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#Elephants

10 posts10 participants1 post today

Taking a moment to remember John Wesley Hyatt, the inventor of the first major #synthetic #ivory, patented 1869, among other things like #InjectionMolding, which allowed him to make consumer goods which would normally use ivory, but were far cheaper, more durable, and had far less variation than the real stuff.

This man is sometimes credited with single handedly driving down demand for real ivory across the board, and later other products, as his own spread the idea that synthetic materials could be significantly better than natural ones.

While it wasn't anyone's intention at the time, his work saved the lives of countless #elephants, and likely other animals later on, as more things which animals were killed specifically for were replaced by synthetic things.

Sometimes, just solving the problem of doing a thing differently can have massive effects.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W

en.m.wikipedia.orgJohn Wesley Hyatt - Wikipedia