Page 333 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1634 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

An encyclopedia
drawing summarizing
all that one needs to
know about rubber, an
important raw product
during the colonial era.

Goodyear called vulcanization,
after the Roman god of fire,
was then copied by Hancock,
who improved the procedure.
The extent to which Goodyear
was indebted to the earlier
work of Nathaniel Hayward
and the morality of Hancock’s
conduct remain controversial
even today. However it came
about, vulcanization laid the
basis of the modern rubber
industry.At first the uses of vul-
canized rubber were relatively
mundane, such as boots, over-
shoes, and air beds. Ebonite, a
hard material produced by pro-
longed vulcanization of rub-
ber, was important as an early
plastic, used to make boxes
and jewelry.
Rubber became an impor-
tant material only after the
development of the pneumatic
tire by the Scottish veterinary
surgeon John Dunlop in 1888.
Dunlop reintroduced the pneu-
matic tire (it had originally
been patented by the Scottish
engineer Robert William Thom-
son in 1846) with the bicycle in mind. In 1895, Edouard Goodyear, which had no connection with Charles
and André Michelin took the important step of adapting Goodyear (1898), and Firestone (1900). By 1910,
their bicycle tire to the automobile, thereby establishing Akron, Ohio, had become the center of the American tire
the major use of rubber in modern society. Nearly all of industry.
the leading rubber companies were founded in this
period, including B.F. Goodrich (1880), Dunlop (1889), Rubber in the Far East
Michelin (1889), U.S. Rubber, formed by a merger When the Michelin brothers invented the automobile
of older firms and later renamed Uniroyal (1892), tire, the sole source of rubber was tapping of wild trees