July 1, 1912.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



489 



The India-Rubber Trade in Great Britain. 



By Our Regular Correspondent. 



SYNTHETIC 

 RUBBER. 



AS pointed out more tlian once in The India Rubber World 

 editorial columns, synthetic rubber is now an established 

 fact, though not exactly a commercial article. It is, 

 however, recognized by those chemists who are w-orking on the 

 subject, that it will never do to depend upon turpentine as the 

 raw product of the isoprene which is 

 to be polymerized into rubber. There 

 seems to be a general agreement that 

 the raw material for the rubber manufacture of the future will 

 be a carbohydrate, most probably starch, as this can be ob- 

 tained from plants which can be grown cheaply almost anywhere. 

 From inside information I have obtained, the problem of the 

 moment is to find the particular ferment which will convert the 

 starch into iso-amyl alcohol, which by a known chemical reaction 

 can be converted into isoprene. The task of finding this fer- 

 ment has proved a somewhat formidable one, but the chemists 

 engaged say that ultimate success is only a matter of time, 

 though at the moment they confess that there is no progress 

 to report. 



Whether there is anything or not in the Russian process 

 which has been well reported in the press, it hardly seems 

 likely that any one patentee or financial group will monopolize 

 the profits of the future, as several patents have been granted 

 both in England and Germany for somewhat similar chemical 

 processes. Although the task of producing synthetic rubber 

 is now in reputable hands, the energies of the quack operator 

 show no diminution. Perpetual efforts, something on the lines 

 of the evergreen Spanish treasure swindle, are being made to in- 

 veigle the ignorant capitalist into subscribing funds to finance 

 the process prior to its sale for a fabulous sum. The details 

 of a quite recent case are in my possession, but although they 

 would make intresting copy, I don't know that I should be 

 justified in giving publicity to them. 



In a recent case in a provincial law court it was stated by counsel, 

 and evidently acquiesced in by the judge, that there were no secrets 

 now-a-days in the rubber manufacture, 

 and that there was nothing under- 

 hand in a firm trying to get workmen 

 from another firm carrying on the same branches of the manu- 

 facture. From what I have gathered in conversation with manu- 

 facturers on the subject the above view is not generally held. 

 It is agreed certainly that in a general sense the various processes 

 of vulcanizing are common property, but the exact details with 

 regard to particular goods are not to be found fully described 

 in technical literature, and that this being so they can fairly 

 claim to come in the category of trade secrets. Counsel in the 

 case under notice said that since the taking out of Parke's patent 

 in 1846 the cold cure process was well known to everyone in 

 the trade, but he omitted to say that the process as applied 

 has important factors of proportions and times, according to the 

 nature of the rubber to which it is applied. It is a safe supposi- 

 tion that all these details are not known to every manager of a 

 mechanical rubber goods factory, and that many of such man- 

 agers would require the assistance of men famiHar with the 

 work, if they were suddenly called upon to produce certain 

 qualities of cold cured goods. 



Without giving particular instances I can call to mind many 

 firms which make a specialty of certain, classes of rubber goods, 

 and the main reason why their supremacy remains unchallenged 

 is that would-be competitors lack knowledge of the essential 

 details of the manufacture. It is the attention to detail which 

 counts for so much in the rubber trade, and until a book full 



SECRETS IN THE 

 RUBBER TRADE. 



of detail is written by a man thoroughly conversant with his 

 subject, it will be correct to say tliat trade secrets abound. With 

 regard to the migration of workmen from one factory to an- 

 other, this has, of course, always occurred, but employers usually 

 guard against too much information being taken away, by mak- 

 ing it a rule for men not to frequent departments other than 

 those in which they are normally employed, an injunction, in- 

 deed, which generally applies to foremen and under-managers 

 also. 



"The Chemistry of the Rubber Industry," is the title of 



the volume written by Mr. H. E. Potts, in Messrs. Constables' 



series "Outlines of Industrial Chem- 



A NEW BOOK J5^ ., jj ^j^3 already been reviewed 



ON RtTBBER. , ■^, ,. , ,rr^'-, s i 



by the editor (p. 450, June issue), but 

 in accordance with custom I propose to say a word or two in 

 this correspondence. A good deal of original work on rubber 

 chemistry has been published in various journals in the past 

 few years, and Mr. Potts has done good service in compressing 

 the pith of this into his book, while giving the original refer- 

 ences which those who have the time and inclination to do so- 

 can look up for themselves. In some ways the book might be 

 called a small new edition of Weber, an author frequently re- 

 ferred to, and whom we find praised on one page and chided 

 on another. Of course a good deal of what has been published 

 by this or that author in recent years has been in the main a 

 refutation of what had previously been announced authorita- 

 tively by another author; and seeing the complexities of the 

 subject this roll of things seems likely to go on. The salient 

 points of the chemistry of colloids are referred to in Chapter I, 

 and though a good many purchasers of the book will probably 

 skip this chapter, and pay more attention to its successors, this 

 is of course no argument against the propriety of its inclusion. 

 The fact that certain published methods of rubber analysis, 

 which were once accepted as gospel, have since been shown to 

 be utterly unreliable, does not seem to be known to all chemists 

 who are connected more or less with rubber analysis; and I 

 know of quite erroneous results being obtained by those who 

 continue to use methods now proved to be quite fallacious. 

 To such chemists Mr. Potts' book is a necessity, though I may 

 say that there are many important details, with regard to the 

 analysis of rubber goods, either not mentioned at all or only 

 in a: very casual manner. 



It is interesting to see that he is not a convert to any of the 

 various direct methods of estimating the amount of rubber, 

 but is rather in favor of the simple and time-honored method 

 of taking it by difference. The estimation of substitute by weigh- 

 ing the fatty acids instead of making a calculation from the 

 loss ii) weight of the rubber after saponification is rightly ad- 

 vised, though with regard to this I see that it has recently- 

 been decided in Germany that the saponification method is quite 

 unreliable. It depends on the amount of substitute present. In 

 a single texture waterproof cloak containing 35 to -10 per cent, 

 the determination can be made w-ith sulficient accuracy, but if 

 it comes to swearing to 2 per cent, in a cable insulation con- 

 taining paraffin wax — well, the job should not be taken on by 

 a novice. The amount of space devoted to the estimation of 

 sulphur is quite justified, as it is recognized that the inherent 

 difficulties are much greater than was formerly supposed. In 

 the course of a brief resume of the chemistry of reclaiming, the 

 -author rightly deprecates the too common use of the expression 

 "devulcanized" in the case of products which have only had 

 their free sulphur removed, and which in fact always contain 



