As Ralph Wolfe's poetic prose confirms, rubber is as indispensable to modern society as steel and wood and mortar. We use products made of rubber at work, at home, at play, even when we travel. Automobiles, trains and aircraft rely on it for safety and comfort. Industry uses it to produce hoses, belts, gaskets, tires, molding, and thousands of other products. Rubber in the modern world is omnipotent.
Natural rubber is siphoned from cultivated trees on plantations in Asia and Africa.
Synthetic rubber is man-made and is produced around the world in manufacturing plants that synthesize it from petroleum and other minerals. Whether it's natural or synthetic, rubber in its native form is virtually useless. Depending on the chemicals used, products made of rubber can be as soft as a sponge, as resilient as a rubber band, or as hard as a bowling ball. As a result, we use thousands of rubber products with varying degrees of hardness in our daily lives. Natural rubber has been available for centuries, synthetic rubber for less than a hundred years.