Rubber gets its name from the Indian word "rubber", which literally means "tears of a tree." Maya and Aztecs extracted it from the sap of the Brazilian hevea (Hevea brasiliensis or rubber tree), similar to the white sap of dandelion, which darkened and hardened in the air. From the juice they evaporated a sticky dark resinous substance "rubber", making primitive waterproof shoes, fabrics, vessels, and children's toys from it. Also, the Indians had a team game reminiscent of basketball, in which special rubber balls were used, which were remarkable for their amazing jumping ability. During the Great Geographical Discoveries, Columbus brought to Spain, among other wonders of South America, several of these balls. They fell in love with the Spaniards, who, having changed the rules of Indian competitions, invented something that became the prototype of today's football.
The next mention of rubber appeared only in 1735, when the French traveler and naturalist Charles Condamine, exploring the Amazon basin, discovered the Hevea tree and its milky sap for Europeans. The tree discovered by the members of the expedition gave off a strange, rapidly hardening resin, which was later called "rubber" by thinkers from the Paris Academy of Sciences. After in 1738, Condamine brought to the continent samples of rubber and various products from it, along with a detailed description of the methods of extraction, in Europe began to search for ways to use this substance. The French weaved rubber threads with cotton and used them as garters and suspenders. The hereditary English shoemaker Samuel Peel in 1791 received a patent for the manufacture of fabrics impregnated with a solution of rubber in turpentine, creating the company Peal & Co. At the same time, the first experiments on protecting shoes with covers made of such a fabric arose. In 1823, a certain Charles Mackintosh from Scotland invented the first waterproof raincoat, adding a thin piece of rubber between two layers of fabric. The raincoats quickly became popular, were named after their creator and marked the beginning of a real "rubber boom". And soon in America, in damp weather, they began to put on clumsy Indian rubber shoes - galoshes - over their shoes. Until his death, Macintosh continued to mix rubber with various substances such as soot, oils, sulfur in an attempt to change its properties. But his experiments were unsuccessful.
The rubberized fabric was used to make clothes, hats, and roofs of vans and houses. However, such products had one drawback - a narrow temperature range of rubber elasticity. In cold weather, such fabric hardened and could crack, and in warm weather, on the contrary, softening, turned into a fetid sticky mass. And if the clothes could be put away in a cool place, then the owners of roofs made of rubberized fabric had to put up with unpleasant odors. Thus, the fascination with new material quickly passed. And the hot summer days brought ruin to the companies that established the production of rubber, since all their products turned into foul-smelling jelly. And the world again forgot about rubber and everything connected with it for several years.
A chance helped to survive the rebirth of rubber products. Charles Nelson Goodyear, who lived in America, has always believed that rubber can turn into a good material. He nurtured this idea for many years, persistently mixing it with everything that came to hand: with sand, with salt, even with pepper. In 1939, having spent all his savings and owed more than 35 thousand dollars, he achieved success.
Contemporaries ridiculed the eccentric researcher: "If you meet a man in rubber boots, a rubber coat, a rubber top hat and a rubber wallet in which there will not be a single cent, then you can be sure - you are in front of Goodyear."
There is a legend that the chemical process he discovered, called vulcanization, appeared thanks to a piece of mac cloak forgotten on the stove. One way or another, it was the sulfur atoms that united the molecular chains of natural rubber, turning it into a heat- and frost-resistant, elastic material. It is he who is called rubber today. The story of this stubborn man has a happy ending, he sold the patent for his invention and paid all his debts.
During Goodyear's lifetime, a rapid production of rubber began. The United States immediately took the lead in the production of galoshes, which were sold all over the world, including Russia. They were expensive and only rich people could afford to buy them. The most curious thing is that galoshes were used not to keep the main shoes from getting wet, but as house slippers for guests, so that they did not stain carpets and parquet. In Russia, the first enterprise manufacturing rubber products was opened in St. Petersburg in 1860. The German businessman Ferdinand Krauskopf, who already had a factory for the production of galoshes in Hamburg, assessed the prospects of the new market, found investors and created the Partnership of the Russian-American Manufactory.
Few people know that the Finnish company Nokia, among other things, from 1923 to 1988 specialized in the production of rubber boots and galoshes. Actually, during the years of crises, this helped to keep the company afloat. The world famous Nokia has become thanks to its cell phones.
