The phrase "a time when material" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing a specific period or context related to material, such as in historical, educational, or artistic discussions.
Example: "Reflecting on a time when material was scarce, we can appreciate the innovations that emerged from necessity."
Alternatives: "an era when resources" or "a period when substances".
The construction may have been at a time when material and labor were at the highest price, so that the actual cost far exceeds the present value.
"In everyday life," another midlife study found, "the decade of the 40s is likely to be experienced as a time when material and emotional dreams are fulfilled".
This formulation is particularly poignant at a time when material independence will be elusive for many college students, who are coming of age during a recession, with onerous debt, and may actually go home to their parents for much of their twenties in order to make ends meet.
I lived through a time when material poverty was the only way of life.
"If Brighton wants to increase the amount of plastic it is collecting, it will take a huge investment to put the technology in place at a time when the material has a negative value," he said.
In his defence he says that only with hindsight can one tell just how earth-shakingly critical that information was at a time when intelligence material on al-Qa'ida's activities, real or rumoured, was flooding the intelligence airwaves.
It must be remembered that, to Plotinus, the whole process of generation is timeless; Nous and Soul are eternal, while time is the life of Soul as active in the physical world, and there never was a time when the material universe did not exist.
Having originated during a time when printed material was not readily available and only a select few had the ability to read and write, lectures were a very useful, if not the only, way to share information with large groups of people.
The doors of the Manhattan State Supreme Court building recall a time when the materials of choice were wood and brass, not brushed stainless steel.
The soaring Australian dollar has inflicted an increasing toll on manufacturers, hitting earnings at a time when raw-material costs are also surging.
The front-page editor's column of the new look front page states "it will help make the utmost use of every inch of paper at a time when the raw material on journalism has to be so severely rationed".
