The History of Rubber. Franz Carl Achard's “Experiments on Elastic Resin”

Abstract

Abstract It is a curious fact that it is in the history of rubber that extreme difficulty is encountered in altering current beliefs. This is attributable in part to the fact that the history of rubber is usually treated in a cursory way in the introduction to a work, and an investigation of the original sources is ordinarily omitted. It is also attributable to the general belief that everything has been settled in this field, and therefore that it is sufficient merely to refer to this or to that original work. The present writer has plenty of evidence at his disposal to support this contention. Although of great value in its day, the compilation of scientific publications on the entire history of rubber by A. Slingervoet Ramondt is today out of date in many respects. Unfortunately too, much that is of value in this work has been forgotten. Slingervoet Ramondt cites, for example, Gmelin's “Handbuch der Chemie” to the effect that Achard studied the action of nitric acid on rubber. As a matter of fact the original work of Achard is not mentioned, either in any notes in the text or in the chronological list of references to the literature. The present author has therefore deemed it a pleasant task to make better known the contributions of a German chemist to the earliest investigations of rubber, a chemist whose name is already held in high esteem for his work in another field, the production of beet sugar.