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Oct 6, 2020 · Before the birth of the mass-market automobile industry, the demand for rubber was associated with highly specialised components, consumer goods and bicycle tyres. The Brazilian rubber supply successfully kept pace with global demand, even throughout the bicycle craze of the 1890s.
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Apr 30, 2018 · Written by a social and cultural historian at the University of Akron (the city that was long called the “rubber capital of the world”), this short book examines the history of rubber, mainly in th...
- Peter Morris
- 2018
History of Rubber - ERCA - From 1000 BC to nowadays. 1000 BC – 500 BC. The first known use of rubber was by the Olmec, the first major civilisation in Mexico. They used natural latex from the Hevea tree to make rubber used to make balls for a Mesoamerican ballgame. 1000 BC – 300 AD.
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- Development of the natural rubber industry
If latex is allowed to evaporate naturally, the film of rubber that forms can be dried and pressed into usable articles such as bottles, shoes, and balls. South American Indians made such objects in early times: rubber balls, for instance, were used in an Aztec ceremonial game (called ollama) long before Christopher Columbus explored South America and the Caribbean. On his second voyage to the New World in 1493–96, Columbus is said to have seen natives in present-day Haiti play a game with balls made from the gum of a tree. In 1615 a Spaniard related how the Indians, having gathered the milk from incisions made in various trees, brushed it onto their cloaks and also obtained crude footwear and bottles by coating earthen molds and allowing them to dry.
The first serious accounts of rubber production and the primitive Native American system of manufacture were given in the 18th century by Charles-Marie de La Condamine, a member of a French geographic expedition sent to South America in 1735. La Condamine described “caoutchouc” (the French spelling of a native term for “weeping wood”) as the condensed juice of the Hevea tree, and in 1736 he sent rubber samples to Europe. Initially the new material was merely a scientific curiosity. Some years later the British scientist Joseph Priestley remarked on its usefulness for rubbing pencil marks from paper, and so the popular term rubber was coined. Other applications gradually developed, notably for waterproofing shoes and clothing.
Important progress toward a true rubber industry came at the beginning of the 19th century from the separate experiments of a Scottish chemist, Charles Macintosh, and an English inventor, Thomas Hancock. Macintosh’s contribution was the rediscovery, in 1823, of coal-tar naphtha as a cheap and effective solvent. He placed a solution of rubber and naphtha between two fabrics and in so doing avoided the sticky surfaces that had been common in earlier single-texture garments treated with rubber. Manufacture of these double-textured waterproof cloaks, henceforth known as “mackintoshes,” began soon afterward.
The work of Hancock, who became Macintosh’s colleague and partner, is of even greater importance. He first attempted to dissolve the rubber in turpentine, but his hand-coated fabrics were unsatisfactory in surface texture and smell. He then turned to the production of elastic thread. Strips of rubber were cut from the imported lumps and applied in their crude state to clothing and footwear. In 1820, in an effort to find a use for his waste cuttings, Hancock invented a masticator. Constructed of a hollow wooden cylinder equipped with teeth in which a hand-driven spiked roller was turned, this tiny machine, originally taking a charge of two ounces of rubber, exceeded Hancock’s greatest hopes. Instead of tearing the rubber to shreds, it produced enough friction to weld the scraps of rubber into a coherent mass that could be applied in further manufacture.
Britannica Quiz
Building Blocks of Everyday Objects
If latex is allowed to evaporate naturally, the film of rubber that forms can be dried and pressed into usable articles such as bottles, shoes, and balls. South American Indians made such objects in early times: rubber balls, for instance, were used in an Aztec ceremonial game (called ollama) long before Christopher Columbus explored South America and the Caribbean. On his second voyage to the New World in 1493–96, Columbus is said to have seen natives in present-day Haiti play a game with balls made from the gum of a tree. In 1615 a Spaniard related how the Indians, having gathered the milk from incisions made in various trees, brushed it onto their cloaks and also obtained crude footwear and bottles by coating earthen molds and allowing them to dry.
The first serious accounts of rubber production and the primitive Native American system of manufacture were given in the 18th century by Charles-Marie de La Condamine, a member of a French geographic expedition sent to South America in 1735. La Condamine described “caoutchouc” (the French spelling of a native term for “weeping wood”) as the condensed juice of the Hevea tree, and in 1736 he sent rubber samples to Europe. Initially the new material was merely a scientific curiosity. Some years later the British scientist Joseph Priestley remarked on its usefulness for rubbing pencil marks from paper, and so the popular term rubber was coined. Other applications gradually developed, notably for waterproofing shoes and clothing.
Important progress toward a true rubber industry came at the beginning of the 19th century from the separate experiments of a Scottish chemist, Charles Macintosh, and an English inventor, Thomas Hancock. Macintosh’s contribution was the rediscovery, in 1823, of coal-tar naphtha as a cheap and effective solvent. He placed a solution of rubber and naphtha between two fabrics and in so doing avoided the sticky surfaces that had been common in earlier single-texture garments treated with rubber. Manufacture of these double-textured waterproof cloaks, henceforth known as “mackintoshes,” began soon afterward.
The work of Hancock, who became Macintosh’s colleague and partner, is of even greater importance. He first attempted to dissolve the rubber in turpentine, but his hand-coated fabrics were unsatisfactory in surface texture and smell. He then turned to the production of elastic thread. Strips of rubber were cut from the imported lumps and applied in their crude state to clothing and footwear. In 1820, in an effort to find a use for his waste cuttings, Hancock invented a masticator. Constructed of a hollow wooden cylinder equipped with teeth in which a hand-driven spiked roller was turned, this tiny machine, originally taking a charge of two ounces of rubber, exceeded Hancock’s greatest hopes. Instead of tearing the rubber to shreds, it produced enough friction to weld the scraps of rubber into a coherent mass that could be applied in further manufacture.
Britannica Quiz
Building Blocks of Everyday Objects
- Alan N. Gent
More affordable, just as durable, crumb tire may be the raw materials of the next great American rubber company! A look into the origins of rubber, where it came from, who made it, which rubber company has led the way, and why is rubber so important to our economy.
Aug 16, 2019 · The history of the rubber industry in the UK centres on Bradford on Avon, where the first rubber mill was set up in the mid-19th century by a friend of famous tyre manufacturer, Charles Goodyear. Born in 1794, entrepreneur Stephen Moulton, of County Durham, had been living in New York, where he met rubber pioneer Goodyear.
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May 5, 2015 · Summary. Natural rubber is one of the most significant export crops from the tropics, but since the 1940s rubber has been produced from both natural latex and from petroleum. International markets for rubber expanded rapidly after the late 1880s, led by the newly expanding tire industry.
