Interview with Herbert Blades, 2014 August 19
Part of collection: History of Kevlar oral history interviews (2014-249)
Dates
- Creation: 2014 August 19
Creator
- Blades, Herbert, 1925- (Interviewee, Person)
Biographical Note
Recruited by the DuPont Co. in 1954, Herbert Blades made contributions to the development of both Tyvek and Kevlar. For Tyvek, Blades developed a polymerization process for reliably making high density polyethylene fibers and is listed as co-inventor on the patent for Tyvek non-woven sheeting, which among other applications is used in building construction. For Kelvar, Blades developed a commercially viable process to spin fibers from the polymer. Prior to his work at DuPont, Blades attended the University of Western Ontario and received a PhD in physical chemistry from McGill University, where he researched gas kinetics. Following that, he completed postdoctoral fellowships at the National Research Council Canada and the Royal Military College of Canada, during which he was recruited by the DuPont Co.
Scope and Content
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]
Physical Description
20 MOV files. 6 MXF files. TRT 01:33:16. Access copy available as an MPEG4.
Extent
From the Collection: 457.5 Gigabytes
Language of Materials
From the Collection: English
Additional Description
Access Restrictions
This collection is open for research.
Repository Details
Repository Details
Part of the Audiovisual Collections Repository