Page 334 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

rubber 1635

in the Amazon river basin. The increased demand for class of synthetic rubber called copolymers, one of which
rubber for bicycle tires was an economic bonanza for turned out to be suitable for tires, while another was oil-
the Amazonian rubber traders, symbolized by the lav- resistant and was used for gaskets and gasoline hoses.
ish opera house at Manaus, Brazil, built in 1896. It was, When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they were keen
and remains, impossible to establish rubber planta- to use these synthetics as a substitute for natural rubber.
tions in the Amazon basin because of the leaf blight that Within ten years, I.G. Farben had erected three factories
attacks rubber trees there if they are grown close to- and Germany was producing thousands of tons of syn-
gether, yet the harvesting of rubber from wild trees thetic rubber. After the war ended, information from the
alone was clearly unsustainable. The solution was the German plants (and deported chemists in the case of the
development of plantations in Malaya and the Dutch Soviets) assisted the technical development of the Amer-
East Indies (now Indonesia). The British government ican and Soviet industries.
had established plantations in Ceylon in the late 1870s Initial attempts to create an American industry faltered,
by buying seeds in Brazil (the popular myth that they but progress was rapid when America was cut off from
were smuggled out is incorrect), but the real break- the Far Eastern plantations after Pearl Harbor. Most of
through was the planting of rubber trees in Malaya in the U.S.-produced synthetic rubber, manufactured under
the late 1890s, following a fall in the price of the lead- government control and called GR-S (Government
ing cash crop, coffee. Rubber–Styrene), was petroleum-based, but some of it
was made from maize-based ethyl alcohol to appease the
Synthetic Rubber vociferous farm lobby. The decision to keep most of the
The industrial synthesis of this important natural mate- plants open after World War II was vindicated by the out-
rial was a bold undertaking and took many years to break of the Korean War in June 1950, which was pre-
attain success.The first synthetic rubber was made by the ceded by a rapid increase in the price of natural rubber.
English chemist William Tilden in 1882, but it was not The technical improvements introduced during this
economical since it was made from turpentine, which period, polymerization at lower temperatures and addi-
was both expensive and relatively scarce. When rubber tion of mineral oil, made GR-S competitive with natural
prices were high in 1910, attempts to produce synthetic rubber. As a result, the industry was privatized by Con-
rubber were pursued in England, Germany, Russia, and gress between 1953 and 1955.
the United States. The most successful was Bayer’s
“methyl rubber,” made from acetone, which was used by The Modern
Germany as a rubber substitute during World War I. Rubber Industry
Interest in synthetic rubber revived in 1925, as the result West Germany adopted the American petroleum-based
of an attempt by the British government to restrict technology for synthetic rubber in the early 1950s. Over
exports from Malaya and Ceylon, and synthetic rubber the next decade, synthetic rubber factories were estab-
production was started in the Soviet Union, Germany, lished in Britain, Italy, France, Japan, and even Brazil, the
and the United States in the 1930s. The Soviet industry original home of natural rubber. Synthetic rubber over-
made a weak synthetic rubber (polybutadiene) from took natural rubber around 1960. The American syn-
ethyl alcohol and set up the first synthetic rubber facto- thetic rubber industry maintained its leading position,
ries at Yaroslavl’ and Voronezh in 1932. By 1940 pro- despite growing competition from Japan. In tire manu-
duction had reached 40,000 to 50,000 tons. The facture, however, the Americans had failed to realize the
German firm I.G. Farben (formed by a merger of Bayer importance of the radial tire, which had been introduced
with BASF and Hoechst in 1925) developed a new by Michelin in 1949.