Rubber is a commodity that people have been producing and benefitting from since the Aztecs used it for making toys. The history of modern day culture manufacturing rubber starts in about 1735 when the French scientist Charles de la Condamine discovered it during an expedition to Peru. Condamine’s work on the discovery sparked an outburst of many famous scientists and inventors who began discovering and inventing new ways to produce, and utilize the spectacular material. Rubber was discovered from a rubber producing plant. While over 2,000 different plant species are known to produce rubber, only a small number of plant species are capable of producing large amounts of high quality rubber. At first, production of the worldly famous commodity of rubber was isolated to mainly the Amazon, South East Asia, and Africa. Every country wanted to monopolize the commodity in order to make the greatest profit from it by exporting it around the world. This element of the rubber discovery leading into greed resulted in extreme downfalls within each country’s economy. Another important discovery connected to the development of Rubber is the vulcanization process. In the year 1839 an inventor and scientists accidentally discovered a way to improve rubber far beyond its natural state. He discovered a way to take natural rubber, which is gooey at warmer temperatures and inflexible at cool temperatures, become competent of withstanding extreme heat and pressure. This breakthrough of the vulcanization of rubber opened up the possibilities of a mass amount of new ways to use rubber. This invention was also significant because it coincided with the Industrial Revolution, so mass producing the rubber products was enormously needed. The discovery of rubber is an extremely important mile stone in our world’s history. Today, the commodity is used for hundreds of different products such as automobile and aircraft tires, latex balloon devises, water proof clothing, surgical gloves, hair ties, sneakers, and
so much more.
so much more.