2 , THE RUBBER INDUSTRY 



Madrid in that year, of different articles manufactured 

 from the coagulated latex of the rubber-tree by the 

 Amazonian Indians. In 1734 La Condamine was sent 

 by the Paris Academy in charge of a scientific expedi- 

 tion to the Equator, and in 1736 he forwarded to Paris 

 a small quantity of rubber under the designation of 

 " caoutchouc," giving a description of the uses to which 

 it was put. To the species of tree from which this 

 rubber was obtained La Condamine gave the name of 

 heve, a word of Indian derivation, and this later was 

 transformed into hevea, a term covering the many 

 varieties providing the principal source of production 

 in Brazil and the Orient at the present time. In 1770 

 Priestly discovered that caoutchouc would erase pencil- 

 marks from paper, and hence arose its common name 

 of indiarubber. 



In 1823 the first important step was made towards 

 the application of rubber for practical purposes in 

 Europe. In that year Charles Mclntosh discovered 

 that it was soluble in benzine, and he applied this 

 knowledge to the manufacture of waterproof coats and 

 other rain-resisting articles. A few years later, in 1832, 

 the firm of Chaffee and Haskins founded the Roxbury 

 Indiarubber Company in the United States for making 

 waterproof materials. It was in connection with this 

 latter enterprise that a chemist named Charles Good- 

 year, after many experiments, proved that a mixture of 

 sulphur with rubber rendered the latter capable of 

 resisting great extremes of cold and heat, and this 

 process, subsequently known as " vulcanization," was 

 adopted generally in the manufacture of all classes of 

 rubber goods. 



