Well, it was kind of an accident, because plastic is not what I meant to invent. I had just sold photograph paper to Eastman Kodak for 1 million dollars.

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.