1920.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



337 



Reg. United States Pat. Off Reg. United Kinnrdom. 



Published on the Ist of each month by 



THE INDIA RUBBER PUBLISHING CO. 



No. 25 West 45th Street, New York. 



Telephone— Bi^ant 2576. 

 CABLE ADDRESS: IRWORLD. NEW YORK. 



HENRY C. PEARSON, F.R.G.S., Editor 



Vol.61. 



MARCH 1. 1920. 



No. 6 



SuEscaiPTiON: $3.00 per year, $1.75 for six months, postpaid, for the 

 United States and dependencies and Mexico. To the Dominion 

 of Canada and all other countries, $3.50 (or equivalent funds) 

 ptr year, postpaid. 



Advlriising: 



applK 



Rbmitiances: Should always be made by bank draft. Post OfTicc or 

 Express money order on New York, payable to The India Rubber 

 Publishing Company. Remitiances for foreign subscriptions should 

 be sent by Inteinational Postal Order, payable as above. 



Discontinuances: \*-av\y orders for subscriptions and advertisine are 

 regaidcd as permanent, and after the first twelve months they will 

 be discontinued only at the request of the subscriber or advertiser. 

 Bills are rendered promptly at the beginning of each period, and 

 thereby our patrons have due notice of continuance. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS ON LAST PAGE OF READING. 



GOODYEAR AND THE HALL OF FAME. 



CHARLES Goodyear discovered, invented, created vul- 

 canized rubber. Thus simply stated, the fact seems 

 very commonplace and of no paramount importance. 

 It does not seem comparable with the work of Whitney 

 and the Cotton Gin, Fulton and the Steamboat, Morse 

 and the Telegraph, and others of the Immortals. Yet 

 his accomplishment as far as originality goes far tran- 

 ^ scends them all. Not that it is intended to minimize the 

 ^' genius of the others or to decry the value of their work. 

 ■^ But the case stands thus : Fulton applied an existing 

 well-known principle successfully ; Whitney made a ma- 

 - chine do what had formerly been done by hand ; Morse 

 »5 interpreted and applied known physical laws in electrical 

 ^ transmission. Goodyear on the other hand had no pre- 

 pared basic knowledge from which to start : no text 

 books contained a line of value ; scientists and practical 

 men could offer no assistance. Indeed, the thought that 

 india rubber could be "changed" was to them the height 

 of absurdity. Yet after thousands of experiments, cov- 

 ering years of time, he transferred a sticky, unreliable 

 vegetable resin into a semi-metal that is to-day one of 



the world's most useful products. No other single human 

 invention approaches it in strangeness. The transmu- 

 tation of lead into gold would alone eciual it in apparent 

 impossibility. 



i'Voiii his discovery in the early 'forties has sprung 

 an industry that is world-wide in scope. The production 

 of the gum has given work to hundreds of thousands of 

 natives in South America, Africa and Southern India. 

 It has done more to clear up tropical jungles and to bring 

 civilization and sanitation to the hot countries than has 

 any other one industry. The hundreds of factories in 

 the temperate zone, the millions of workmen and the 

 billions of wealth thus created are in themselves a potent 

 witness to the value of the Goodyear discovery. 



Fortunately for individual manufacturers but unfortu- 

 nately as far as general knowledge goes, vulcanization 

 instead of founding one industry, produced nearly a 

 score, all based solely upon vulcanization, but aside from 

 that having little in common. To cite two examples, 

 rubber footwear and insulated wire. They vary widely 

 in machinery, processes, compounds, and markets. Man- 

 ufacturers of the one commodity may not know that the 

 other e.\-ists. And so it is with the rest of the lines of 

 rubber manufacture. 



To catalog even the varied products of vulcanized 

 rubber would be an enormous task. Suffice it to say 

 that it is a necessary .factor in every industry, touches 

 every profession and indeed every individual. 



Hence it is wise and right that the request of Colonel 

 Colt published elsewhere in these columns be endorsed 

 by everyone in the rubber trade, and by every American. 

 Charles Goodyear's name certainly belongs in the Hall 

 of Fame. 



AS TO PNEUMATICS FOR TRUCKS. 



" A "-'TOMOTivE L\DU.STRiEs" sounded a timely note of 



i~\ warning recently in an article entitled "Pneumatic 

 Figures Needed," thus : 



There is great need for authentic figures on pneumatic 

 truck tire costs in different services. The claims made 

 by different manufacturers vary widely. This is natural 

 when it is considered that the figures are compiled from 

 services operating under widely varying circumstances. 

 The time has come, however, when definite conclusions 

 should be drawn. 



One manufacturer claims that on a ton-mile basis, the 

 pneumatic will save 25 per cent on gasoline, 32 per cent 

 on oil and 70 per cent on repairs. These figures were 

 deduced from observations of trucks in service in Texas. 

 It would be interesting to know how this checks with 

 experiences in other parts of the country and some more 

 or less concerted effort for getting down to hard facts 

 on the pneumatic tire will be necessary before we have 

 a clearly estalilished idea of where they pay and where 

 their serviceability is problematical. 



It is very doubtful if the size of the truck has much 

 to do with the matter, although there is doubtless a limit 

 of truck size for which pneumatics are desirable. It is 

 felt by many truck makers that the 1 to IJ/^-ton size 

 should be practically universally equipped with pneu- 

 matics, and the 3j/2-ton size and over, rarely, if ever. It 



