Macintosh, Charles

Some 500 years ago during Columbuss second voyage to what are now the Americas he and his crew saw children playing with balls made from the latex of trees that grew there Later Joseph Priest ley called this material rubber to describe its ability to erase pencil marks by rubbing and in 1823 Charles Macintosh demonstrated how rubber could be used to make waterproof coats and shoes Shortly there after Michael Faraday determined an empirical for mula of CsHs for rubber It was eventually determined that rubber is a polymer of 2 methyl 1 3 butadiene... 

Rubber becomes brittle in cold weather and tacky in hot weather, and it is odorous and perishable. It also has very low tensile strength and low resistance to abrasion. One of the major advances in the improvement of rubber was in the discovery by Charles Macintosh in Scotland in 1820 that coal-tar naphtha is a cheap and effective solvent for rubber. He placed a solution of rubber and naphtha between two fabrics, and in so doing he covered up the sticky or brittle surfaces that had been common in earlier single-texture garments treated with rubber. Macintosh patented the process in 1823. These double-textured waterproof cloaks, which were first introduced to the public in 1824, have been known ever since as mackintoshes. 

Thomas Hancock (1786-1865) and Charles Macintosh (1766-1845) a chemist dissolved natural rubber in naphtha obtained by the fractional distillation of coal tar. They, then dipped ordinary cloth in this rubber solution to produce waterproof cloth for making coats. This waterproof coat came to be known as Mackintosh . 

Early uses of rubber mostly involved the weather-proofing of fabric or leather. This must have been frustrating, since these coatings melted in hot sunlight. Charles Macintosh was a Scottish chemist who found that by combining rubber with naphtha, he got a more stable compound that would not melt if it got warm. Clothing made from fabric coated with this compound was called a Macintosh. 

Natural rubber is isolated from a white fluid, called latex, that exudes from cuts in the bark of Hevea brasiliensis, the South American rubber tree. Many other plants secrete this polymer, as well. The name rubber was first used by Joseph Priestly, who used the crude material to rub out errors in his pencil writing. Natural rubber is soft and sticky. An enterprising Scotsman named Charles Macintosh found that rubber makes a good waterproof coating for raincoats. Natural rubber is not strong or elastic, however, so its uses were limited to waterproofing cloth and other strong materials. 

POLYMER MILESTONES—THOMAS HANCOCK CHARLES MACINTOSH... 

Charles Macintosh patents a method for making waterproof garments... 

In 1823 Scottish chemist and inventor Charles Macintosh (1766-1843) began to manufacture double-textured rainproof garments known as mackintoshes. He made these by introducing a coal tar naphtha solution of rubber between two pieces of fabric, thus circumventing the sticky (when warm) and brittle (when cold) surfeces associated with single-textured rubber-containing garments. 

Natural rubber is a polymer of 2-methyl-l,3-butadiene (isoprene Section 26.6). On average, a molecule of mbber contains 5000 isoprene units. All the double bonds in natural rubber are cis. Rubber is a waterproof material because it consists of a tangle of hydrocarbon chains that have no affinity for water. Charles Macintosh, a Scotsman, was the first to use mbber as a waterproof coating for raincoats. 

An amusing true-life story about the rise and fall of a man named Charles Mackintosh, from Glasgow, Scotland, illustrates the problem. The clever fellow decided to use rubber in the production of raincoats. A thin layer of rubber was placed between two layers of fabric. It worked out very nicely, and the raincoats (called macintoshes) became very popular in the notoriously wet Britain. Mackintosh rapidly became rich, shortly after he started his business in the winter of 1820. However, when summer came along, the temperature rose, and all the rubber flowed out of the macintoshes. The poor inventor went bankrupt, and the whole idea of padding coats with rubber was abandoned for many years. 

Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh (1766-1843) makes ebonite (from... 

Parkes was bom in 1813 and was apprenticed as a brass-founder. He became active in the youthful rubber industry and in 1843 patented a waterproof fabric, a patent he sold later to Charles Macintosh. The waterproofing of fabrics was naturally a major earfy use of natural rubber, which was obtained at the time from trees in the South American jungle. The unpleasant tackiness of the early products was eliminated with the discovery by Goodyear and Hancock in the 1840s of the vulcanizing effect of sulfur. At first the sulfur was merely dusted on the surface, but this was soon to be followed by mechanical mixing of rubber and sulfur. The interest of Parkes in the infant rubber and plastics industry is symbolic of the scientific and industrial relationship which has always existed between them. 

Use of Solvent-based adhesives in seaming stems from the pioneering work of Charles Macintosh in the last century seam bonding with rubber solutions was a method used in the original waterproof coats carrying his name. Developments of the rubber-bonded seams are used in the manufacture of items such as life jackets and life rafts. The following (in cross-linked form) are commonly used Natural rubber-based adhesives, Poiychioroprene rubber adhesives, Poiyurethane and butyl rubber. 

Thomas Hancock built a factory for producing rubber articles in 1820 and Charles Macintosh obtained waterproof fabric by making a rubber-cloth sandwich in 1823. It is of interest to note that John Jacob BerzeUus coined the word polymer in 1833 just seven years after Michael Faraday had shown rubber to have the composition of CgHg and six years before the discovery of the vulcanization process by Charles Goodyear. Berzelius also coined the terms isomer, catalyst and protein (4) and synthesized glycerly tartrate polyester resins (5). 

While there were few other noteworthy scientific developments during the life of Charles Goodyear, other inventors used the vulcanization process for the production of useful end products, such as pneumatic tires. A Scottish chemist, named Charles Macintosh, produced waterproof coats lay placing a solution of natural rubber in naphtha, between two pieces of fabric. The garment still bears his name. 

Charles, like many other inventors of that time, was familiar with the effect of temperature on waterproof textiles, such as the Macintosh rain coat and hoped to... 

Neither the idea nor the practice of producing oil from coal is new. As early as 1819, Charles Macintosh distilled naphtha from coal for the purpose of waterproofing textiles. However, the major breakthroughs in coal liquefaction did not occur until the period between the early 1900 s, when the two processes long used as the starting points for producing oil from coal—the Bergius and Fischer-Tropsch methods— were developed. 

Nature created the first polymers and, through chemical evolution, such complex and important macromolecules as proteins, DNA, and polysaccharides. These were pivotal in the development of increasingly multifaceted life-forms, including Homo sapiens, who, as this species evolved, made better and better use of such polymeric materials as pitch, woolen and linen fabrics, and leather. Pre-Columbian Native Americans used natural rubber, or cachucha, to waterproof fabrics, as did Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh in nineteenth century Britain. 

Waterproof fabric is used in raincoats (Charles Macintosh) Macintosh patents a waterproof fabric consisting of soluble rubber between two pieces of cloth. Raincoats made of the fabric are still often called mackintoshes (macs), especially in England. 

In 1768 Macquer investigated the solubility of india rubber in ether, and showed that it was precipitated from the solution by water. According to Murray, Cavallo first showed that the ether must be washed with water before it will dissolve rubber, Grossart having found that ordinary ether does not dissolve it. Coal-tar naphtha was used as a solvent for rubber by J. S)rme, and the solution was used for making waterproof fabrics ( macintoshes ) by Charles Macintosh in 1823 (Brit. Pat. 4804/1823). ... 

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