The modern era of American society has evolved over little more than two hundred years. During that time, we Americans have been provided so many new products, processes, and discoveries that we have become a nation of people who see even the greatest of innovations as commonplace. In this series is to encourage you to take a moment to appreciate some things we all take for granted, but wouldn’t want to live without, and to learn about and recognize the people behind these truly amazing discoveries.

Today’s topic concerns a product so basic, we hardly give it a second thought. Can you guess what it is?

Tide is the name of a popular laundry detergent on the market in the United States, Canada and other countries. It is manufactured by Procter & Gamble. Tide is marketed under various sub-brands, such as 2x Ultra Tide. First introduced in test markets in 1946 with national distribution reached in 1949, Tide was touted as "America's Washday Miracle." It quickly gained dominance in the detergent market, dwarfing the sales of other P&G products, such as Ivory Snow, as well as the competition from Rinso. The latter two were soap products. Originally, Tide was a white powdered solid, but the brand line was later expanded to include a liquid form, an orange-tinted clear fluid; today, liquid Tide is generally a darkish blue color.Tide is recognized for its distinctive orange-and-yellow bullseye logo. The first synthetic detergents appeared in 1916. Production of household detergents began during the 1930s in America, but did not really take off until after World War II, with development in 1946 of Tide® all-purpose detergent. It almost immediately became a staple household item in modern American society.

In the 1920s, the majority of Americans used soap flakes in order to wash their clothes according to Proctor and Gamble. By th3 1950s, most had switched to Tide laundry detergent.

Why is laundry detergent a historic chemical landmark? Because Laundry detergent was a new kind of product. Prior to its invention, people washed laundry with traditional soap. Laundry detergent, however, was based completely on synthetic compounds.

For those of us who are not familiar with washing the laundry during the 1930’s and 40’s, it wasn’t anything like the way we wash the laundry today.  If you know your American history, you already know the 1930’s meant “The Great Depression.”  And the first half of the 40’s meant “World War II.” The common way to wash the clothes was with a washtub, a washboard, water, and a lot of elbow grease.  And soap.  

Soap is a cleansing product created through the chemical process of combining a fat or natural oil with an alkali (such as wood ashes or lye) under controlled conditions. The housewife had her choice of using bar soap, flaked soap, and granulated soap.  American housewives during this time spent an entire day each week boiling up tubs of water, rubbing clothes on a board with soapy warm water, and then hanging the laundry out to dry. Occasionally, they would add starch to the laundry to make it stiffer, and less prone to wrinkles. On occasion, they used bleach to get out tough stains. On special wash days, they would “blu” the wash; that is, use prussian blue ink mixed with water to reinsert the bluing taken out by repeated washings. All this laundry work took an immense amount of effort and time. Interesting fact: When they used bluing to make the whites brighter, their hands would become stained blue. So they called wash day “Blue Monday.” (It would wear off in a day or two.)

About half of all households in America has a washing machine, but they were not the same as those today. Although there were newer looking models, the washing machines shown here represent an average washing machine of the 1940s. There was no room to set it up permanently, so it was stored in the closet under the stairs. When the woman of the house was ready to use it she could pull it into the kitchen, The washer stood about three feet high, and was about two feet in diameter. Mounted on four legs, each of which had a wheel on it, it was easy to move around the house. The light-weight steel construction made it durable. Toward the bottom of the tub was the electrical cord, as well as a water hose. Once wheeled into the kitchen it could be plugged in, then hooked up to the kitchen sink. The washing tub (where the actual washing was done) was about one and a half feet deep. In the center was the spinner, just like the machines of today. Once the clothes were placed in it, and it was plugged in, you could let them wash. This would happen by the spinner moving back and forth to help mix the soap and water, which was what cleaned the clothes. There was no automatic rinse cycle. One had to empty the washer, and put in fresh water to rinse them clean. Washing machines used granulated soap or soap flakes. Procter and Gamble introduced Oxydol, a flaked laundry soap, in 1924.

