Otto Bayer

At the ICRI meeting last week, one of the speakers talked about Otto Bayer. He said that he invented Polyurethane. I didn't mention it in the previous post because I wanted to find out more. His name may be Bayer and he may have worked for Bayer, but he merely shared the name, not the lineage. The Bayer website has a nice little excerpt about him.

http://www.plastiquarian.com/obayer.htm

Polyurethanes were discussed because it is one of the types of products that seals cracks and is more typically used for stopping leaks in concrete structures. There is a nice writeup on Polyurethanes in wikipedia and it explains the history of it quickly. It was invented prior to WWII. It was explained that Germany was trying to make a product to replace rubber tires.

Vehicle tires use the process of vulcanization, thus a vulcanized rubber tire. This process was invented by Charles Goodyear around 1839.

Polyurethanes were not successful as tires. However, they are in use today in a multitude of ways. They are in everything from earplugs to mattresses and, yes, sometimes even concrete structures that have a leak that needs to be stopped.