THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



lOrcBtB 1. 1910. 



can make a rubber factory pay larger dividends than 

 any corps of chemists rnnninj; aroimd witli abstracted 

 reasonings. If there is anythinp that gets the "goat" 

 of a superintendent, it is to have some half-cooked 

 chemist tell him liow to run the factory. W-ry truly 

 yours, 



This naturally leads one to ask exactly what the status of 

 the chemist in the rubber industry has been, what it now is, 

 and is to be, and incidentally the status of the so-called 

 practical man. 



The beginnings of the industry, of course, were coincident 

 with the discovery of vulcanization. Offhand one would say 

 that Charles Goodyear was the discoverer — and he was, as 

 far as the printed page goes. The fact, however, that before 

 Goodyear's time the Indians up the Amazon were mixing 

 gunpowder (because of its sulphur content), with rubber 

 iatex, spreading the mixture on cloth and exposing it to the 

 strong rays of the sun, would really suggest that they had 

 discovered vulcanization witliout knowing it. As they made 

 no claim to such discovery, perhaps it would be well to let 

 them go into the discard. 



The discovery of vulcanization, as far as Charles Goodyear 

 went, was the result of hundreds of experiments. It was 

 the fortunate result of a constant groping after an ideal by 

 an exceedingly pertinacious experimenter. That he didn't 

 know exactly what he had done is proved by the fact that 

 he patented the "triple compound." composed of rubber, sul- 

 phur and white lead and that for years after white lead ap- 

 peared in every compound. 



The English discoverer of vulcanization, Thomas Hancock, 

 another practical man, worked for years trying to produce 

 rubber compounds that would not get sticky in hot weather 

 nor stiff in cold, and finally, securing through a friend named 

 Brockedon a sample of the American vulcanized product, dis- 

 covered sulphur on the surface. As a result he invented the 

 type of vulcanization known as the sulphur bath. That is, he 

 melted sulphur, inimeised rubber in it. raised the heat and 

 secured vulcanization. 



About the same time .Alexander Parkes, a chemist, pro- 

 duced a process of vulcanizing rubber by using chloride of 

 sulphur; in other words, invented the cold cure. 



In Germany during the years of the American and English 

 search after vulcanization. Dr. Leudersdorff. of Berlin, 

 through bis own initiative, compounded rubber with sulplinr. 

 treated the surfaces with powdered sulphur, and at times 

 got results that looked like vulcanization. He did not at 

 that time appreciate what he had. but without doubt he 

 would eventually have discovered vulcanization, even if the 

 rest of the world had remained ignorant of it. 



.About the same time a Dutch apothecary named Jan Van 

 Geun, who lived in Haarlem, put upon the market a rubber 

 tubing that did not get stiff in cold weather, was not softened 

 by heat and withstood acid. What his process was nobodj' 

 knows, but the evidence goes to prove that he did discover 

 vulcanization. 



The iTiatter thus stands, without counting the Indian, that 

 the world's vulcanization of india rubber was discovered by 

 two practical men, two chemists and a dru,g.gist. 



American rubber manufacture divided itself into three pe- 

 riods. The tirst was of pioneering. In spite of the fact 

 that vulcanization had been accomplished, the early manu- 

 facturers were a long way from being able to produce rubber 

 goods in quantities, without a percentage of spoiled .goods 

 and seconds that would put any present manufacturer out of 

 business. The early pioneers were Candee, Meyer. Poppen- 

 husen. Day, Hartsliorn, Hodgman and Hayward. None of 

 these men were chemists, but they tackled their varied 

 problems with undaunted courage and succeeded in spite of 

 many failures. The next generation, wliich embraced the 

 well-known names of Converse. Forsyth, Cheever. Spadone. 

 Bourn, Banigan, Hood, Goodrich, McClymonds, Dale and 

 Cowen, inheriting the compounds and processes of their 

 predecessors, began to appeal to machinists and mechanical 

 engineers to assist them in mechanical problems, and occa- 

 sionally to chemists. In spite of this, the man who had 

 worked up through the various processes, the practical man. 

 was esteeined more than any other individual. It is only 

 proper to say that he often possessed a high degree of skill. 

 and that through his experience he was able to avoid many 

 errors, and that his results showed in earnings that were 

 sometimes remarkable. The old-time practical man was a 

 czar when it came down to the question of compounding. 

 In many cases he alone possessed the secret formula, and if 

 he left an employer he carried them with him. 



