[osreb]

Believe it not, pantyhose - as we know them today - are barely 50 years old. The first ever pair got off the production line in 1959, at Glen Raven Mills. In order to make our panty hose retrospective as complete as possible though, we need to go back all the way to 1938, when a crucial event, one that would later make pantyhose possible, took place at the New York Herald Tribune's 8th Annual Forum on Current Problems, on October 27th. The event was an announcement, coming from Charles Stine, vice president of E.I. du Pont de Nemours Inc., regarding the invention of a new fiber, the world's first synthetic fiber, called nylon. Nylon has never been registered as a trademark, and it wasn't because of negligence on the part of DuPont. The company simply decided to let the word be absorbed into everyday vocabulary.