In the spring of 1930, Carothers and his team had already synthesized two new polymers. One was neoprene, a synthetic rubber greatly used during World War II.[19] The other was a white elastic but strong paste that would later become nylon. After these discoveries, Carothers' team was made to shift its research from a more pure research approach investigating general polymerization to a more practically-focused goal of finding "one chemical combination that would lend itself to industrial applications".[2]:94