1930's Fashion - The invention of Nylon Stockings !On October 27, 1938, Charles Stine, a vice president of E. I. du Pont de Nemours, Inc., announced that nylon had been invented. He unveiled the world's first synthetic fiber not to a scientific society but to three thousand women's club members gathered at the site of the 1939 New York World's Fair for the New York Herald Tribune's Eighth Annual Forum on Current Problems. He spoke in a session entitled "We Enter the World of Tomorrow" which was keyed to the theme of the forthcoming fair, the World of Tomorrow.
Images Courtesy of Hagley Museum and Library.
Wallace Hume Carothers in his Du Pont lab in
Wilmington, DE.
In the middle of Stine's talk, he proclaimed: "To this audience . . . I am making the first announcement of a brand new chemical textile fiber. This textile fiber is the first man-made organic textile fiber prepared wholly from new materials from the mineral kingdom. I refer to the fiber produced from nylon. . . . Though wholly fabricated from such common raw materials as coal, water, and air, nylon can be fashioned into filaments as strong as steel, as fine as a spider's web, yet more elastic than any of the common natural fibers."
Thinking that "strong as steel" meant indestructible stockings, the women at the forum burst into applause.
Read the full story here at The Nylon Drama - gripping stuff !