I was trying to make something really hard, but then I thought I should make something really soft instead, that could be molded into different shapes. That was how I came up with the first plastic. I called it Bakelite.

Baekeland is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Sleepy Hollow New York. 175. Chemists had begun to recognize that many of the natural resins and fibers were polymers.

Leo Henricus Arthur Baekeland (November 14 1863 – February 23 1944) was a Belgium born American chemist who invented Velox photographic paper (1893) and Bakelite (1907) an inexpensive nonflammable versatile and popular plastic which marked the beginning of the modern plastics industry.