Gums, Resins, 



[July, 1910. 



To deal with the various rubber- 

 making industries separately, let us 

 take first the manufacture of rubber 

 boots and shoes. From the interesting 

 Quarter Century Special Supplement of 

 The India Rubber Journal, we learn 

 that the earliest attempts to manufac- 

 ture india-rubber boots and shoes in 

 England were made in the twenties and 

 thirties of the last century ; but it was 

 not until about 1854 that the trade was 

 really established. "Since that time a 

 large number of companies have started, 

 and the development of the trade has 

 been very great. Rubber boots and 

 shoes have been made for every market 

 of the world, with special shapes to 

 suit the foot-wear of the country. The 

 extraordinary shapes for the Chinese 

 who have always been large purchasers 

 of rubber shoes, are perhaps the most 

 peculiar." The Journal goes on to point 

 out that rubber boots and shoes have 

 never been really popular in the United 

 Kingdom and are chiefly made for ex- 

 port. But, of course, there is a large 

 consumption of rubber for the soles of 

 tennis shoes and in other sports. 



The tyre industry, which consumes 

 enormous quantities of rubber, is only 

 about 25 years old, though a patent was 

 granted in 1845 to a Mr. R. W. Thompson, 

 for an elastic tyre. Tnis tyre was con- 

 structed almost on the same principles 

 as the Dunlop tyre, but it was invented 

 far before there was any use for it, 

 and it was not \intil Dunlop took out 

 a patent in 1888 for a pneumatic tyre 

 that the industry really began to de- 

 velop. Solid tyres were, of course, in 

 use before this date, and were first used 

 for cabs in 1861, The tyre industry has 

 developed in conjunction with the 

 bicycle and motor industries, and it is 

 the tremendous growth of the latter, 

 as we have said, that mainly accounts 

 for the rubber boom. 



India-rubber has been employed for 

 waterproofing garments for a long 

 time. As early as 1791 one Samuel Peel 

 took out a patent for waterproofing 

 garments, using caoutchouc dissolved 

 in turpentine. Of course, the name of 

 Macintosh is historic in connection with 

 waterproof fabrics. It was in 1823 that 

 Charles Macintosh took out his fitst 

 patent for rendering textures imper- 

 vious to water and air by means of 

 rubber. Paraffin wax has recently been 

 supplanting rubber to a certain extent 

 as a waterproofing material ; but the 

 development of motoring, as in the 

 case of tyres, has come to the aid of 

 this branch of the rubber industry, for 

 textures waterproofed with rubber are 

 best adapted to keeping out rain, wind, 

 and dust in an open car. 



Rubber is largely used in the making 

 of hose pipes. The first rubber hose on 

 record was manufactured in 1827 by 

 Charles Macintosh and Co., of Man- 

 chester, and John Hancoekr It was made 

 for a floating fire engine belonging to 

 the London Assurance Corporation. 

 Leather used to be a rival commodity to 

 rubber for making hose, but it was 

 found that rubber owing to its elasticity 

 was better adapted for withstanding 

 the varying pressures of the water. 

 Rubber hose is also used for suction 

 pipes for beer engines, as the beer has 

 not the chemical effect upon rubber 

 which it has upon metal piping. In the 

 case of the larger aud high pressure 

 hoses rubber has to be reinforced with 

 some other material. Usually it is some 

 textile fabric, but very high pressure 

 hoses have a spiral of strong wire round 

 them. Rubber is important in the 

 manufacture of machinery belting. It 

 is used for two sorts of belting ; one of 

 which is used as a means of transmitting 

 power from an engine to machinery, 

 while the other kind is a sort of moving 

 way for conveying materials, such as 

 coal, from one place to another. The 

 industry dates back to 1858, when a Mr. 

 Spencer Thomas Parmelee took out a 

 patent for the manufacture of belting. 

 He united rubber with a strong woven 

 fabric. The advantage of rubber in this 

 instance is not so much its elasticity as 

 the fact that it is not affected by various 

 temperatures and difference in the 

 moisture of the atmosphere. Fabric by 

 itself would shrink or stretch according 

 to the conditions of the surrounding 

 atmosphere, but when coated with 

 rubber it is unaffected by them. 



For insulating purposes Gutta-percha 

 is preferred to rubber, especially for 

 cables ; for, although rubber is other- 

 wise an admirable insulator, contact 

 with copper has a bad effect on it, 

 Cables insulated with rubber or gutta- 

 percha were devised about the year 

 1845, and the first one to be used was an 

 overland wire on the Berlin-Frankfort 

 line in Germany in 1847. Gutta-percha 

 was used for the first submarine cable 

 laid between England and France 

 in 1850. 



There is a large demand for elastic 

 thread and webbing made out of rubber ; 

 the first patent for this substance 

 was taken out in the thirties of the 

 last century. This elastic is used for 

 numerous purposes, for the sides of 

 certain makes of boots and shoes, for 

 medical purposes, and for various sorts 

 of wearing apparel. Golf balls used to 

 be made entirely of gutta-percha, but 

 now the core is usually rubber and the 



