Posted by admin | Posted in trees,shrubs | Posted on 28-07-2010
Tags: rubber trees uses of
Amazing History of Rubber Products
Christopher Columbus discovered not only America but also rubber. He brought his discovery back to Europe. Subsequent adventurers to the Americas found rubber in various forms and as they told their tales of this stretchy bouncy substance, the historians documented it.
Antonio de Herrera Tordesillas, a Spaniard, in 1615 recorded rubber in his “The General History of the Voyages of the Castilians in the Islands of America,” as part of an Indian ball game.
The ball used by the Indians was made of the gum of a tree that grew in the Amazon. It was made by drilling holes in trees, collecting the sap, and then the sap was collected in white drops that soon hardened. It was then shaped into balls and darkened. He described it as heavy. It could be bounced on the ground and caught up again in hand. He said the natives liked to use it as something to stick their feathers into when making costumes. Another Spanish historian writing at the time described the Mexican Indians making shoes, head-gear, clothing, and other watertight articles of the gum of a tree. This delighted European readers as something quite exotic.
The actual introduction of any useful applications for rubber in Europe seems was after the Portuguese colonized Brazil in the early part of the sixteenth century. The Portuguese found uses for rubber in ship building and bridge parts.
In 1736, in company with Bouguer and Godin, La Condamine, a French savant, was sent by the king of France to South America to measure the globe. On returning to Europe he brought the first specimen of caoutchouc from Peru, by way of the Amazon River. La Condamine exclaimed this “most singular resin” came from a tree called heve or hyeve. It was called pao de xyringa by the Portuguese colonists.
Rubber was used for all manner of things in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it was limited in use because it wasn’t very durable. Flash forward to B.F. Goodrich in 1895 developing a vulcanization process. Goodrich and his scientists learned how to make longer polymers out of the short natural ones, resulting in various hardnesses of rubber for various purposes. Vulvanized rubber could then be as soft as car tires or as hard as bowling balls. Once vulcanization was employed, rubber became widely used, especially in the automotive industry.
Today, rubber is no longer made from trees, but from petroleum. Mixed with various additives, it can be used both as primary building material and a secondary one, such as in gaskets.
So, the next time you are driving down the road on your car tires, remember the Peruvian Indians who made their own primitive “base balls” out of sap from rubber trees.
About the Author
I am a slow foodie,technologies, and farmers markets fanatic. Learn more about rubber and rubber products such as rubber pavers at on my blog.
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