Research gave plastic a new twist; Ohio man, co-worker discovered material used everywhere today

Robert Banks and John Paul Hogan aren't exactly household names, but just try to get through the day without them.

Their presence is in the baby bottles you heat on the stove, the pipes tucked under your kitchen sink, the indoor- outdoor carpeting you laid in the basement. They ate with you as you poured your breakfast milk from a jug, played with you as you twirled a Hula-Hoop, and worked beside you as you pulled out tools to tackle a repair. And as you drove to school to pick up the kids, they went along for the ride: under the hood, in the trunk, on the roof.

No, Banks and Hogan didn't invent all of those things. They invented what made all of those things possible: high density polyethylene and polypropylene, the basis of today's plastics industry.

While their discovery back in 1951 was completely unexpected, don't call it an accident. Hogan, a deeply spiritual man, will tell you it's all part of a greater plan. "I came to regard research as discovering God's secrets and learning to think God's thoughts as he revealed them in sometimes surprising ways," he said.

Hogan, 82, was born in Lowes, Ky. Banks, who died in 1989, was a native of Piedmont. Both were chemists for Phillips Petroleum Co. on that fateful day in June 1951. What they had set out to do was convert natural gas byproducts into gasoline additives. It had been obvious for some time that the family car - traveling faster and farther than ever before - was in need of a high-octane gas that was affordable.

Hogan and Banks watched as an experiment in a flask turned into a white, taffylike substance. "We knew we had a unique discovery on our hands," Hogan would say years later. An understatement, to be sure. While most plastics of that period were either brittle or too easily softened by heat, the process they refined produced a material that was strong, heat-resistant and cheap.

As a result of their work, Phillips plunged headlong into the plastics industry, investing $50 million in a plant near Houston and marketing a material it branded "Marlex." But some early production problems made manufacturers question whether Phillips really had such a miracle plastic. Most of the Marlex plastic pellets sat in warehouses for years until relief came from an unlikely source.

The Hula-Hoop craze swept America when it hit the stores in 1956 and, all of a sudden, toy manufactures couldn't keep up. As huge orders for their plastic came in, Phillips not only emptied its Marlex warehouses but geared the plant's entire output toward making more. By the time Hula-Hoop fever leveled off in 1959, the production problems had been solved and salesmen had lined up new markets.

Phillips also had to fight some legal battles over patents. But in 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Phillips, and Banks and Hogan gained official recognition for their discovery.

Today, billions of pounds of polyethylene and polypropylene are used annually to make packaging and containers, tools, furniture, auto parts, tubing, carpet, pipes and many other products.

Hogan continued to be a chemist for Phillips until his retirement in 1985, and while his greatest discovery came early in his career, he said he never lost his zest for learning.

He was often motivated by a quote he kept in his office: "It's what you learn after you think you know it all that counts."