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Newspaper
Medicine Hat News
Location
Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada
Date
Jun 16, 2014
Page
14
Joseph Priestley, the clergyman philosopher and scientist, named rubber after noting that Indian gum could erase pencil marks. In Britain erasers remain called rubbers and natural rubber goes by India rubber China rubber or caoutchouc. caoutchouc derives from a South American word meaning weeping wood.
Rubber is a versatile material with air and liquid containment and low electrical conductivity. Its key feature is elasticity, and it occurs naturally in tree sap or can be synthesized from chemicals.
Rubber is a hydrocarbon made of hydrogen and carbon. It consists of thousands of isoprene molecules linked into long polymer chains. A single isoprene unit is a monomer. The polymer chain acts like a spring, giving rubber its elasticity. This combination makes rubber an elastomer.
The rubber band was patented in 1845 by Stephen Perry a British inventor. Names vary by region including elastics loop bands gum bands tucky bands jimmys and binders. The Guinness record rubber band ball weighed 4097 kg in 2008 made by Joe Waul.
Natural rubber comes mainly from tropical rubber trees in Southeast Asia with over 80 percent grown in Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Other producers include Brazil, China, India, Liberia and the Philippines, while synthetic rubber is produced in many industrialized nations such as France, Germany, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
Natural rubber comes from latex in many plants. The Para rubber tree Hevea brasiliensis in the Amazon Basin yields milky sap that is easier to tap for rubber production.
The discovery by Charles Goodyear of heating and mixing sulfur into rubber made it tougher and more elastic, resistant to heat and cold, water and chemicals, and nonconductive. Vulcanized rubber enabled mass use, driving demand for raw rubber, with World War II boosting needs for allies such as fighters and ships.
From pre Columbian use of latex for balls shoes and waterproof fabrics to modern energy harvesting rubber sheets. Notable points include 1736 Brazilian samples c1770 Priestley latex as eraser Goodyear era 1791 Peal waterproofing 1876 seed smuggling 1879 synthetic rubber Bouchardat 1914 18 WWI Buna 1935 2010 energy harvesting rubber sheets powering devices
The text traces key rubber innovations from 1823 patenting waterproof fabrics to 1839 vulcanization and 1850 rubber toys. It notes 1931 DuPont patenting neoprene and 2010s rubber band bracelets gaining popularity for causes.
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