History

History of rubber

Discovery of the elastic material

Long before the first European explorers reached the American continent, the indigenous peoples of Central America, such as the Aztecs and Mayans, knew about the sap of the “weeping tree”. They called the tree “caao-chu”, so that our rubber developed from the French word “caoutchouc”. They used the “Hevea brasiliensis” or rubber tree, as it is known today, to make everyday objects such as shoes, bottles, torches and balls.

Early records by Christopher Columbus(1495) and Fernando Cortez(1519) are the first to mention elastic balls that the indigenous people played with. This is how Europe learned about the unknown elastic material.

For over 200 years, these discoveries were insignificant. It was not until 1736 that the French scientist Charles Marie de La Condamine sent the first samples of Hevea brasiliensis to the Paris Academy.

First rubber inventions

In 1765, Frenchman Pierre-Joseph Macquer discovered for the first time that rubber dissolves in ether and turpentine and returns to its original form after the solvent evaporates. This discovery made it possible to spread the rubber into molded parts.

In 1823, Charles Macintosh produced the first rainproof coat, thus establishing the industrial production of waterproof fabrics based on rubber.

The first Austrian rubber factory was established in 1824 and the first in Germany in 1829.

1832 Friedrich Wilhelm Lüdersdorff discovered that the addition of sulphur greatly improved the properties of rubber. In 1839, Charles Goodyear combined this with subsequent heating and obtained the first elastic materials. Charles Goodyear is considered one of the most important scientists for today’s rubber production and the discoverer of vulcanization.

In 1845 the first pneumatic tire was made from natural rubber and in 1849 Nelson Goodyear invented hard rubber by adding 50% sulphur.

Economic impact of rubber

Due to the resulting rubber boom, the Brazilian government banned the export of rubber tree seeds in order to maintain Brazil’s monopoly. From 1860, rubber prices shot up as a result.

In 1876, Henry Wickham managed to smuggle 70,000 seedlings to England, from where seedlings were sent to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The establishment of plantations in Sri Lanka, India and Indochina broke the Brazilian monopoly.

From 1878 to 1894, numerous new inventions were made on the basis of rubber, such as the tennis ball and removable pneumatic tires for bicycles and cars.

In 1909, the German chemist Fritz Hofmann developed the first synthetic rubber as polyisoprene.

The strong motorization from 1910 onwards caused the price of rubber to skyrocket again. Global consumption amounted to around 100,000 tons per year.

Isoprene rubber was established by Carl Duisberg in 1912 as a viable alternative to natural rubber in tire production. His ride from Leverkusen to Freiburg on Isoprene bikes without a puncture contributed to this.

In 1929, Walter Bock developed the first styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR) and started the economic boom of synthetic rubber. SBR is still the most widely used synthetic rubber today.

In the USA, Neoprene® was invented by DuPont in 1931 and the first silicone rubber in 1942.

By 1990, the economic relevance of natural rubber had declined. In 1980, NR accounted for only 30% of global production.