Boosters called Houston's Astrodome the "Eighth Wonder of the World" when the first domed sports stadium opened in 1965. But one feature wasn't so wondrous: baseball players couldn't see fly balls in the glare from the plastic skylights. To fix this problem the panes were painted grey, which improved visibility but made the interior dimmer. Over several months the Astrodome's grass withered and died. In response, stadium managers tried a new option: they resurfaced the field with Chemgrass, a carpet of half-inch thermoplastic fibers at-tached to a rubber mat and laid on top of an asphalt base. Chemstrand, the Monsanto subsidiary that had developed the synthetic turf, saw a marketing opportunity and renamed it AstroTurf.
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