What is the name of the first plastic made from synthetic compounds, patented in 1907? The material is moldable, resistant to heat and destructive solvents, electrically nonconductive, and not flexible. Chemically it is a product of a condensation reaction between phenol and formaldehyde, creating polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride. The material is named after its developer, a Belgian chemist.
Answer to yesterday's question: Ada Lovelace (1815–1852). Her notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine included the algorithm now called Note G, published in 1843. more than a century before any computer existed to actually run these. Beyond the algorithm, she is credited with the conceptual leap from a machine manipulating numbers to one manipulating symbols, hinting at what computing would eventually become. The programming language Ada was named after her in 1980, still used today in safety-critical systems like aviation.