Rubber

Uses of rubber date all the way back to the 1600’s when the Mesoamericans used it for small things such as balls for entertainment, and a type of temporary rubber shoe that was made by dipping their feet into a latex mixture. However, the year that is better known for the discovery of rubber is 1735 when the French scientist Charles de la Condamine discovered it during an expedition to Peru.  After he discovered it he sent back the remarkable new rubber samples to the Académie Royale des Sciences in France.

He spent the next ten years exploring Peru and the rest of the Amazon. In 1745, he returned to Paris and in 1751 Charles's ''Journal du voyage fait par ordre du roi'' was published with all his adventures and discoveries from Peru which included the uses, properties, and importance of his newly found substance of rubber.

Condamine’s paper is known as the first scientific paper on rubber. Rubber got its name, rubber, in 1770 when in England a man named Joseph Priestly discovered it could be used to rub off pencil marks on paper.  In 1764 François Fresnau discovered that turpentine was a rubber solvent.

The recognition for the many uses of the newly discovered commodity exploded from a great number of scientists and inventors who began discovering new ways to utilize the material, and improving ways of production of the rubber.  South America was a major source of the rubber that was used in much of the 19th century.

Rubber soon spread all over the world, starting its large spread with a man named Henry Wickham when he gathered the seeds from the rubber producing trees in Brazil and germinated them in England. The seeds germinated in England were then traded and exported all over the world to places like India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia. 

During this time Congo, Africa was also a large producer of the trees used to make rubber therefore made them large producers of the rubber as well.

https://historyofrubber.weebly.com/discovery.html

Thomas Hancock 1786-1865 British inventor of vulcanized rubber using raw rubber from rubber trees and invented the machinery and processes to blend rubber with other materials to give fabrics elasticity and water proofing. He also invented a machine to recycle rubber.  He began experimenting with rubber in 1819.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hancock_(inventor)

Charles Goodyear 1800-1860,

Charles Goodyear was born on December 29, 1800 in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1834, he began experimenting with natural rubber. In 1839, he accidentally discovered the process of vulcanization. He struggled to patent it, as Thomas Hancock had recently patented vulcanized rubber

Harvey Firestone 1868-1938 grew up on his father’s farm in Ohio. After high school, he worked at Columbus Buggy Co and started his own company in 1890. He patented inflatable tires.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader