April 1, 1912.; 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



337 



SOME RUBBER THAT STUMPED THE EMPEROR. 



EVERYBODY at all familiar with the history of the rubber 

 industry will remember the great furor created in the 

 World's Fairs held in the "fifties" in London and Paris by 

 Charles Goodyear's rubber exhibit. If anything, the Parisians 

 were more excited over it than the English were. A great many 

 stories showing the absorbing interest taken in Goodyear and 

 his wonderful rubber display have been preserved in the litera- 

 ture of this industry, but here is a new one that appears in a 

 book entitled "Memoirs of Many Men," written by Maunsell B. 

 Field, who was the United States Commissioner at the World's 

 Fair in Paris held in 1855, which shows that the Emperor Louis 

 Napoleon, while greatly attracted by what Goodyear had to show, 

 was a little confused in his deductions because of the military 

 tinge which his thoughts naturally took. He saw a pile of large 

 rubber balls and immediately concluded that they must be cannon 

 balls ; but here is the way Mr. Field tells the story : 



"The Emperor approached me and remarked that he had that 

 afternoon walked through our department of the exposition — 

 this was just before it was open to the public — that he had seen 

 many things there which interested him, but that nothing had so 

 much pleased him as the exhibition of vulcanized india rubber. 

 Among the articles he had noticed something which had puzzled 

 him ever since. He very much regretted that I was not present 

 at the time of his visit. 



"Here I interrupted him to say that I very much regretted it 

 myself and that if he had sent me an intimation of his purpose 

 I should have been certain to attend. 



" 'Well,' he answered, 'in one corner I saw, stacked as one 

 sees them in an artillery yard, a pile of vulcanized india-rubber 

 cannon balls. There was nobody there to answer the inquiries 

 which I desired to make. Perhaps you can explain the matter 

 to me.' 

 "I had not even seen the balls in question and had to say so. 

 " T cannot imagine,' resumed his majesty, 'how any prepara- 

 tion of india rubber can be used for projectiles. It has often 

 occurred to me that, in combination with other materials, it might 

 be made useful for defensive purposes.' 



"I was compelled to admit that it was equally mysterious to 

 me how the inventor could have thought seriously of making 

 cannon balls of it. After so unsatisfactory an interview the 

 Emperor probably did not think that it would be civil to leave 

 me immediately, so he asked me if I took much interest in 

 military matters. I answered that I did not any more than 

 civilians usually do. 



"I was at that time residing very near the Palace of Industry. 

 The next morning I went over before breakfast for the purpose 

 of getting information upon the subject which had so puzzled 

 the Emperor. I went directly to the india-rubber exhibit and 

 sure enough, I found the balls there just as they had been de- 

 scribed to me. It was too early for me to expect to see the man 

 in charge, but there was a person in his place. I asked what in 

 the world he expected to do with india rubber cannon balls. 



" 'They are not cannon balls,' he answered ; 'they are foot- 

 balls!'" 



But after all the Emperor was not so far out of the way, be- 

 cause the experiences of the last few years in our great cultural 

 sport shows that the football is quite as much an instrument of 

 carnage as the cannon ball. 



AKTIEN-GESELLSCHAFT METZELER & CO., MUNICH. 



Metzeler & Co., of Munich, in their annual statement, in place 

 of the profit equaling $138,885, made in 1910, report a loss for 

 1911 equal to $185,000. Of this amount 85 per cent, is covered 

 by the reserve fund of the company. The loss is chiefly ascribed 

 to the large stocks of raw material held, and to the reductions in 



prices of manufactured products. It is stated that orders repre- 

 senting $1,000,000 have, however, been booked for this year. 



ADVANCE IN PKICES OF GERMAN KTTBBER STAMPS. 



The Association of German Stamp Manufacturers has made 

 an advance of 10 per cent, in the prices of rubber and other 

 stamps. As stamp makers are under the provisions of the Ger- 

 man Book Printers' wage scale, they consequently benefit by the 

 10 per cent, increase, which went into effect with the prniters 

 on January 1, 1912. 



WHAT CONSTITUTES AN EXPLOSION! 



Owing to certain differences in expert opinions as to what 

 really constitutes an explosion, the Association of German En- 

 gineers has recently come to an understanding on that point 

 with the German fire insurance companies. An explosion is 

 defined to be "a sudden expression of force, resulting from the 

 expansive effort of gases and vapors, it being indifferent 

 whether the gases or vapors were present before the explosion, 

 or were only formed in the course of the same." Under the 

 term "explosions" are included those arising from explosives, 

 from mixtures of gases, dust, evaporation of fluids and the ex- 

 panding force of gases and vapors. Disturbances caused by the 

 centrifugal force of rotating bodies or the tension of materials 

 are excluded. 



LIGA GUMMIWERKE, KEINRICH PETER & CO., FRANKFURT a. M. 



Further particulars received from the new Liga Rubber Works 

 rectify and supplement the provisional details quoted in the 

 October, 1911, issue of The Indi.\ Rubber World. 



The company is under the management of Mr. Theodor Heiges 

 and Mr. Heinrich Peter, the former, who was previously manag- 

 ing director of the Louis Peter Co., having assumed the com- 

 mercial management of the Liga company; while the latter, who 

 had been for ten years works manager of the Louis Peter Co., 

 has undertaken the management of the new works. Mr. Louis 

 Peter, Jr., and Mr. Frederich Peter (both previously connected 

 with the Louis Peter Co.) are likewise interested in the new 

 company, the specialties of which are cycle and commercial motor 

 tires, heel pads and rickshaw pneumatics. Capital has been in- 

 creased from $37,500 to $90,000. 



TAMPING PAVING BLOCKS BY AIK. 



A German inventor has devised an apparatus for tamping 

 paving blocks with compressed air. The compressed air is sup- 

 plied by a portable plant shown in the illustration reproduced 



Pneu-m.\tic Tamper for Paving Blocks. 



from "Popular Mechanics." A number of leads of hose and tam- 

 pers may be used simultaneously. The tamper has a rod run- 

 ning through its centre, which rests upon the block, and which 

 is worked up and down by the pneumatic mechanism. 



