October ], 1913] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



Eighth International Congress of Applied Chemistry. 



THE Eighth International Congress of Applied Chemistry was 

 held in New York from September 6 to 13th, under the 

 presidency of William H. Nichols, Sc. D., LL. D. In 

 the course of the proceedings, which took place in the Great Hall 

 of the College of the City of New York, six lectures of general 

 character were delivered by the following leaders of chemical 

 thought from various countries : 



England, Professor Perkin ; Germany, Professor Bernthsen, 

 Professor Duisberg; Italy, Professor Ciamician; France, Pro- 

 fessor Bertrand ; Norway, Professor Hyde. 



The meetings of the 24 sections, into which the Congress was 

 divided, were held at Columbia University. In the section de- 

 voted to rubber the following ten papers were read : 



L. H. Baekeland, New Y'ork. "On Condensation Products of 

 Phenols and Formaldehyde." 



Paul Bary, Paris, "Application of Osmosis to the Deresination 

 and the Reclaiming of Rubber." 



C. Beadle and Henry P. Stevens, London, "Investigation into 

 the Nature and Properties of licz-ca Latex." 



C. R. Boggs, Boston, "A Direct Determination of Rubber Ap- 

 plicable to Specifications on Vulcanized Rubber." 



J. G. Fol. Delft, "On the Relationship Between the Amount of 

 Resins and the Viscosity of Rubber Solutions." 



Eduard Marckwald, Berlin, "Treatment of Rubber." 



Clement and Riviere, Paris, "Researches on Cellulose Acetate." 



B. Setlik and J. Zofka, Prague, "Analysis and Tests of Rubber- 

 Coated Fabrics." 



Lothar E. Weber, Boston, "The Action of Resins in the Vul- 

 canizing of Rubber." 



G. Stafford Whitby, "On Some Preliminary Observations Re- 

 garding the Causes of Natural Change in the Latex of Hevca 

 BrasUiensis, and on the Depolymerization of Caoutchouc and its 

 Conversion." 



In the section for Coal-Tar Industry the following paper was 

 presented : 



W. H. Perkin, Manchester, "A Study of Syntheses in the Ter- 

 pene Group." 



THE SYNTHESIS OF RUBBER. 



AN INTERVIEW WITH DR. DITISBERG. MANAGING DIRECTOR OF THE 

 BAYER COLOR WORKS, ELBERFELD, GERMANY. 



rpOLLOWING the notable lecture delivered by the famous 

 ■'■ German chemist, Dr. Duisberg, at the Congress of Applied 

 Chemistry, he courteously accorded an interview to a repre- 

 sentative of The Indi.\ Rubber World, in which he expressed 

 himself further regarding the highly successful results achieved 

 in the celebrated works at Elberfeld over which he presides, in 

 the solution of synthetic rubber. 



"In presenting the case relative to synthetic rujiber, we should 

 not overlook the fact that William Tilden was the true dis- 

 coverer of the new product, for he observed its presence in a 

 bottle in his laboratory in 1892. This you will note was about 

 ten years after he had completed his experiments. Unfortu- 

 nately he omitted to note the exact physical and chemical con- 

 ditions under which the synthetic rubber was formed, and was 

 therefore unable to duplicate his experiments. At all events 

 his method was not a commercial one. 



"The results published by Dr. Fritz Hofmann, of Elberfeld, 

 state the exact conditions under which the new material may 

 be prepared. He made observations as to the time and temper- 



ature required, and the concentration of the solutions needed 

 for its proper preparation. Thus he was the first to describe 

 a new and useful process for the preparation of synthetic rubber, 

 and must therefore be regarded as the inventor of this process. 

 In proof of his contention that his process is new and useful 

 and technically possible, he has had rubber goods manufactured 

 from the new material, and has applied tests to determine its 

 commercial value. 



"The production of synthetic rubber is one of the greatest 

 successes, and yet it was one of the most difficult problems of 

 the chemical industry. I am proud of the fact that its produc- 

 tion was successfully accomplished in the works at Elberfeld, 

 and that I was able to follow every stage of this important 

 discovery. Perhaps you would be interested to hear how the 

 whole thing happened, especially as much that is misleading has 

 appeared in the press. 



"Caoutchouc made from the milky sap of numerous species of 

 trees and shrubs and the grotesquely formed lianas by various 

 coagulation processes, on being suitably treated with sulphur or 

 sulphur compounds, t. e., by vulcanization, acquires its valuable 

 and characteristic properties. The synthetic method took quite 

 a different route. The very complex molecule which rubber 

 doubtless possesses was broken up by heat, t. e., by dry distilla- 

 tion, into a maze of all kinds of gases, oils and resins. A color- 

 less fluid resembling benzine, to which the investigators gave the 

 name "Isoprene," was also obtained. Bouchardat, in France, 

 first expressed the belief that this isoprene, obtained in very 

 small quantities, and in an impure form by the dry distillation 

 of caoutchouc, might be closely and intimately related to caout- 

 chouc itself. As far back as the eighties, the Englishman Tilden 

 claimed to have prepared artificial rubber from isoprene by 

 treatment with hydrochloric acid. Tilden, though he worked 

 strenuously for years, did not succeed in repeating the experi- 

 ments. Other investigators were likewise unable to confirm the 

 results. Dr. Fritz Hofmann, of Elberfeld, in 1909 succeeded 

 in polymerizing the isoprene molecules into the complex rubber 

 molecule. Somewhat later Harries* discovered independently 

 another method of arriving at the same result. Everyone is now 

 in a position to repeat this exceedingly simple experiment him- 

 self, but in order to obtain Hofmann's results, it is necessary 

 to employ pure isoprene. 



"The practical value of this rubber, of which many samples 

 have been made, has been tested by the highest authorities in this 

 branch of the industry, whilst Harries, whose labors extending 

 over many years, prepared the soil for Hofmann's synthesis, has 

 carefully examined the chemical constitution of the substance. 



"The matter appears very simple, intelligible and clear, but 

 the difficulties which have been overcome were great indeed, 

 and those which still remain to be surmounted, in order to pro- 

 duce a substance equal to Para rubber in quality and capable of 

 competing w^ith cheap plantation rubber costing only 25 cents per 

 lb., are still greater. The end in view is this : that artificial rub- 

 ber may soon play as important a role in the markets of the 

 w-orld as does natural rubber. 



"I have employed articles made of synthetic rubber, and for 

 some time have used automobile tires made of this material. 

 Y'et, if you ask me to answer you honestly and truly when 

 synthetic rubber will bring the millions which prophets see in 

 its exploitation, I must reply that / do not know. Surely not in 

 the immediate future, although synthetic rubber will certainly 

 appear on the market in a very short time." 



•Sec article on Synthetic Rubber in Germany, on page 11 of this issue. 



