Polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride

[…]Baekeland introduced polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride to the scientific community at the 909 meeting of the New York chapter of the American Chemical Society, and to the world thereafter as “Bakelite.”

Compared to the uniformity of modern plastics, the lightly marbled grain of true Bakelite feels organic: not something you'd expect from a substance whose real name is polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride.

[…]Yonkers was the home of Leo Baekeland, the Belgian chemist who had accidentally discovered polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride, better known as Bakelite, while working to produce a synthetic replacement for shellac[…]