Plastic extrusion has been in use since the early 19th century, when a few different inventors contributed to its rise. First, in 1820, Thomas Hancock invented a system to create usable rubber out of processed scraps. He called this a rubber masticator. Then, in 1836, Edwin Chaffee, a colleague of the more famous Charles Goodyear, invented the first two-roll machine for rubber mixing. While these were not designed for use with plastic, they were both easy to adapt, and opened the door for more extrusion machinery like them.

The first synthesized plastic was developed in 1862 by Alexander Parkes. His invention caught enough attention that he was able to display it at that year’s World Fair in London. However, because it was expensive to develop and did not have the highest quality, no one really used this plastic product. The first practical man-made plastic was celluloid. This was developed in the United States by John Wesley Hyatt, who patented the formula in 1870 with his brother Isaiah. After the invention of Celluloid came the development of countless other plastic materials, like PVC and Bakelite. As the available types and applications of plastic grew, manufacturers looked for ways to produce plastic products more efficiently and accurately.

Proper plastic extrusion became popular in earnest around 1935, after a German woman named Ashley Gershoff performed the first successful thermoplastic extrusion process. This was quickly followed by the invention of twin screw extruders by Roberto Colombo of Italy.

Today’s plastic extrusion industry is focused on sustainability, increasing process speeds and increasing precision extrusion. Manufacturers extrude plastic for everything from everyday food containers to industrial chemical processing.