The most influential engineered wood products of the 20th cen-tury may be classified quite simply as wood composites—recombinations of wood and wood fibers that overcome many of wood’s natural limitations and extend its usefulness. Surpris-ingly, however, in this century of rapid scientific progress, most of the notable new lumber products have been rather modest steps forward—chemical improvements on essentially mechani-cal 19th-century inventions. Plywood, the trade name adopted by the Veneers Manufac-turers Association in 1919, is a perfect example of a product that became truly viable only in the 20th century. The industrial process of cutting thin layers of wood veneer by either peeling logs or slicing them, along with the concept of adhering layers of veneer together, was first introduced in France around 1830. Furniture makers such as Thomas Sheraton and the Steinway company began using laminated wood veneers in the mid-19th century, and in 1884 a factory in Reval, Estonia, bega...