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Oct 6, 2020 · With over 90% of natural rubber originating from Brazil until the first decade of the 20 th century, the geographical exclusivity of the Amazon insured profits from rubber production remained steady and shielded the market from outsiders.
In the first three decades of the twentieth century, major changes in both supply and demand created unprecedented uncertainty in rubber markets. On the supply side, Southeast Asian rubber plantations transformed the cost structure and capacity of the industry.
- Overview
- Development of the natural rubber industry
If latex is allowed to evaporate naturally, the film of rubber that forms can be dried and pressed into usable articles such as bottles, shoes, and balls. South American Indians made such objects in early times: rubber balls, for instance, were used in an Aztec ceremonial game (called ollama) long before Christopher Columbus explored South America and the Caribbean. On his second voyage to the New World in 1493–96, Columbus is said to have seen natives in present-day Haiti play a game with balls made from the gum of a tree. In 1615 a Spaniard related how the Indians, having gathered the milk from incisions made in various trees, brushed it onto their cloaks and also obtained crude footwear and bottles by coating earthen molds and allowing them to dry.
The first serious accounts of rubber production and the primitive Native American system of manufacture were given in the 18th century by Charles-Marie de La Condamine, a member of a French geographic expedition sent to South America in 1735. La Condamine described “caoutchouc” (the French spelling of a native term for “weeping wood”) as the condensed juice of the Hevea tree, and in 1736 he sent rubber samples to Europe. Initially the new material was merely a scientific curiosity. Some years later the British scientist Joseph Priestley remarked on its usefulness for rubbing pencil marks from paper, and so the popular term rubber was coined. Other applications gradually developed, notably for waterproofing shoes and clothing.
Important progress toward a true rubber industry came at the beginning of the 19th century from the separate experiments of a Scottish chemist, Charles Macintosh, and an English inventor, Thomas Hancock. Macintosh’s contribution was the rediscovery, in 1823, of coal-tar naphtha as a cheap and effective solvent. He placed a solution of rubber and naphtha between two fabrics and in so doing avoided the sticky surfaces that had been common in earlier single-texture garments treated with rubber. Manufacture of these double-textured waterproof cloaks, henceforth known as “mackintoshes,” began soon afterward.
The work of Hancock, who became Macintosh’s colleague and partner, is of even greater importance. He first attempted to dissolve the rubber in turpentine, but his hand-coated fabrics were unsatisfactory in surface texture and smell. He then turned to the production of elastic thread. Strips of rubber were cut from the imported lumps and applied in their crude state to clothing and footwear. In 1820, in an effort to find a use for his waste cuttings, Hancock invented a masticator. Constructed of a hollow wooden cylinder equipped with teeth in which a hand-driven spiked roller was turned, this tiny machine, originally taking a charge of two ounces of rubber, exceeded Hancock’s greatest hopes. Instead of tearing the rubber to shreds, it produced enough friction to weld the scraps of rubber into a coherent mass that could be applied in further manufacture.
Britannica Quiz
Building Blocks of Everyday Objects
If latex is allowed to evaporate naturally, the film of rubber that forms can be dried and pressed into usable articles such as bottles, shoes, and balls. South American Indians made such objects in early times: rubber balls, for instance, were used in an Aztec ceremonial game (called ollama) long before Christopher Columbus explored South America and the Caribbean. On his second voyage to the New World in 1493–96, Columbus is said to have seen natives in present-day Haiti play a game with balls made from the gum of a tree. In 1615 a Spaniard related how the Indians, having gathered the milk from incisions made in various trees, brushed it onto their cloaks and also obtained crude footwear and bottles by coating earthen molds and allowing them to dry.
The first serious accounts of rubber production and the primitive Native American system of manufacture were given in the 18th century by Charles-Marie de La Condamine, a member of a French geographic expedition sent to South America in 1735. La Condamine described “caoutchouc” (the French spelling of a native term for “weeping wood”) as the condensed juice of the Hevea tree, and in 1736 he sent rubber samples to Europe. Initially the new material was merely a scientific curiosity. Some years later the British scientist Joseph Priestley remarked on its usefulness for rubbing pencil marks from paper, and so the popular term rubber was coined. Other applications gradually developed, notably for waterproofing shoes and clothing.
Important progress toward a true rubber industry came at the beginning of the 19th century from the separate experiments of a Scottish chemist, Charles Macintosh, and an English inventor, Thomas Hancock. Macintosh’s contribution was the rediscovery, in 1823, of coal-tar naphtha as a cheap and effective solvent. He placed a solution of rubber and naphtha between two fabrics and in so doing avoided the sticky surfaces that had been common in earlier single-texture garments treated with rubber. Manufacture of these double-textured waterproof cloaks, henceforth known as “mackintoshes,” began soon afterward.
The work of Hancock, who became Macintosh’s colleague and partner, is of even greater importance. He first attempted to dissolve the rubber in turpentine, but his hand-coated fabrics were unsatisfactory in surface texture and smell. He then turned to the production of elastic thread. Strips of rubber were cut from the imported lumps and applied in their crude state to clothing and footwear. In 1820, in an effort to find a use for his waste cuttings, Hancock invented a masticator. Constructed of a hollow wooden cylinder equipped with teeth in which a hand-driven spiked roller was turned, this tiny machine, originally taking a charge of two ounces of rubber, exceeded Hancock’s greatest hopes. Instead of tearing the rubber to shreds, it produced enough friction to weld the scraps of rubber into a coherent mass that could be applied in further manufacture.
Britannica Quiz
Building Blocks of Everyday Objects
On 23 April, 2024, the Government of Colombia issued a formal apology to the indigenous communities of the Amazon basin for allowing the forced enslavement and systematic brutality they endured during the rubber booms of the 19th and 20th centuries which, in the Amazon region of Colombia, resulted in the death of about 60,000 indigenous people.
Jan 31, 2019 · Where Did Natural Rubber Come From? South and Central American indigenous peoples first created natural rubber by boiling syrup from the Hevea brasiliensis tree. Appreciating its lightweight, bouncy properties, they were quick to form rubber into balls used for sports such as Tlachtli and Ulama.
May 5, 2015 · International markets for rubber expanded rapidly after the late 1880s, led by the newly expanding tire industry. The interior of Amazonia underwent a boom in speculative land sales in the 1890s, as soon as the Brazilian government adopted simplified land registration procedures.
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The competition that gave rise to the formation of the footwear trust, which came to be known as the United States Rubber Company, followed the rubber industry throughout the twentieth century. As the century ended, the competition that had marked the industry's history shifted to a global scale.