But Soap Had Problems…

The housewife frequently had very little to show for her trouble--- except sore arms, chapped hands, and an aching back.  Because soap dulled colors, and turned whites gray.

And when soap products were used in hard water (most of the U.S. from Midwest to the Rockies) , a substance called "soap curds" or “scum" formed. The scum, which would not dissolve, formed in the water and stuck to surfaces causing films and deposits The problem that hard water creates is that dissolved ions in hard water react with the chemicals in soap to create a sticky scum or curd. Clothes and sheets can feel rough, even harsh to the touch. Fabrics washed in hard water tend to wear out faster.

Twenty-nine states have water hard enough to cause this problem

The story of Tide has many facets: It rested on a research breakthrough – in fact, the effort to find a synthetic detergent proved so difficult that P&G officially shelved the project at one point

It represented a corporate gamble – a soap company making a product that undermined soaps

It had societal implications – it freed woman from the drudgery of washday Monday This became even more significant since Tide entered the market the same year as the automatic washing machine The two innovations taken together saved consumers much time and effort doing laundry

Building on work done in Germany, P&G researchers discovered it was possible to create a two-part molecule This molecule resembled a string which allowed water to break up oils and grease and float dirt away One end of the molecule bonds with oils and grease, the other with water The molecule pulls the oils and grease into a water solution The solution is then washed away This molecule is called a surfacant, which is short for surface acting agent

P&G’s initial product was Dreft® - the first synthetic detergent in the United States, launched in 1933 Dreft was a breakthrough It cleaned clothes in hard water without leaving curds But it did not clean heavily soiled clothes Because of this limitation, Dreft remained a useful product with a narrow market appeal – for delicate fabrics and baby clothes

P&G chemical engineers understood that cleaning ability could be improved by “building” the surfactant. Builders are chemical agents – sodium phosphates – that increase the surfactant’s ability to remove deeply embedded dirt But there was a problem with builders: they left clothes harsh and stiff The reason: The chemicals reacted with hard water to form insoluble, granular deposits that would not rinse away

But there was a problem with builders: they left clothes harsh and stiff The reason: The chemicals reacted with hard water to form insoluble, granular deposits that would not rinse away

Throughout the 1930s Procter & Gamble's chemists and chemical engineers at the Ivorydale Technical Center worked to develop a heavy-duty synthetic laundry detergent. The researchers experimented on the surfactant-builder problem, attempting to develop an alkyl sulfate-based detergent that cleaned heavily soiled clothes without leaving them hard and stiff.

They tried to build the surfactant with different chemicals; they added soaps to synthetic detergents; they mixed and matched formulae, tried them as flakes, granules, and liquids.

But nothing worked satisfactorily. By the end of the decade, the company had all but given up on developing a heavy-duty synthetic detergent and management began shifting research into other projects. As David "Dick" Byerly — the holder of the key Tide® patent — later recalled: "For almost 10 years we experimented with the new surface-active agents, the basic cleaning agents of synthetic detergents. By the middle of 1941, we still had not come up with a satisfactory, heavy-duty, non-soap product." Research into boosting the cleaning power of synthetic detergents was put on the back burner.

One person, David “Dick” Byerly, a P&G researcher, refused to give up on the project . His boss told him to shelve the research. Senior management frequently tried to discourage him from working on it. But Byerly continued. He even had to take his research “underground” within the company to keep it going. To the few who know about it, it became known as “Project X.”