In the second half of the 19th century, Brazil experienced the peak of its heyday, being a monopolist in the cultivation of hevea. Manaus, the former center of the rubber region, has become the richest city in the western hemisphere. What was the stunning opera house built in a city hidden by the jungle. It was created by the best architects in France, and building materials for it were brought from Europe itself. Brazil carefully guarded the source of its luxury. The death penalty was imposed for an attempt to export hevea seeds. However, in 1876, the Englishman Henry Wickham secretly removed seventy thousand seeds of Hevea in the holds of the ship "Amazonas". They served as the basis for the first rubber plantations, established in the colonies of England in Southeast Asia. This is how cheap natural British rubber appeared on the world market.
Soon, a variety of rubber products conquered the whole world. Conveyor belts, all kinds of drive belts, shoes, flexible electrical insulation, linen elastic bands, baby balloons, shock absorbers, gaskets, hoses and much, much more were made from rubber. There is simply no other rubber-like product. It is insulating, waterproof, flexible, stretchable and compressible. At the same time, it is durable, strong, easy to process and resistant to abrasion. The heritage of the Indians turned out to be much more valuable than all the gold of the famous Eldorado. It is impossible to imagine our entire technical civilization without rubber.
The main application of the new material was with the discovery and distribution, first of rubber carriage tires, and then of car tires. Despite the fact that carriages with metal tires were very uncomfortable and made a terrible noise and shaking, the new invention was not welcomed. In America, even carriages on massive solid tires were banned, since they were reputed to be very dangerous due to the impossibility of noise to warn passers-by about the proximity of the vehicle.
In Russia, such horse-drawn carriages also caused dissatisfaction. The main problem lay in the fact that they often threw mud at pedestrians who did not have time to rebound. The Moscow authorities had to issue a special law on equipping carriages with rubber tires with special license plates. This was done so that the townspeople could notice and bring their offenders to justice.
The production of rubber increased many times over, but the demand for it continued to grow. For about a hundred years, scientists around the world have been looking for a way to learn how to make it chemically. Gradually it was discovered that natural rubber is a mixture of several substances, but 90 percent of its mass is polyisoprene hydrocarbon. Such substances belong to the group of polymers - high molecular weight products formed by combining very many, identical molecules of much simpler substances called monomers. In the case of rubber, these were isoprene molecules. Under favorable conditions, the monomer molecules joined together into long, flexible strand chains. This reaction of the formation of a polymer is called polymerization. The remaining ten percent in the rubber was made up of resinous mineral and protein substances. Without them, polyisoprene became very unstable, losing its valuable properties of elasticity and strength in air. Thus, in order to learn how to make artificial rubber, scientists had to solve three things: synthesize isoprene, polymerize it, and protect the resulting rubber from decomposition. Each of these tasks proved to be extremely difficult. In 1860, the English chemist Williams obtained isoprene from rubber, which was a colorless liquid with a specific odor. In 1879, the Frenchman Gustave Bouchard heated up isoprene and, with the help of hydrochloric acid, was able to carry out the reverse reaction - to obtain rubber. In 1884, the British scientist Tilden isolated isoprene by decomposing turpentine during heating. Despite the fact that each of these people contributed to the study of rubber, the secret of its manufacture remained unsolved in the 19th century, because all the discovered methods were unsuitable for industrial production due to the low yield of isoprene, the high cost of raw materials, the complexity of technical processes and a number of other factors.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, researchers wondered whether isoprene is really needed to make rubber? Is there a way to obtain the required macromolecule from other hydrocarbons? In 1901, the Russian scientist Kondakov discovered that dimethylbutadiene, left in the dark for a year, turns into a rubbery substance. This method was later used during the First World War by Germany, cut off from all sources. The synthetic rubber was of very poor quality, the manufacturing process was very complicated, and the price was prohibitive. After the war, this methyl rubber was never produced anywhere else. In 1914, research scientists Matthews and Strange from England made a very good rubber from divinyl using metallic sodium. But their discovery did not go further than experiments in the laboratory, because it was not clear how, in turn, to produce divinyl. They also failed to create a plant for synthesis in the factory.
