Discovery : Rubber helps to make life comfortable

 

The world's first cars had iron wheels. These made a horrible sound as they moved along the road. Later on, Frenchman Andre Michelin had an idea; he put the wheels in pneumatic tyres(filled with air and made of rubber). The noise as well as shaking stopped causing amazement . That happened at the end of the 19th century. Today , many useful things are made of rubber. It helped man to conquer air space - the first balloons and aeroprobes were made of silk mixed throughout with raw rubber. Diver's suits and masks were likewise made of rubber. So the divers could reach the ocean depths due to rubber. About a hundred years ago there appeared electric street lamps and telephones. The cables were again coated with rubber. today, rubber helps to make the strong and sensitive"fingers" of robots, house foundations in earthquake prone areas and even artificial hearts. At the end of the 15th century Christopher Columbus and his seamen brought to Europe strange bouncing balls of rubber. They were taken to be little more than amusing toys and were soon forgotten. In the 18th century Charles Marie de la Condamine of France presented to the Academy of Paris easily bent of folded limps of thickened sap of the South American rubber tree. The learned scholars considered him an eccentric and rubber was forgotten again. In the course of time people found some use for rubber in England. They made erasers to rub off pencil marks. And in 1821 the first rubber factory was set up at Vienna Austria. Then people learned to turn the heavy sticky stuff into elastic rubber. Millions of waterproof rubber shoes and comfortable shoulder-straps for holding up trousers were brought into use and became popular. Rubber trees can only grow in the regions of the Earth that are noted for a hot climate. So what shall people in cold climates do?In 1932 the Russian scientist S.Lebedev thought up and worked out a way of making artificial rubber.