History of uPVC

Waldo Semon invented polyvinyl chloride also known as PVC or vinyl

Polyvinyl chloride or PVC was first created by the German chemist - Eugen Baumann - in 1872.    Eugen Baumann did not apply for a patent.

Polyvinyl chloride or PVC was never patented until 1913 when German, Friedrich Klatte, invented a new method of the polymerization of vinyl chloride using sunlight.

Friedrich Klatte became the first inventor to receive a patent for PVC.    However, no really useful purpose for PVC was found until Waldo Semon came along and made PVC a better product.  Sermon had been quoted as saying, "People thought of PVC as worthless back then [circa 1926]. They'd throw it in the trash."

In 1926, Waldo Lonsbury Semon was working for the B.F. Goodrich Company in the United States as a researcher, when he invented plasticized polyvinyl chloride.

Waldo Semon had been trying to dehydrohalogenate polyvinyl chloride in a high boiling solvent in order to obtain an unsaturated polymer that could bond rubber to metal.

For his invention, Waldo Semon received United States patents #1,929,453 and #2,188,396 for the "Synthetic Rubber-like Composition and Method of Making Same; Method of Preparing Polyvinyl Halide Products."