Elmer Keiser Bolton
When Wallace Carothers arrived at DuPont in 1928 one of the tasks his group took on was the development of new synthetic fibers for textiles. At that time a number of natural polymers such as latex and cellulose were in common use, rayon as a semisynthetic from nitrated cellulose had recently been improved and begun upending the textile industries, and some fully synthetic polymers such as bakelite were also known and being used for certain applications, but the existing fully synthetic polymers could not be drawn into fibers and spun into thread, so great opportunity existed to manufacture thread and yarn from synthetic polymers to join or replace the existing fibers in the market (natural fibers such as cotton, wool, linen, and silk and artificial fiber in the various recently emerged types of rayon).
Polyester
In 1926, United States-based E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. began research on large molecules and synthetic fibers. This early research, headed by W.H. Carothers, centered on what became nylon, which was the first synthetic fiber. Carothers was working for duPont at the time. Carother’s research was incomplete and had not advanced to investigating the polyester formed from mixing ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid. The project was revived by British scientists Whinfield and Dickson who patented PET or PETE in 1941. Polyethylene terephthalate forms the basis for synthetic fibers like Dacron, Terylene and polyester. In 1946, duPont bought all legal rights from Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI).