Natural rubber

1736

Rubber was later used by the Maya and Aztec cultures – in addition to making balls Aztecs used rubber for other purposes such as making containers and to make textiles waterproof by impregnating them with the latex sap. Charles Marie de La Condamine is credited with introducing samples of rubber to the Académie Royale des Sciences of France in 1736.

1751

In 1751, he presented a paper by François Fresneau to the Académie (published in 1755) that described many of rubber's properties.

1755

In 1751, he presented a paper by François Fresneau to the Académie (published in 1755) that described many of rubber's properties.

1764

In 1764, François Fresnau discovered that turpentine was a rubber solvent.

1770

In England, Joseph Priestley, in 1770, observed that a piece of the material was extremely good for rubbing off pencil marks on paper, hence the name "rubber".

1779

Giovanni Fabbroni is credited with the discovery of naphtha as a rubber solvent in 1779.

1800

See Atrocities in the Congo Free State for more information on the rubber trade in the Congo Free State in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

1839

Charles Goodyear redeveloped vulcanization in 1839, although Mesoamericans had used stabilized rubber for balls and other objects as early as 1600 BC. South America remained the main source of latex rubber used during much of the 19th century.

1873

In India, commercial cultivation was introduced by British planters, although the experimental efforts to grow rubber on a commercial scale were initiated as early as 1873 at the Calcutta Botanical Gardens.

1876

In 1876, Henry Wickham smuggled 70,000 Amazonian rubber tree seeds from Brazil and delivered them to Kew Gardens, England.

1888

India today is the world's 3rd largest producer and 4th largest consumer. In Singapore and Malaya, commercial production was heavily promoted by Sir Henry Nicholas Ridley, who served as the first Scientific Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens from 1888 to 1911.

1900

Malaya (now Peninsular Malaysia) was later to become the biggest producer of rubber. In the early 1900s, the Congo Free State in Africa was also a significant source of natural rubber latex, mostly gathered by forced labor.

See Atrocities in the Congo Free State for more information on the rubber trade in the Congo Free State in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

1902

The first commercial Hevea plantations were established at Thattekadu in Kerala in 1902.

1911

India today is the world's 3rd largest producer and 4th largest consumer. In Singapore and Malaya, commercial production was heavily promoted by Sir Henry Nicholas Ridley, who served as the first Scientific Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens from 1888 to 1911.

2013

In 2013, by inhibiting one key enzyme and using modern cultivation methods and optimization techniques, scientists in the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology (IME) in Germany developed a cultivar of the Russian dandelion (Taraxacum kok-saghyz) that is suitable for commercial production of natural rubber.




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Page generated on 2021-08-05