Fifteen years later, our compatriot Sergei Lebedev found the answer to both of these questions. Before the World War, Russian factories produced about twelve thousand tons of rubber a year from imported rubber. After the revolution ended, the needs of the new government, which was industrializing the industry, in rubber increased many times over. One tank required 800 kilograms of rubber, a car - 160 kilograms, an airplane - 600 kilograms, a ship - 68 tons. Every year, purchases of rubber abroad increased and increased, despite the fact that in 1924 its price reached two and a half thousand gold rubles per ton. The country's leadership was concerned not so much with the need to pay such huge sums of money, but rather with the dependence into which the suppliers put the Soviet state. At the highest level, it was decided to develop an industrial method for the manufacture of synthetic rubber. For this, at the end of 1925, the Supreme Council of the National Economy proposed a competition for the best way to obtain it. The competition was international, however, according to the conditions, rubber was to be made from products mined in the Soviet Union, and the price for it should not exceed the world average for the last five years. The results of the competition were summed up on January 1, 1928 in Moscow based on the results of the analysis of the submitted samples weighing at least two kilograms.
Sergei Vasilievich Lebedev was born on July 25, 1874 in the family of a priest in Lublin. When the boy was seven years old, his father died, and his mother was forced to move with the children to their parents in Warsaw. While studying at the Warsaw gymnasium, Sergei became friends with the son of the famous Russian chemist Wagner. Often visiting their house, Sergei listened to the professor's fascinating stories about his fellow friends Mendeleev, Butlerov, Menshutkin, as well as about the mysterious science dealing with the transformation of substances. In 1895, having successfully graduated from the gymnasium, Sergei entered the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of St. Petersburg University. The young man spent all his free time in the house of Maria Ostroumova, who was his mother's sister. She had six children, but Sergey was especially interested in her cousin Anna. She was a promising artist and studied with Ilya Repin. When the young people realized that their feelings were far from their relatives, they decided to get engaged. In 1899, Lebedev was arrested for participating in student riots and exiled from the capital for a year. However, this did not prevent him from brilliantly graduating from the university in 1900. During the Russo-Japanese War, Sergei Vasilyevich was drafted into the army, and when he returned in 1906, he devoted himself entirely to research. He lived all day in the laboratory, making himself a bed of blankets stored in case of fire. Anna Petrovna Ostroumova several times found Sergei in the hospital, being treated for burns received as a result of dangerous experiments, which the chemist always conducted himself. Already at the end of 1909, working almost alone, he managed to achieve impressive results, demonstrating to colleagues the rubbery polymer of divinyl.
Sergei Vasilyevich Lebedev was well aware of all the difficulties in the production of synthetic rubber, but decided to take part in the competition. The time was difficult, Lebedev headed the Department of General Chemistry at the Leningrad University, so he had to work in the evenings, on weekends and completely free of charge. Fortunately, several students decided to help him. To meet the deadline, everyone worked with great stress. Difficult experiments were carried out in the worst conditions. The participants in this enterprise later recalled that absolutely nothing was missing and they had to do or find on their own. For example, ice for cooling chemical processes was all together chopped on the Neva. Lebedev, in addition to his specialty, mastered the professions of a glassblower, locksmith and electrician. And yet things were moving forward. Thanks to previous long-term research, Sergei Vasilyevich immediately abandoned experiments with isoprene and settled on divinyl as a starting product. As a readily available raw material for the production of divinyl, Lebedev tried oil, but then settled on alcohol. Alcohol turned out to be the most realistic starting material. The main problem with the decomposition reaction of ethyl alcohol to divinyl, hydrogen and water was the lack of a suitable catalyst. Sergei Vasilievich suggested that it might be one of the natural clays. In 1927, while on vacation in the Caucasus, he constantly searched for and studied clay samples. He found the one he needed on Koktebel. The reaction in the presence of the clay he found gave an excellent result, and at the end of 1927 divinyl was obtained from alcohol.
Anna Lebedeva, the wife of the great chemist, recalled: “Sometimes, while resting, he lay on his back with his eyes closed. It seemed that Sergei Vasilyevich was asleep, and then he took out his notebook and began to write chemical formulas. Many times, sitting in a concert, and being excited by the music, he hastily took out his notebook or even a poster and began to write something down, and then put everything in his pocket. The same could have happened at exhibitions."
Polymerization of divinyl was carried out by Lebedev according to the method of British researchers with the presence of metallic sodium. At the final stage, the resulting rubber was mixed with magnesia, kaolin, soot and some other components to prevent decay. Since the finished product was obtained in scanty quantities - a couple of grams per day - the work went on almost until the last days of the competition. At the end of December, the synthesis of two kilograms of rubber was completed, and he was sent to the capital.
