Test-Tube Love Seat

Toward the close of World War I big Eastman Kodak Co. got scared. Low and uncertain were its supplies of methanol (wood alcohol), indispensable solvent of the cellulose nitrate from which photographic film was made. When peace came, Eastman set about making its wood alcohol supply secure. In doing so, it unwittingly became a pioneer in the infant field of U. S. plastics.

Kingsport, Tenn. (pop.: 11,914) lies among mountains full of Southern hardwood, not far from the coal fields of Virginia. Acquiring 40,000 acres of timber land in 1920, the No. 1 camera and film maker built a plant in Kingsport to distill methanol from waste "chemical wood" (limbs & tops, slabs & ends). They called their new subsidiary Tennessee Eastman Corp.

Once under way, Tennessee Eastman began to bud like a culture of yeast. The spread of home movies and the problem of storing X-rays in hospitals demanded a non-inflammable film. Cellulose nitrate was highly inflammable. Cellulose acetate was not. Made by treating cellulose (purified cotton linters) with acetic acid and acetic anhydride, cellulose acetate was costly because the method of extracting the two acids from the wood was crude. But Eastman's chemists found a better way, and in 1930 Tennessee Eastman's first cellulose acetate unit began turning out the raw material for "safety film." That done, the chemists turned their test tubes on acetate yarn, a year later had a factory producing the synthetic yarn for rayon dresses, other fabrics.

Sucked along in the pell-mell wake of an expanding chemical universe, Eastman chemists next tried molding the cellulose acetate into sheets, other forms. It worked.The product, a plastic called Tenite I, went into production in 1933. Its uses were staggering--anything from clothes pins to telephones. Detroit motormakers snapped it up. This year it is a rare automobile that does not have a cellulose acetate steering wheel, door handle or other part, mostly Eastman-made.

Last week in Manhattan hog-wild Tennessee Eastman gave a coming-out party for its latest creation: Tenite II--a slightly refined Tenite I extruded in long, thin, narrow strips and strings. On display were Tennessee Eastman's debutantes: plastic chairs, tables, love seats, lazy boys of Tenite II for use in sun rooms, on verandas and lawns. Woven in strips or strings on rattan frames, the plastic furniture is (Eastman boast) impervious to sun, rain, fading. It is made by Ypsilanti Reed Furniture Co. out of strips and strings extruded by Detroit Macoid Corp. from Tennessee Eastman's Tenite II. Tentatively priced from $17 for a small chair to $50 for a section sofa, it is already on display in leading stores, should go on sale in April.

Awed but not dizzied by all this is Tennessee Eastman's President Perley S. Wilcox ("Uncle Perley" to his employes). Now completing his forty-second year with Eastman, he has built his plant to 82 buildings, 372 acres, 5,000 workers (second to the Kodak Park Works, Rochester, N. Y.'s biggest plant). Last year his big plant produced some 50,000,000 Ibs. of cellulose acetate, of which one-half went into rayon yarn, one-eighth into Tenite I & II, the rest into film, wrapping sheets, lacquers. Gross: some $25,000,000. For Tennessee Eastman pioneering has paid.

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