Polyurethane is one of the most important material in building auto component parts and other parts. The history of polyurethane begin with Professor. Otto.Bayer when he was synthesizing polymer fibers to compete with nylon and he developed the first fiber forming polyurethane in 1937. His invention ranks among the major breakthroughs in polymer chemistry, but. the polymer was dismissed as impractical by his superiors at I.G. Farbenindustrie.  For more than 20  years, Germany  had been at the forefront of synthetic fiber technology,beginning with the introduction of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) fibers in 1913.

Germany remained leading in the fiber field until 1935, when Carothers in the United States discovered the nylons, E.I.DuPont in America introduced and began marketing nylon fibers, protected by a barrage of patents that proved impossible to overcome. Nothing as versatile  and practical as the poly amides was available, prompting Bayer to investigate similar polymers not covered by the impenetrable DuPont patents. At the end of January 1938, Rinke and. collaborators were successful in reacting an aliphatic 1,8-octane diisocyanate with 1,4-butanediol to form a low-viscosity melt from which they were able to draw fibers.These early efforts resulted in what are now known as polyurethanes: the.esters of carbamic acid. These polyurethanes could be spun from the melt; yarns and mono filaments that could be made from their new polymer were of high  quality. Rinke and Associates were awarded the first U.S. patent on polyurethanes in 1938.