By 1941, he had concluded that the best builder was sodium tripolyphosphate. Only the two protons bonded to highly electronegative oxygen atoms are expected to be acidic. Another major commercial use of phosphates is in laundry detergents. The problem of precipitation of soap by hard-water ions such as Ca2+ was mentioned in Sec. 12.2. This can be prevented, and the cleaning power of synthetic detergents can be improved, by adding phosphates. The compound usually used is sodium tripolyphosphate, whose anion is a condensation polymer of hydrogen phosphate and dihydrogen phosphate ions:

More importantly, Byerly had a counterintuitive breakthrough. All previous research on soaps and detergents had shown that reducing the amount of builder in a formula yielded a less harsh product (and it was the harshness of products with builder that hamstrung the project for so many years). Like his predecessors and colleagues, Byerly at first tried to keep the proportion of surfactant — the actual cleaning agent — as high as possible. But when he inverted the ratio by boosting the level of builder well above the amount of surfactant, he got a surprising result: The detergent cleaned well without leaving clothes stiff and harsh. After a great deal of trial and error, Byerly determined that the correct formula was one part active detergent, alkyl sulfate, to three parts builder, sodium tripolyphosphate. No one could figure out why it worked, but it worked.

The successful marketing of Tide is an interesting chapter in corporate history P&G management received a demonstration of Tide in mid-1945 and quickly understood that it was an innovative product

They quickly scrapped normal production schedule and, fearing a competitor might develop a synthetic detergent, rushed Tide into production. (note: this is a Dreft production line. There are no known photos of the original Tide production line)

Tide chosen as the name, though no one could ever recall why The famous box of concentric rings in vivid orange and red in a bull’s eye motif with Tide in blue letters was developed Slogans chosen: “oceans of suds,” “Washday Miracle,” “cleaner than soap.” The last was a significant claim from P&G, which was a company that, after all, had built its success on soaps

Tide was introduced to test markets in October 1946 as the world’s first heavy-duty detergent. Consumer response was immediate and intense. Tide detergent outsold every other brand within weeks. It became so popular that store owners were forced to limit the quantity purchased per customer.

Before Tide could actually be marketed, several engineering problems had to be solved Sufficient quantities of sodium tripolyphosphate had to be secured New facilities had to be built, especially new towers to granulate Tide, since synthetics required a different process than soaps To prevent clogging in the granulation towers, the engineers added a small amount of sodium silicate to the formula

The date significant because it coincided with the spread of automatic washing machines Tide was an instant marketing success Tide quickly boosted P&G’s share of the laundry market Colgate and Lever Brothers rushed to develop synthetic detergents Of course, Tide soon undermined P&G’s soap business: By 1949 the company was producing more synthetic detergents than soaps By the early 1950s Tide captured more than 30% of the market and it has been the number one selling laundry detergent ever since

The American Chemical Society designated the development of Tide® — the first heavy-duty synthetic detergent — as a National Historic Chemical Landmark in a ceremony in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 25, 2006. The plaque commemorating the event reads:

Scientists have developed a coating that enables fabric to clean itself The reaction hinges on exposure to sunlight - raising the intriguing possibility of specially-treated sheets being "washed" simply by hanging them on the clothes line. Similarly, stained ties and skirts could be as good as new after a few hours under the sun, removing the need for dry cleaning. In a study, published in American Chemical Society journal Chemistry of Materials, red-wine stains on pieces of wool started to fade within a few minutes of exposure to light and had all but vanished within a day. The researchers, from Monash University in Australia and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, say the process is kinder to fabrics than the chemicals used in dry cleaning, If that were not enough, the coating does not alter the texture or feel of fabrics. It is thought it will take around five years to refine the technology for use in self-cleaning clothes and linen. Andy Garland, of the Institute of Nanotechnology in Stirling, said the technology had the potential to have such an impact on our laundry habits that many washing powder manufacturers are developing self-cleaning sprays in a bid to grab a slice of the action. There are, however, concerns that self-cleaning fabrics might not be as hard-wearing as their conventional alternatives. The wide-scale use of nanotechnology, once derided by Prince Charles as "grey goo," is also likely to prove controversial. The science, which involves the study and manipulation of particles so small that a million could fit on the head of one pin, is becoming increasingly popular across the cosmetics industry, where the tiny particles are used to increase the absorption of skin creams and boost the protection of sun creams. But lack of safety checks have led to academics, consumer groups and Government officials warning the science could endanger the body and the environment. The food and farming department Defra warned recently: "There could be significant implications for business and the wider community if the potential risks are not identified and managed before any harm to the environment or human health may be done. Source:Farewell to wash day? Introducing the fabric that can clean itself By FIONA MACRAE Last updated at 08:38 12 February 2008 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-513697/Farewell-wash-day-Introducing-fabric-clean-itself.html

We hope you have enjoyed this presentation. For more like it, please visit the American Chemical Society Website.

