After describing his education and early work at the DuPont Company on polymer solutions, Herbert Blades recounts his contributions to the development of Tyvek and Kevlar. On the Tyvek project, he describes developing the polymerization process for creating high-density polyethylene fibers after such paper-like fibers had been accidentally created in the laboratory.

Blades details his work on Kevlar, for which he developed a commercially viable process to spin fibers from the polymer. Blades describes the three components of the process. First, he discovered that a relatively high concentration of polymer could be dissolved upon heating in 100 per cent sulfuric acid, which is non-aqueous and non-corrosive. The resulting solution had a low enough viscosity that it could be spun rapidly through a spinnerette, a small hole. Next, Blades discovered that instead of spinning the fiber directly into a water bath, leaving a small air gap led to fibers that were significantly stronger. Finally, he determined that the water "quenching" of the fiber occurred extremely fast. His spinning innovations made it possible to spin Kevlar fibers economically and at high speeds. [ID: 2014249_20140819_Blades]