Selling Soap: "Oxydol Goes Into High" 1938 Procter & Gamble

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• published: 07 Sep 2012
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more at http://clothing.quickfound.net/ "'Motion slidefilm' for Oxydol distributors & retailers, showing sales campaigns undertaken by manufacturer. Good lab testing shots. Housewife speaks about Oxydol detergent & its benefits." Public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archive, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied. The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxydol Oxydol is the name of a laundry detergent sold in the United States and in the United Kingdom. It was created in 1914. Purchased by Procter & Gamble in 1927, it was P&G;'s first detergent. In the 1930s, Oxydol was the sponsor of the Ma Perkins radio show, considered the first soap opera. As Oxydol sponsorship put the soap in "soap opera". P&G; sold the brand in 2000 to Redox Brands, a marketing company founded by former Procter & Gamble employees. Redox Brands was merged into CR Brands in 2006. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laundry_detergent Laundry detergent, or washing powder, is a type of detergent (cleaning agent) that is added for cleaning laundry. In common usage, "detergent" refers to mixtures of chemical compounds including alkylbenzenesulfonates, which are similar to soap but are less affected by "hard water." In most household contexts, the term detergent refers to laundry detergent vs hand soap or other types of cleaning agents. Most detergent is delivered in powdered form. History From ancient times, chemical additives were recognized for their ability to facilitate the mechanical washing with water. The Italians used a mix of sulfur and water with charcoal to clean cloth. Egyptians added ashes and silicates to soften water. Soaps were the first detergents. The detergent effects of certain synthetic surfactants were noted in Germany in 1917, in response to shortages of soap during World War I. In the 1930s, commercially viable routes to fatty alcohols were developed, and these new materials were converted to their sulfate esters, key ingredients in the commercially important German brand FEWA, produced by BASF, and Dreft, the US brand produced by Procter and Gamble. Such detergents were mainly used in industry until after World War II. By then, new developments and the later conversion of aviation fuel plants to produce tetrapropylene, used in household detergents, caused a fast growth of domestic use in the late 1940s. The use of enzymes for laundry was introduced in the early part of the 1900s by Otto Rohm. Only in the latter part of the century with the availability of thermally robust bacterial enzymes did this technology become mainstream. At the present time, soap has largely been displaced as the main cleaning agent in developed countries. Soap is, by weight, relatively ineffective, and it is highly sensitive to deactivation by hard water. By the 1950s, soap had almost been completely replaced by branched alkylbenzenesulfonates, but these detergents were found to be poorly biodegradable. Linear alkylbenzenesulfonates (LABs), however, proved to be both highly effective in cleaning and more biodegradable than the branched relatives. LABs remain the main detergents used domestically. Other detergents that have been developed include the linear alkylsulfonates and olefinsulfonates, which also resist deactivation by hard water. Both remain specialty products, for example only an estimated 60 million kilograms of the sodium alkylsulfonates are produced annually. During the early development of non-soap surfactants as commercial cleaning products, the term syndet, short for synthetic detergent, was promoted to indicate the distinction from so-called natural soaps. Chemistry of detergents Many kinds of molecules and ions can serve as high-efficiency surfactants. They are often classified according to the charge of the molecule or ion, the three main classes being anionic, neutral, and cationic detergents. Anionic detergents are most commonly encountered for domestic laundry detergents. Detergents are ions or molecules that contain both polar and nonpolar components. The polar component allows the detergent to dissolve in the water, whereas the nonpolar portion solubilizes greasy ("hydrophobic") materials that are the usual target of the cleaning process. An estimated 6 billion kilograms of detergents are produced annually for domestic markets...