March 1, 1920] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



371 



CONDAMINE, THE POPULARIST OF IND'A RUBBER. 



f Tow INDIA RUBBER was made known to Europe by Charles 

 •^ * ^larie de La Condamine, of the Academy of Sciences, and 

 later of the French Academy is told very entertainingly by 

 Andre Dubosc in his "Histoire dii Caoutchouc." La Condamine 

 was a typical product of the eighteenth century ; a thorough 

 Parisian, born of a commercial family that had been ennobled 

 because it was in the Government employ. He left school at 

 seventeen to enlist in the army, where he distinguished himself 

 by foolhardy valor, but when peace came he threw up his com- 

 mission and became a literary man about town. He showed the 

 hereditary business sense and ability to push his way socially; 

 he frequented the salons of literary ladies, could work off clever 

 verse, and was interested in 

 all scientific novelties. He 

 dabbled in chemistry, in 

 mathematics and in astron- 

 omy; he was a fiiend of 

 Voltaire, and of most of the 

 prominent literary French- 

 men of his time. He lived 

 this life of fashion until he 

 was thirty-four, and indulged 

 in an adventurous journey to 

 the Orient, spending a year in 

 Constantinople. 



A scientific quarrel as to 

 whether the earth was fiat or 

 projected at the poles, resulted 

 in two French expeditions 

 setting out to measure the de- 

 grees of longitude, one to 

 Lapland, the other to some 

 place near the equator. La 

 Condamine joined the latter 

 e.xpedition, which picked out 

 Ecuador, then a portion of 

 Peru, as the scene of its ac- 

 tivity. The men in charge 

 kept quarrelling, and La 

 Condamine left the others at 



Playa del Oro to make his way to Quito alone. He had a 

 hard time on his journey along the Andes and reached his 

 destination a month after the rest of the expedition ; but he 

 was a good botanist and he kept his eyes open, and on reaching 

 Quito the first thing he did was to send to the Academy of 

 Sciences "some rolls of a blackish, resinous material" which he 

 had gathered in the forests; namely, caoutchouc. This was in 

 1736. The expedition stayed on for several years measuring 

 the meridian, constantly quarrelling among themselves and being 

 interfered with by the Spanish Viceroy. 



La Condamine in writing home explained that this liquid 

 flowed out of a tree, Hevc, after a single incision, milk-white and 

 gradually hardening and blackening in the air. The natives 

 made torches of it; they spread the liquid on cloth and used it 

 as we use waxed cloth. Along the Amazon the Indians made 

 boots of it which kept out the water ; they put it around molds 

 shaped like bottles, and when the gum had hardened they broke 

 the mold, producing a light, unbreakable bottle that would hold 

 any liquid. He set to work himself and made waterproof cloths, 

 and also a splendid rubber case for his quadrant. He noted too, 

 that the natives made small bottles of the rubber which they 

 filled with hot water and used as syringes ; they in consequence, 

 called the tree, seringueira. 



By September, 1742, after he had made important discoveries 

 in physics and mathematics, he decided that his work was done 

 and that he would make his way down the .Amazon to the 



"Histoire (ill Caoutchcu 



Ch.arles de La Condamine. 



I'rcnch settlement at Cayenne, a journey of 2,000 miles in nearly 

 unexplored regions. He made the journey alone, with only 

 native attendants and reached Guiana in May, 1743. On his trip 

 he had plenty of opportunities of examining the manner in which 

 the rubber grew and the natives utilized the rubber. As France 

 was at war with England he was obliged to wait two years at 

 Cayenne before returning home, but he reached La Rochelle at 

 last on March 7, 1745. He returned to his literan^ pursuits and 

 told in the salons the story of his adventures and the wonderful 

 qualities of the rubber which he had found, specimens of which 

 he exhibited. Paris of the eighteenth century, however, did not 

 take the discovery any more seriously than it did the beginnings 

 of modern science, and it was reserved to Hancock and Good- 

 year in the following century to break the way for the modem 

 uses of rubber. 



In the five years following 

 his return La Condamine 

 wrote six big volumes, and, 

 despite his social activities 

 and his literary quarrels, kept 

 up his interest in rubber. His 

 friend Fresneau found the 

 rubber tree in Guiana and 

 wrote to him the description 

 of the native method of gath- 

 ering it, smoking it and using 

 it. He and the French chem- 

 ists who examined the new 

 substance reached conclusions 

 that are startlingly similar in 

 many points to those reached 

 by modern rubber chemists. 

 Fresneau, for instance, 

 thought it was a kind of con- 

 densed resinous oil ; the name 

 now used is polyterpene. To 

 prevent it from sticking he 

 used Spanish white, ashes or 

 dust. 



La Condamine induced 

 other explorers to search for 

 rubber and learned before he 

 died in 1775 that it had been found in the Isle de France and 

 in Madagascar. Nevertheless, the only practical commercial 

 use found for the caoutchouc in that century was as an eraser 

 of pencil marks, which led to Priestley's christening it by the 

 name it has retained in English, "india rubber.'' 



NEW INCORPORATIONS. 



Accurate Cover Co., Inc., February 5, 1920 (New " 

 and p. Coen, G. C. Woolf— all of 373 Canal street, 

 deal in rubberized fabrics, etc. 



Associated Tire Corp. 



H. L. Michaels, H. C. Cashman. 



Boston, Massachussetts. Principal office. Bosti 

 sell, exchange, repair and dispose of rubber, fabri 



Bell 



The, December 15, 1919 (Massachusetts), $60,000. 



"*• "' Hartstone — all of 40 Court street, 



Massachusetts. To buy, 



re & Rubber Co.. Inc., January 28, 1920 (Virginia), $50,000. 

 R. J. Bell, president; A. R. Hall, vice-president: H. W. Powerl, secreUry; 

 T. Bell, treasurer. Principal office, Richmond, Virginia. To deal in auto- 

 mobile acessories. 



Bliss Rubber Co.. The, November 21, 1919 (Massachusetts), $5,000. J E 

 Crowley. S6 Dean road. Brookline; P. C. Adams. 514 Liberty street. South 

 Braintree— both in Massachusetts; A. Bliss, 130 Empire street. Providence, 

 Rhode Island. Principal office, Boston, Massachusetts. To manufacture 

 and deal in tires, tire rims, woven hose and rubber hose. 



Boston Sanitary Belt Co., December 16, 1919 (Massachusetts), $50,000. 

 J. W. Barlow. SO Tyler street. WoUaston; E. M. Sanger. 120 GlenviUe 

 avenue, Boston; A. C. Gould, 1704 Beacon street, Waban— all in Massa- 

 chusetts. To manufacture elastic and non-elastic sanitary belts and other 

 sanitary articles. 



Central Tire Co., December 2, 1919 (Massachusetts), $25,000 N T 

 Balch, 35 Lincoln street, Gardner; R. L. Chandler, 219 Washington street' 

 B. W. Jenkins, 35 Lancaster street— both of Leominster— all in Massachu- 

 setts. Principal office, Leominster, Massachusetts. To sell automobile 

 tires, accessories and supplies. 



Century Rubber Stamp Works, Inc., January 28, 1920 (New Yorkl 

 $24,000. W. C. Campbell. 410 Fifth avenue; C. Trebing, 900 Hart street" 

 both of Brooklyn; H. Heine, 286 St. Ann's avenue, Bronx — all in New 



