Rubber a Shilling a Pound.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVIII, Issue 6, 7 August 1912, Page 62

Rubber a Shilling a Pound.

It is not to be supposed that the average business man will jump for joy to receive Professor Verkin’s assurance that the ’• Production and Polymerisation of Isoprene ami its Homologues ’’ can bo accomplished on commercial lines, but it is conceivable that many of your readers max be considerably interested to learn from the eminent scientist that it is now possible to produce synthetic or laboratory made rubber at a price that would show a handsome profit if sold at half-a-crown a pound. Professor Perkin, who has other claims to fame beyond being the son of the discoverer of aniline dyes which effected one of the great revolutions in the imlustri.il world, made hi*, disclosure before the Society of ('hemical Industry ie<*ently. lie. like other experts. deprecates the term “ artificial rubber.” because he maintains that the synthetic produ.t is in all respects pure rubber, ami identical with the natural product. He assured hi*, audience that such rub ber -ould be produced from raw material at a shilling a pound, er it might be less. Describing the history of the discovery. Professor Perkin related quite a romance of chemical research. He told how, at the end of 1909, Mr E. 11. Strange, of Messrs Strange and Graham, technical research chemist*, of London, directed his organisation of -chemists, headed by Dr. Matthews, to the study of the synthetic production of rubber. Professor Perkin was himself afterwards approached, and later Sir William Ramsay joined the group as consultant, with Professor Pornbach, of the Pasteur Institute. In July. 1910. came an interesting episode in this romantic research. It appears that Dr Matthews had left isoprene (a mobile liquid which is a family relation of natural rubber) in contact with sodium, ami. by the following September. found that it had turned into a solid .mass of rubber. Further investigation proved sodium to be a general polvmerising (or thickening) agent of first-rate importance. * uriously enough, the first announcement of this discovery’ was made by Professor Carl Den ies, of Germany, who di**<t>\cred it himself three months k ter. although owing to the English patent not having been published, he was unaware tha: he had been anticipated. I'he great importance of thi* discovery. Professor Perkin proceeded, was in the fact that the synthetic rubber contained no impurities. The paper was a highly technical one. but the purport of it was that a prod" ’ 1. s b» en manufactured by fermentation fr >m isoprene that is claimed to be “identical with natural rubber, and that it «-an lie made for a shilling a pound or thereabout*. Ji it i- proved that the result* of the lalvoiatory experiments <an be reproduc'd on a commercial «cale. the importance id the discovery «an scarcely be overestimated. A* it is. in their experiment* in the production of synthetic rubber, tin- English **cien:ist< nave, it is said, found a method of producing acetone at a cost of k-s* than ,L‘3O per ton, vbi' h i- •** thin a third of its present mark*-* value. A.-etone plavs a mo*t important part in the manufacture of cordite. an<l in time* of war it- price runs up to bun In ;!•* of p.un.i- per ton. From a national dvfen e point of view, this dixoveix G the more important f the ■ a . • D’ ■«: I 1 - .1 ’.<<l bi* . . fl. .. -