The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-10-14
Tires Extracted From Turpentine
Artificial Rubber Made at Johns Hopkins = Professor Remsen Says it Will Supply Demand May be Years Before it is in Common Use

After years of unceasing endeavor and a series of false alarms, artificial or synthetic rubber that is not merely Hike rubber, but that actually is rubber of caoutchouc, is now being produced in the chemical laboratory, according to Professor Ire Remsen, president of Johns Hopkins University, and while at present it is worth al- most it's weight in diamonds, he de- clares that 'it safely may be predict ed that before many years have pass ed, rubber will be artifioially prepar- ed in quantity sufficient to supply the great and increasing demand for it. It is to turpentine that the chemists now look as the basis of supply for the artificial rubber of the future, the rubber being evolved as the result of a series of processes involving four general stages, but it probably will be years before tires extracted from tur- pentine will replace those that grow on trees, so to speak.
 In order to make artificial or fsyn- thetic'' rubber, Professor Remsen ex- plains in the Scientific American, it first was necessary to determine the chemical nature of ca0Ntchouc, and this was something of which very lit tie was known until recently. In tell ing of how its chemical Identification was brought about and how rubber is now being made from iSOprene, he says in pant as follows:
 ''In general terms it may be stated that chemists do not like to work with gummy substances, but prefer things that crystalize, or that boil without decomposition, or that form definite cryStillizable products. Now .caout- clouc does not crystalline, it does not boil without decomposition, and suntil a. few years ago it was not known to be capable of yielding definite crystal liZable products. Great impetus was given to it's study by the discovery of Harries that it forms well-defned product when treated with ozone, and that the ozonide thus obtained de- composes when boiled with water and yields levulinic aldehyde, a substance than can easily be identified.
 ''It also has been shown that caout- chouc forms a so-called nitrosite when treated with nitrous acid, and this nitrosite can also easily be identified. These facts make it possible for the chemist to tell whether he has caOut- cf1ouc in hand or not and the scienti- fic study of the substance has been materially, advanced in consequence. Before the discovery of these facts a product had been obtained artificially that was described as "like rubber [, but the question whether it was iden- tical with caoutchouc or not could not be definitely answered. Now it is possible to determine with certainty whether a substance is or is not ca outchouc.
 "To identify caoutchouc after you get it is one thing to determine what it is is quite another. The first step towards the solution of his problem was taken a number of years ago, when Greville Williams showed that when rubber is heated to decompoSi- tion a very volatile substance is formed which he called isoprene This boils at 36 deg. c, and is a hy- drocarbon of the formula C5Hs. La ter Harries found that this. same hy- drocarbon is formed by the action of moderate heat upon oil Of turpentine and other terpeneS. This isoprene has come to be the chief factor in the artificial preparation of rubber, for it is this substance which when exposed to certain conditions is converted at least partly into caoutchouc
 'In the summer of 1909 Harries re- ceived from an English firm a speci- men of a substance, which it was claimed had been made artificially by a process patented by Dr. Heinemann in England. Harries found that the substance was in fact caoutchouc, but he did not believe that it had been made artificially. Heinemann's meth Od consisted III passing acetydene, ethylene and methyl chloride to- gether through a tube heated to red ness. Harries could not make this work and others who tried it also failed
 Up to this time the experiences of HarrieS had been anything but en- couraging. In November, 1909, he received from the Eaberfield Color Factory some specimens of artificial rubber which had been made from is- oprene by a secret process devised by Dr. Fritz Hofmann. This led Har- ries to take up his own experiments on the subject again, and toward the end of January, 1910, he was in a po- sition to apply for a patent The method devised by him consists in heating isoprene with strong acetic acid in a closed tube. The product