Evening capital news. (Boise, Idaho) 1901-1927, 1917-10-07

AKRON HAS 5000 ACRES OF FLOOR
touch of button dropped the steel door
of the oven, when the stream was turned
on and the vulcanizing began.
But before ] go farther, let me tell YOU
something as to how the crude rubber is
turned into the manufactured rubber of
commerce. The first rubber manufactures
were i'll the shape of balls, which Columbus
found used by the Indians on the West In
dies Islands shortly after he discovered
America. A little later Cortez was laugh;
by the Aztecs in Mexico, to spread i, over
the coats of his soldiers to keep out the
rain, and about twenty-six years before our
Declaration of Independence Frenchman
brought some of the juice Of the rubber
tree from Ecuador to Europe in the shape
of rude bottles The first manufacture OF
rubber by civilized man was by Dr. Joseph
Priestley, an English scientist, who came
to the United States while George Wash
ington was President Dr. Priestley made
the first rubber eraserS They were cubes
much smaller than the kind we now buy
for a nickel. They were half an inch long
and sold for IS cents.
The first waterproof cloth was made by
an Englishman in 1877, about the time that
John Adams was inaugurated President Of
the United States, but it could not stan,l
the heat, and it was not until the presidency
OF John Quincy Adams that Charles Mack
intosh, a Scotchman, discovered how to
dissolve rubber in naptha, and make a liq-
uid which, spread upon cloth, caused it -
shed water. That was the birth OF the
sicker and the rubber coats OF all kinds that
our men will wear in the field.
The greatest OF all rubber inventions,
however, was made by an American This
was Charles Goodyear, who discovered the
process OF inflammation. Goodyear was :
Connecticut Yankee, who began life as 4
hardware man. He became interested in
the study OF rubber and when he saw some
shoes made of the pure gum, which had
been imported from Brazil, he conceived
the idea of making something of the kind
for the trade. He used pure gum. which
was then cheap, but the shoes softened
during the summer and gave out bad
odor, Goodyear tried to harden the rubber
by treating it surface with nitric acid, and
he was able to improve it thereby He
then tried mixing it with sulphur, but the
process was not success until one dav
when he was baking mixture of sulphur
and rubber on his kitchen stove, some of
the gum fell out upon a hot iron Instead
OF melting, the stuff hardened like leather.
and he discovered that great heat would
make rubber hard He took the rubber out
side and nailed it to the wall OF the house
to see whether it would stand the cold.
There was frost that night but the next
morning the piece of rubber was as elastic,
as ever, and it had none of the brtteness
of the cold rubber he had previously made.
He then went on until he learned Just how
the gum should be treated and the amount
OF heat needed for vulcanization He took
out his first patent in 1874 and upon that
patent has grown the great rubber indus
try Of today. Various improvements have
been added to make vulcanized rubber sof..
and we have it in various shapes.
| wish | could take you over one of these
big rubber factories and show you the many