January, 1913 



KNOWLEDGE. 



35 



at from four shillings to five shillings a pound. 

 Natural rubber could probably be produced profit- 

 ably at as low a price as one shilling. 



Naturally, a product of such value did not escape 



Figure 31. 



Dr. Otto Hehner testing Messrs. Strange & Graham's 

 process for the production of fusel oils from starch. 



the attention of the chemist, and numerous attempts 

 have been made to produce rubber artificially, 

 although until quite recently with no commercial 

 success. The synthetic production of rubber, in 

 fact, is a problem of extreme difficulty. Indeed, so 

 complex that no one individual could hope to get 

 over the difficulties ; and it was only when chemists 

 banded themselves together and began to work 

 cooperatively with this object in view that any 

 success was obtained. 



To mention some of the difficulties, isoprene — the 

 volatile hydrocarbon from which synthetic rubber 

 was first obtained — is a liquid so volatile that it has 

 only to be poured from one glass to another a few- 

 times before it all disappears in invisible vapour ; it 

 could at first only be produced by imperfect methods, 

 and the yield was so bad that Kondakow could only 

 obtain ten grammes, while Ipatjew only managed to 

 make five grammes and Euler not two grammes ! 

 Before much progress could be made, methods had 

 to be laboriously worked out for obtaining it in 

 quantity. The chemists employed by the great 

 German firm, Er. Bayer & Co., of Elberfeld, en- 

 deavoured to obtain isoprene from coal-tar products 

 in no less than fifty distinct ways, and all these ways 

 failed except one ! Indeed, until the chemical con- 

 stitution of rubber had been worked out with a 

 tolerable degree of certainty, its synthetic production 

 commercially was scarcely realisable; the recently 

 discovered methods of producing synthetic rubber 

 by a chain of processes from maize, other cereals, 



potatoes or petroleum has been an immensely 

 laborious task, requiring years of work and a large 

 group of investigators. For any single man to have 

 attempted it would have been hopeless. 



An Englishman, Greville Williams, seems to have 

 been the first to produce anything resembling rubber 

 from isoprene nearly fifty-two years ago (in 1860) ; 

 next, in 1875, Bouchardat, in France, definitely found 

 that isoprene could be converted into rubber. In 

 1882, 1884 and 1892, Sir William A. Tilden (Figure 

 33) worked out the problem much further, and 

 finally showed that synthetic rubber could be vulca- 

 nised like ordinary rubber. A large number of 

 investigators have since worked at the problem, 

 amongst whom should be mentioned Kondakow, 

 Wallach, Mariutza, Weber, Thiele and many others. 

 Kondakow especially, a Russian by birth, made 

 many valuable observations. 



About 1903, Professor Carl Harries (Figure 34), 

 of Kiel University, began his epoch-making work on 

 rubber, and in 1904 it was in full swing. The 

 present writer was at that time studying at Kiel 

 University and well remembers how Professor 

 Harries installed electrical apparatus for producing 

 ozone in quantity in some of the rooms, while every- 

 where danger notices were posted up " Dangerous 

 to Life — Do not Touch," evidently to prevent in- 

 quisitive students from electrocuting themselves with 

 the powerful high tension currents or blowing them- 

 selves up with the explosive ozonides which at that 

 time he was producing in quantity- 

 Professor Harries is in many ways an interesting 

 personality. He is reputed to be a man of enormous 

 wealth, and only a few years ago he bought the 

 Kaiser's famous racing yacht, the " Meteor " ; he is 



Figure 32. 



Tubes containing Isoprene polymerising to rubber in Messrs. 

 Strange & Graham's laboratory. 



