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Invisible Helpers – Chemistry in Everyday Life

It is almost impossible to imagine everyday life without BASF products. For the most part, however, these products would not be recognizable as BASF innovations. For BASF has been developing solutions for a better quality of life since 1865, but has remained mostly invisible to the end user.

Sheer Stockings and Functional Clothing

Tent ropes, toothbrush bristles, and women’s stockings – the synthetic fiber Perlon is an all-round talent soon after its discovery. In Ludwigshafen, caprolactam, a raw material of Perlon, has been produced since 1939. Today, BASF is a leading provider of polyamides for engineering plastics, films, and fibers, which are marketed under the trade name Ultramid.

Material for Creative People

Soon after the first plastics have left the laboratory, artists discover the new materials for themselves. When the Hungarian artist Victor Vasarely (1906–1997) searches for a weather-resistant and color-resistant plastic for his sculptures, he turns to BASF in 1969. BASF works closely with the artist and advises him on selecting the right plastic. As the company also later advises Verner Panton, BASF recommends the material Luran to Vasarely.

BASF Products in the Living Area

Furniture and household appliances? BASF would not necessarily come to your mind when thinking of them. Yet, in many cases they are made of BASF products, especially plastics, as the latter facilitate their characteristic properties.

The glue Kaurit even revolutionizes woodworking after its launch in 1931. For it is the forerunner of particle board without which furniture today would have been unaffordable for the most part.

In All the Colors of the Rainbow

For a long time, colored clothing is restricted to the rich and powerful. This is because natural dyes are rare and expensive. Synthetic dyes are a remedy to this deficiency and make life more colorful. In 1869, BASF succeeds in synthesizing its first natural dye: Alizarin red is the artificial equivalent of madder obtained previously from madder roots. Its greatest achievement is synthetic indigo, which is launched onto the market in 1897.

No Car without BASF

A car without BASF? Impossible. The antifreeze Glysantin is the first product in this field in 1928. It is followed by plastics. Autobodies are produced from the BASF plastic Palatal for the first time in 1964. A few years later, BASF plastics start to be applied in the engine compartment, too. The starting point is an Ultramid intake module for a limited-series of Porsche. Exhaust catalysts have also become indispensable in modern cars. BASF has been active in this area since 2006, through the acquisition of the Engelhard Corporation.

All on Tape

In the 1970s, vinyl records and cassette tapes are included among its broad-based business with storage media. All this started with the tape in 1934. Initially limited to voice and music recordings, mainframe computers have been saving their data on BASF solenoids since the 1960s. BASF video tape supplement the portfolio from the 1970s onwards. In 1997, however, BASF sells its storage media division and ends its production of data carriers.

BASF begins its story with dyes that make clothing for many people more colorful. Textile dyes are followed by pigments for paints, and soon after by complete automotive paints and coatings. With Kaurit glue, a BASF product finds its way into the furniture industry in 1931. Since the 1950s, the modern woman does not want to do without women’s stockings made of Perlon. Objects made from the BASF plastic Luran are found in her kitchen in the 1960s. Plastics also conquer modern sportswear. The most recent example is the innovative foam Infinergy™ as part of a new running shoe from adidas.

These BASF products and almost all others have one thing in common: in the supermarket, sports shop and furniture store, for example, customers do not realize, in most cases, that many products owe their desired properties to BASF’s innovations.

Exceptions confirm the rule: the few BASF products, which are also recognized by the end user as such, include antifreeze Glysantin introduced in 1928/1929 and the magnetic audio tape which has offered music at the push of a button since 1934. BASF’s audio tape becomes an indispensable part of family entertainment from the 1950s onwards and so does its music cassette from the 1980s. Other storage media are added later: records and video tapes or even computer tapes and disks.