: DuPont announced it in 1938, a nylon-bristled toothbrush appeared that year, and nylon stockings, on general sale from 1940, sold 64 million pairs in their first year. In response, Paul Schlack of IG Farben developed nylon 6 in 1938. In the Second World War nearly all nylon went into parachutes and other military uses.