The modern era of American society has evolved over little more than two hundred years. During that time, generations of Americans have been provided so many new products, processes, and discoveries, they we have become a nation of people who see even the greatest of innovations as commonplace. Our goal in this series is to encourage you to take a moment to appreciate some things we all take for granted, but wouldn’t want to live without, and to learn about and recognize the people behind these truly amazing discoveries.

National Historic Chemical Landmark Program Presents…

Things We Take for Granted* * but wouldn’t want to live without.

Today’s Modern Miracle

National Historic Chemical Landmarks Tide® Laundry Detergent

Why a Historical Landmark? Because it was the first big change in soapmaking in 2,000 years. “The first big change in soapmaking in 2,000 years." - Neil McElroy, Time Magazine, October, 1953, p.92.

Why a Chemical Landmark? Because it was based entirely on synthetic compounds; this made it a new kind of product

History of Washing

Before Tide, there was laundry soap

Bar, Granulated, or Flaked Soap

Washing Machine Soap

But Soap Had Problems…

Dulled Colors, Grayish Whites

Scum and Curds

Hard Water Areas in US

Procter & Gamble – a company which made soaps – led the way in developing a synthetic detergent that cleaned in hard water

The Story of Tide has Many Facets

Research Breakthrough a research breakthrough

Corporate Gamble a corporate gamble a research breakthrough

Societal Change Agent a corporate gamble A societal change agent a research breakthrough

Research Origins of Tide

Surfacants Likes water Hates water

Dreft – introduced 1933 Cleaned clothes in hard water without leaving curds Did not clean heavily soiled clothes

Builders

Problem with Builders

Developing Tide

Ivorydale P&G chemists and chemical engineers at the Ivorydale Technical Center in Cincinnati worked in the 1930s to develop a heavy-duty synthetic detergent.

They tried… They tried to build the surfactant with different chemicals They added soaps to synthetic detergents They mixed and matched formulae, testing them as flakes, granules, and liquids

But nothing worked and by the end of the decade P&G had all but given up on the project

Project “X” goes underground

The setup: Sodium Tripolyphosphate

The breakthrough: balance

Comparison of Soaps and Detergents

Marketing Tide http://erikaschneider.com/imgs/print/tide2.gif

Fast-tracked in 1945

Product Development “Oceans of Suds” “Washday Miracle” “Cleaner than Soap

The Tide Revolution Tide was launched in 1946, the same year the automatic washing machine was introduced. It was a smash hit, becoming the century's best-selling laundry detergent.

Producing Tide

Engineering Problems New ingredient New manufacturing process Clogging

October 1946 - Success!

Landmark Designation In 1933 Procter & Gamble introduced Dreft, a synthetic detergent made from an alkyl sulfate. Dreft cleaned clothes in hard water without depositing a residue of soap scum, a problem common to traditional soaps. But it was not strong enough to clean heavily soiled clothes. To solve this problem, P&G chemists, working at the Ivorydale Technical Center, added a "builder," sodium tripolyphosphate, to the surfactant (cleaning agent) and determined that an effective formula contained three parts builder to one part detergent. These breakthroughs led in 1946 to the debut of Tide, the first heavy-duty synthetic detergent. The simultaneous introduction of automatic washing machines saved the consumer time and effort.

What Will They Think of Next? Fabric that cleans itself?

American Chemical Society 42 National Historic Chemical Landmarks For More Things We Take for Granted, Please visit www.acs.org Education >Explore Chemistry>National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program

Things We Take for Granted …But Wouldn’t Want to Live Without.