Rubber, history

Rubber is one of the few examples where chemical synthesis succeeded in a nearly identical performance copy of a natural polymer (polyisoprene) - albeit with a completely different chemical composition (styrene-butadiene-rubber, SBR). Regarding sustainable development, the complete imbalance of the early rubber history has emanated during recent years into equilibrium between natural and synthetic rubber. 

A detailed discussion of the history structure and applications of natural rubber appears in the May 1990 issue of the Journal of Chemical Education... 

Table 3. Worldwide Nitrile Rubber Production History ...

SCHIDROWIT2, p. and DAWSON, T. R., History of the Rubber Industry. The Institution of the Rubber Industry, London (1952)... 

For more on the development history of polyurethanes at I. G. Farben and elsewhere, see (a) O. Bayer, Angew. Chem, A59, 275 (1947) (b) O. Bayer, E. Mueller, S. Peterson, H. Piepenbrink and E. Windemuth, Angew. Chem, 62, 57 (1950) (c) O. Bayer, E. Mueller, S. Peterson, H. Piepenbrink, andE. Windemuth, Rubber Chem. Technol., 23, 812 (1950) (d) Urethanes Technology, Vol. 4, March and June issues (1987), Crain Communications, London (e) K. C. Frisch, Historical Developments of Polyurethanes, in 60 Years of Polyurethanes, International Symposium and Exhibition, January 15-16, 1998, Technomic Publishing, Lancaster, PA, 1998. 

Rubber elasticity has a long-standing history. Ancient Mesoamerican people were processing rubber by 1600 BC [1], which predated development of the vulcanization process by 3500 years. They made solid rubber balls, sofid and hollow rubber human figurines, wide rubber bands to haft stone ax heads to wooden handles, and other items. 

Stem, J., in History in Rubber Technology and Manufacture, C.M. Blow, Ed., Newnes-Butterworths, London, 1977, p. 18. 

The first alkene polymer to be used in society was polyisoprene, a natural product extracted from the sap of rubber trees. See our Box for a description of the history of rubber. The monomer from which this polymer is constructed... 

The rubber industry has a long and colorful history. Natural rubber is produced from latex, a milky fluid found in cells that lie between the bark and the wood of many plants. You may have seen latex flow from the broken stalks of milkweed plants, but the source of commercial rubber is the Hevea tree, a native of Brazil. When the bark of this tree is slashed, its milky white sap oozes out and can be collected in cups mounted on the tree s trunk. The people of the Amazon jungle made bouncing balls, shoes, and water Jars out of rubber, and Portuguese explorers sent waterproof boots and a rubber-coated coat back to their king. The first commercial exports included some rubber shoes shipped to Boston in 1823. 

Even as Carothers was explaining the fundamental nature of large biological molecules, he orchestrated a miraculous two weeks in the history of industrial research. During April 1930, he and his team invented not only Neoprene, the first high-grade synthetic rubber, but also polyester, the first synthetic fiber that closely resembled silk. It was a dazzling accomplishment that can still make industrial chemists starry-eyed. 

Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and Isabelle Stengers. A History of Chemistry. Translated by Deborah van Dam. Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 1996. Source for synthetic rubber and neoprene early plastics and Carothers strategy. 

Here we describe the strain history with the Finger strain tensor C 1(t t ) as proposed by Lodge [55] in his rubber-like liquid theory. This equation was found to describe the stress in deforming polymer melts as long as the strains are small (second strain invariant below about 3 [56] ). The permanent contribution GcC 1 (r t0) has to be added for a linear viscoelastic solid only. C 1(t t0) is the strain between the stress free state t0 and the instantaneous state t. Other strain measures or a combination of strain tensors, as discussed in detail by Larson [57], might also be appropriate and will be considered in future studies. A combination of Finger C 1(t t ) and Cauchy C(t /. ) strain tensors is known to express the finite second normal stress difference in shear, for instance. 

Indicates the ability of an unvulcanised rubber compound to accept the heat history required in processing without risk of scorching. 

Undesired premature vulcanisation of a rubber compound during the processing operations of mixing, extruding or calendering. See Heat History. 

---