__1951: __Dacron suits go on sale in New York City. Polyester fabrics are about to add a new wrinkle to fashion by removing a few wrinkles ... and maybe any sense of style.
The fiber came from DuPont, which had made a huge success of nylon a decade earlier. The new material was polyethylene terephthalate, and it was the first polyester fiber to reach the consumer market.
DuPont called it Dacron in the United States and Terylene in Britain. The company touted the material's light weight, durability and resistance to wrinkles, creases, abrasion, soaps, detergents and dry-cleaning chemicals.
Deering, Milliken & Co. wove the fiber into a fabric of 55 percent Dacron and 45 percent worsted wool. Famed haberdasher Hart, Schaffner & Marx tailored the polyester-blend fabric into suits that sold for $79.50 (about $650 in today's money).
The clothing maker preferred the blend, because it didn't get clingy from static electricity the way 100 percent Dacron did. The suits were said to be cooler than summer-weight woolens, and the pants would keep their crease unless you deliberately removed it with a hot iron.
One test customer of a Dacron suit had supposedly fallen out of canoe in his suit, and after hanging it up to dry, it came out wrinkle-free and with a sharp crease. As to why the gentleman was wearing a suit in a canoe, who knows? One suspects he may have been trying to impress a young lady.
Within weeks, Dacron shirts for men and blouses for women were showing up in clothing stores. Another company, Witty Bros., set to work on 100 percent Dacron summer suits to retail for $95 (the equivalent of almost $800 these days).
Synthetic fabrics were here to stay, for good or ill, spawning fashion excesses like the polyester leisure suits (seen above) of the 1970s.
Dacron is versatile, and it also started showing up in medical devices. One such implant was the 1966 Kantrowitz ventricle, a predecessor of the artificial heart:
Lub-a-dub, lub-a-dub,
Adrian Kantrowitz'
Ventricle's only a
Half-hearted start:
Biomechanical,
Extra-ventricular,
Rubber-lined Dacron-tube
Substitute part.
*Sources: *Time magazine, Today in Science History
*Image: Courtesy Lee Jeans
*
See Also:
May 8, 1790: Liberté! Egalité! Métriqué!
**May 8, 1886: Looking for Pain Relief, and Finding Coca-Cola Instead
April 5, 1951: Happy Birthday, Mr. Pied Piper of Technology
Oct. 31, 1951: We’ll Cross That Street When We Come to It
