In 1958, Giulio Natta, Giuseppe Mazzanti, and Paolo Corradini published in the Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei the first successful synthesis of polyacetylene via Ziegler-Natta catalysts. The result was a black, insoluble, intractable powder, with a structure of alternating single and double carbon bonds (conjugated π system). Though the material did not usefully conduct electricity — being essentially an amorphous powder impossible to physically manipulate — Natta demonstrated that polyacetylene possessed the molecular architecture necessary for electronic conjugation. This milestone is the direct synthetic origin of the polyacetylene Shirakawa would transform into a film in 1974 and that Heeger and MacDiarmid would dope in 1977. Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1963 shared with Karl Ziegler for polymerization catalysts.