 have made artificial rubber that excels the natural product in many respects. Called “Duprene,” this substance is already being manufactured on a commercial scale. An acre of rubber trees yields approximately 500 pounds of rubber in 500 years; but an acre-large factory can turn out 200 tons of man-made rubber in five hours! And the raw materials, including sulphur, salt and natural gas, are well-nigh inexhaustible. Natural rubber’s weaknessâ€”its deterioration from contact with heat, oil, acids and alkaloids, is largely removed in “Duprene.” Though it now costs a $1 a pound, six times the price of rubber, “Duprene” has already found a market in gaskets, tubing, and many other uses where rubber is exposed to chemical decay.
To those who remember camphor as a smelly substance applied in treating colds, it may be a surprise to know that camphor is an essential ingredient in pyroxylin plastics and safety glass. The only source of natural camphor is the Japanese island of Formosa. In short, we were long dependent on one small spot on the globe, subject to the vagaries of shipping, tariff, and the possibility of war, for an important product.
It is under these circumstances that research works at its best. No time is wasted in devising substitutes for natural products when they are cheap and plentiful. But let there be a threat of scarcity or high price, and immediately all the guns of science are pointed at a synthetic. So it was with camphor. In 1934, after over $3,000,000 had been spent in various laboratories in a vain hunt for artificial camphor, chemists of the Newport Company derived an excellent synthetic from American turpentine. This new synthetic is now helping make the nine million pounds of safety glass the automobile industry will require in 1936.
The cunning sandwich of materials that compose safety glass is a strange union of man’s newest with man’s oldest chemical achievement. Glass goes far back into ancient history. Yet the effort expended by plastic research is matched by the glass chemist’s constant endeavor to transform his material with new life and new uses. The Corning Glass Works recently completed tests aimed at producing a material long considered impossibleâ€”a glass that would endure the terrific heat of direct flame on top of kitchen stoves.
During these trials, scientists with doctor’s degress became cooks. Glass made from 1,500 different formulae was tested. To reproduce actual kitchen conditions, these eminent men presided over the frying of 18,000 pounds of potatoes in glassware over many kinds of wood, coal, oil, gas and electric stoves!
As a direct result of this ordeal by fire came Pyrex glassware that defies flame and can be used as a serving dish on the table. More that that, laboratory workers cataloged the performance of 1,500 glass formulae, and increased immeasurably their knowledge of the product.
From the same laboratory has come fibrous glass, spun to a fineness seven to fifty times that of a human hair. A glass wool made up of these fibers resembles cotton batting, and is used extensively as insulation in ships and electric refrigerators, where vibration causes ordinary insulating material to settle. In addition, these superfine fibers have been wound around electric wires for insulation with excellent results; and they have been twisted into yarn and woven into textiles!
Today we wonder at the marvel of plastics, at the adaptability of glass. Tomorrow may see still a new material, with new advantages. It has been said that the pen is mightier than the sword but the fragile glass test tube bids fair to outrank them both.