| Christopher Columbus discovered not only America | | | | ship building and bridge parts. |
| but also rubber. He brought his discovery back to | | | | In 1736, in company with Bouguer and Godin, La |
| Europe. Subsequent adventurers to the Americas | | | | Condamine, a French savant, was sent by the king of |
| found rubber in various forms and as they told their | | | | France to South America to measure the globe. On |
| tales of this stretchy bouncy substance, the | | | | returning to Europe he brought the first specimen of |
| historians documented it. | | | | caoutchouc from Peru, by way of the Amazon River. |
| Antonio de Herrera Tordesillas, a Spaniard, in 1615 | | | | La Condamine exclaimed this "most singular resin" |
| recorded rubber in his "The General History of the | | | | came from a tree called heve or hyeve. It was |
| Voyages of the Castilians in the Islands of America," | | | | called pao de xyringa by the Portuguese colonists. |
| as part of an Indian ball game. | | | | Rubber was used for all manner of things in the 18th |
| The ball used by the Indians was made of the gum | | | | and 19th centuries, but it was limited in use because |
| of a tree that grew in the Amazon. It was made by | | | | it wasn't very durable. Flash forward to B.F. Goodrich |
| drilling holes in trees, collecting the sap, and then the | | | | in 1895 developing a vulcanization process. Goodrich |
| sap was collected in white drops that soon hardened. | | | | and his scientists learned how to make longer |
| It was then shaped into balls and darkened. He | | | | polymers out of the short natural ones, resulting in |
| described it as heavy. It could be bounced on the | | | | various hardnesses of rubber for various purposes. |
| ground and caught up again in hand. He said the | | | | Vulvanized rubber could then be as soft as car tires |
| natives liked to use it as something to stick their | | | | or as hard as bowling balls. Once vulcanization was |
| feathers into when making costumes. Another | | | | employed, rubber became widely used, especially in |
| Spanish historian writing at the time described the | | | | the automotive industry. |
| Mexican Indians making shoes, head-gear, clothing, | | | | Today, rubber is no longer made from trees, but |
| and other watertight articles of the gum of a tree. | | | | from petroleum. Mixed with various additives, it can |
| This delighted European readers as something quite | | | | be used both as primary building material and a |
| exotic. | | | | secondary one, such as in gaskets. |
| The actual introduction of any useful applications for | | | | So, the next time you are driving down the road on |
| rubber in Europe seems was after the Portuguese | | | | your car tires, remember the Peruvian Indians who |
| colonized Brazil in the early part of the sixteenth | | | | made their own primitive "base balls" out of sap from |
| century. The Portuguese found uses for rubber in | | | | rubber trees. |