India Rubber

1895

A Comparatively Recent but Potent Factor In Science and Progress.

In our own day it really seems as if we couldn't possibly get on without India rubber and gutta percha. Though both are of comparatively recent introduction, the number of purposes to which they are applied is so immense that our civilization without them would at least be very different from the form in which we actually know it.

To lump a few miscellaneous examples in a single paragraph: Without those two submarine cables would be almost impossible; telegraphy would assume many unlike modifications; goloshes would not exist; waterproofs and mackintoshes would be a beautiful dream and a rubberless world a hideous reality; elastic, in the sense in which ladies use the word, for tying hats or making garters would never have been evolved; tobacco pouches would still be of silk or leather; our combs would be of horn, and our buttons, paper knives, penholders and pipes much dearer than at present.

As for machinery, where would it be without India rubber cinctures and tubes and cups and valves and buffers? Where would engineering be without the endless minute applications of the elastic gum? Where would surgery be without the innumerable devices, the syringes and squirts, the belts and bandages of which India rubber forms the sole, and, as it seems to us now, indispensable basis? Fancy putting out fires without the invaluable hose; fancy whirring manufactories without the inevitable gearing. The bicyclist would miss his pneumatic tires; the artist would miss his ever handy eraser.

When we go to the dentist, which is always in itself a delightful excursion, a happy hour is made happier for us by the India rubber sheet with which he dexterously contrives to check undue loquacity. When we go to the gymnasium, half the apparatus we employ is based on it. And what would life be at the present day without India rubber hot water bottles? — Longman's Magazine.