Anna Petrovna wrote in her memoirs: “On the last day, revival reigned in the laboratory. Those present were happy and happy. As usual, Sergei Vasilyevich was silent and restrained. Smiling slightly, he looked at us, and everything indicated that he was pleased. The rubber looked like a large gingerbread, similar in color to honey. The smell was pungent and rather unpleasant. After the description of the method for making rubber was completed, it was packed in a box and taken to Moscow."
The jury finished examining the submitted samples in February 1928. There were very few of them. The results of the work of scientists from France and Italy, but the main struggle unfolded between Sergei Lebedev and Boris Byzov, who received divinyl from oil. In total, Lebedev's rubber was recognized as the best. The production of divinyl from petroleum feedstock was more difficult to commercialize at the time.
Newspapers around the world wrote about the invention of synthetic rubber in Russia. Many did not like it. The famous American scientist Thomas Edison publicly stated: “In principle, it is impossible to make synthetic rubber. I tried to do the experiment myself and was convinced of this. Therefore, the news from the Land of the Soviets is yet another lie."
The event was of great importance for the Soviet industry, allowing to reduce the consumption of natural rubbers. Also, the synthetic product had new properties, for example, resistance to gasoline and oils. Sergei Vasilievich was instructed to continue research and manufacture an industrial method for the production of rubber. The hard work began again. However, now Lebedev had more than enough opportunities. Realizing the importance of the work, the government gave everything it needed. A synthetic rubber laboratory was created at the Leningrad University. During the year, an experimental installation was built in it, producing two to three kilograms of rubber per day. At the end of 1929, the technology of the factory process was completed, and in February 1930, the construction of the first plant began in Leningrad. The factory laboratory, equipped by Lebedev's orders, was a real scientific center for synthetic rubber and at the same time one of the best chemical laboratories of that time. Here the famous chemist later formulated the rules that allowed his followers to correctly identify the substances for synthesis. In addition, Lebedev had the right to select any specialists for himself. On any questions that have arisen, he should contact Kirov personally. The construction of the pilot plant was completed in January 1931, and in February the first cheap 250 kilograms of synthetic rubber were already received. In the same year, Lebedev was awarded the Order of Lenin and was elected to the Academy of Sciences. Soon, the construction of three more giant factories was laid according to a single project - in Efremov, Yaroslavl and Voronezh. And before the war, a plant appeared in Kazan. The capacity of each of them was ten thousand tons of rubber per year. They were built near the places where alcohol was produced. Initially, food products, mainly potatoes, were used as raw materials for alcohol. One ton of alcohol required twelve tons of potatoes, and at that time it took about five hundred kilograms of potatoes to make a tire for a car. The factories were declared Komsomol construction sites and were built at a staggering speed. In 1932, the first rubber was produced by the Yaroslavl plant. Initially, under production conditions, the synthesis of divinyl was difficult. The equipment needed to be adjusted, so Lebedev, together with his employees, went first to Yaroslavl, and then to Voronezh and Efremov. In the spring of 1934, in Efremov, Lebedev contracted typhus. He died shortly after returning home at the age of sixty. His body was buried in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra.
However, the case, which he gave such a significant foundation, developed. In 1934, the Soviet Union produced eleven thousand tons of artificial rubber, in 1935 - twenty-five thousand, and in 1936 - forty thousand. The most difficult scientific and technical problem was successfully solved. The ability to equip vehicles with domestically produced tires played an important role in the victory over fascism.
In second place in the production of synthetic rubbers at that time were the Germans, who were actively preparing for war. Their production was established at a plant in the city of Shkopau, which, after the victory, was taken by the USSR to Voronezh under the terms of reparations. The third producer of steel was the United States of America after the loss of natural rubber markets in early 1942. The Japanese captured Indochina, the Netherlands India and Malaya, where more than 90 percent of the natural product was extracted. After America entered World War II, sales to them were suspended, in response, the US government built 51 factories in less than three years.
Science also did not stand still. Manufacturing methods and raw materials base were improved. According to their application, synthetic rubbers were divided into general and special rubbers with specific properties. Special groups of artificial rubbers have emerged, such as latexes, curing oligomers, and plasticizer mixtures. By the end of the last century, the world production of these products reached twelve million tons per year, produced in twenty-nine countries. Until 1990, our country held the first place in terms of production of synthetic rubber. Half of the artificial rubbers produced in the USSR were exported. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the situation changed radically. From a leading position, our country was first among the laggards, and then dropped to the category of catch-up. In recent years, there has been an improvement in the situation in this industry. The share of Russia in the world market for the production of synthetic rubber today is nine percent.
