The History of The Rubber Industry

Abstract

The two men who dominate the early history of the world's modern rubber industry enter the story—Thomas Hancock and Charles Macintosh. In the early days of the rubber industry most of its product was used in the manufacture of garments and footwear. To-day the fact that the tyre industry consumes three-quarters of the rubber imported into Britain tends to obscure the critical importance of the remaining uses of rubber in the fabric of modern society. In pre-Columbian America the Indians of the Pacific coast of Guatemala, a region of heavy rainfall, used rubber-coated raincapes, and the Mexican Aztecs apparently wore ponchos coated in the same way. In addition the Indians of Central and South America made use of rubber articles both in their religious and magical ceremonies and in surgery and medicine; primitive syringes, for example, were in wide use. The invention of vulcanization in the early 1840s had a revolutionary effect on the young industry—rubber finally came of age.

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