What is rubber?

The history of rubber is as old as that of nature. Rubber is obtained from special type of plants. Three million years old fossils of the rubber producing plants have been found. It is a highly elastic organic material. It can be stretched eight times to its original length. A while liquid called latex comes out of the trees from which the rubber is made.

When this liquid is dried up we get rubber. Rubber so obtained is called natural rubber. In fact, there are more than four hundred kinds of plants from the juice of which rubber can be made. Each kind of plant gives a different yield of rubber. The plant which gives the hightest yield of rubber is called 'Hevea-Brasiliensis'. It is approximately thirty five metres high. Another high yielding plant is Castilla.
The real development in rubber production took place in the eighteenth century when the samples of rubber giving plants reached America. There is a very interesting story about rubber. When Columbus made his second voyage, he saw the children of the residents of Haiti Island playing with a ball which used to bounce. This ball was taken to Europe. One English scientist named Joseph Gestley observed that pencil writings could be erased by rubbing with this material. Hence it was named rubber.
In the nineteenth century, the use of rubber increased considerably because of its unique properties. It became difficult to fulfill the increasing world demand from the natural rubber. Hence scientists started developing synthetic rubber. The production of artificial rubber was started for the first time in Germany during the First World War. After that synthetic rubber was produced in other countries also. Today about fifty percent of the rubber is produced by synthetic process in the world.
Rubber is very useful for us. Various items of our daily use are made from it. Tyres, tubes, pipes, rain-coats, carpets and water-proof clothes are all made from rubber. Insulation of electric wires is done by coating them with thin layers of rubber. It is soluble in some organic liquids, hence it can be moulded in any form. Today its uses have increased so much that during 1972 the total world production of natural and artificial rubber was 3.1 and 5.3 million tons respectively.