> Interesting. I was under the impression that UV-resistent coatings are
> just overly-optimistic marketing, and in reality none of these coatings
> actually work.

One of the first image results from google gave this:

http://www.alpineastro.com/filters/uv_ir_cut_specs.htm

That's a pretty sharp fall-off below 400 nm. Whether it works or not is 
unquestionable, what is usually up for debate is whether it's actually 
useful on a camera. On skin, eyes or paint of course it works and is 
useful.

> OK, really ancient plastics weren't very good. But the plastics I see
> today and the plastics I saw 30 years ago seem pretty much identical in
> every respect. What's changed?

What you see today is them used in many places where they simply 
couldn't be used 30 years ago because plastics with the required 
performance didn't exist or were too expensive to manufacture. Car 
bumpers were metal or fibre-glass that got dented or cracked, pipes in 
your house were copper, anything involving even slightly corrosive 
chemicals was stainless steel. Today plastics can be and are used in all 
those places, ultimately making things cheaper.

Then there are all the things the consumer doesn't even notice. Like 
plastics that are easier to mould (more complicated shapes are possible 
to be made faster with finer details), possible to process in thinner 
films, flame retardants that are environmentally friendly, stronger and 
stiffer plastics that enable things to be made with less plastic for the 
same performance etc.

The software we use here for simulating the moulding of a plastic part 
(to make sure it will fill correctly and not leave any sink marks, weld 
lines etc) has a built-in database of plastic materials to choose from. 
There are over 10000 of them, and there are plenty not in the list. They 
have all been developed for a specific reason, and most of them recently 
(not 30 years ago).

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