To di.grcss a luoment. il might be interesting to cite one 



of the formula- used by all of the great shoe facioiics during 

 the early days. The upper compound, besides whiting, 

 litharge, sulphur and tar, which were more or less necessary, 

 contained white lead, lime and barytes. Just why, nobody 

 knew. These ingredients, with the exception of the tar, were 

 weighed out in (juantity into a huge bin and then run througl; 

 an old-fashioned l)urr mill for fineness. They were not known 

 as compounds but as ])aints. 



It must not l)e thought, however, that the jiriictical men 

 did not produce ;>nything. They were the producers of 

 excellent mixers, masticators, tubing machines, calenders and 

 spreaders. They also designed scores of machines for the 

 manufacture of belting, packing, hose, insulated wire and 

 so on. When competition became fierce, they made bigger 

 and better machines and cheapened their compounds where 

 they could. 



They also produced many valuable compounds and proc- 

 esses. Of these the most notable are the mechanical process 

 for rubber reclaiming invented by Clapp, and the acid process 

 invented by Mitchell, Bourn and McDerniott. None of these 

 men were chemists, although very early in his career as a 

 manufacturer of reclaimed stock Mr. Mitchell employed chem- 

 ists in consultation. L'p to 1900 the chemist had made hardly 

 any impression at all upon the rubljer trade. 



The writer was so impressed with the future usefulness of 

 the chemist in rubber mills that he took occasion when op- 

 portunity offered to talk with the leaders of the trade, so as 

 to learn their, attitude regarding the possible value of a 

 laboratory and a chemist in connection with their own 

 problems. E. S. Converse stated that they had employe.! 

 chemists, but that the cost to their company had been greater 

 than any value received from their work. Joseph Banigan 

 said, in a jocular vein, that "he had no use for chemists, 

 druggists or apothecaries." L. K. McClymonds said that the 

 value of the chemist would be simply in determining the 

 purity of compounding ingredients, and that he hired a com- 

 petent superintendent to look after that. Henry C. Morse 

 said that he would give more for the guess of his old super- 

 intendent, Leigh, than for all the certainties produced by the 

 best chemist on earth. 



In those early days only two men took the chemist seri- 

 ously. One was James B. Forsyth, of the Boston Belting 

 Co.: but he had the misfortune to deal in secret with a mm 

 whom he believed to be a chemist, but who was really a 

 charlatan and an expert user of chemical terms. It was a 

 long time before Mr. Forsyth discovered that he was being 

 fooled. Dr. Benjamin F. Goodrich, founder of The B. F. 

 Goodrich Co.. was the other man who thoroughly believed. 

 almost from the beginning, that rubber manufacture was as 

 much a chemical problem as a mechanical one. Very earl\- 

 he employed a German chemist, and indeed proposed to the 

 writer that he come to Akron to be the president of a re- 

 search laboratory and chemical plant, offering a block of 

 stock, and saying in his enthusiastic manner, "I will make 

 you rich." As I then had visions of starting a rubber paper, 

 I refused something for which perhaps the (ioodnch com- 

 pany should tender me a vote of thanks. 



It was not until a young chemist from Boston, through a 

 reclaiming process that he invented, made a spectacular suc- 

 cess for himself and for his company, followed by an equally 

 spectacular success in extracting rubber from low-grade gums 

 and making much more money for himself and for his company, 

 that rubber manufacturers in the United States really awoke to 

 the fact that the chemist could be anything besides a dreamer 

 of dreams and a tester of the purity of compounding in- 

 .gredients. 



Looking at the rubber trade of the United States of today. 

 it is absolutely impossible to even indicate how much chemists 

 have done in rubber lines. Their work in producing re- 

 claimed rubber of better types than ever before known, and 

 in handling stock that at one time went under the furnace, is 

 a matter of common knowledge. So, too, are the various 

 extraction processes that have rendered resinous rubber, 

 such as guayule and Pontianak, of so much value to the 

 trade. .Also, in the sijeeding up of the .great variety of com- 

 pounds by new and harmless accelerators, their work has 

 been beyond praise. In the rearrangement of compounds, in 

 the production of new and valuable ones, and above all in 

 the testing of everything that goes into the factory and goes 

 out of it, they have revolutionized the old rule-of-thumb meth- 

 ods. .So true is this that every mill of any note today has 

 either its own laboratory or leans hard on some outside 

 consulting laboratory. Nor would any manufacturer today, 

 once having employed chemists, think of doing without them 

 any more than he would think of eliminating steam or elec- 

 tricity in his power plant. 



