A Short History of Rubber Cables

Key words: underground residential distribution cable, insulation, natural rubber, synthetic rubber,
Kerite insulation, Okonite insulation, polymers
Carl Zuidema and Wes Kegerise
The Okonite Company, Ramsey, NJ
Robert Fleming
The Kerite Company, Seymour, CT
Mark Welker
ExxonMobil Chemical Company, Baytown,
TX
Steven Boggs
Institute of Materials Science, University of
Connecticut, Storrs

Discovery and Vulcanization of Rubber In 1770 Joseph Priestley coined the word "rubber" for a gumlike substance which would erase pencil lines by rubbing. Natural
rubber was collected from wild plants, principally the rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis. Although natural rubber had been used by Native Americans long before discovery by Europeans and sporadic attempts had been made to develop commercial products from natural rubber, natural rubber could not be transformed into a substance with good flexibility in both hot and cold environments, without adhesiveness or tack. Charles Goodyear, a hardware merchant in Naugatuck, Connecticut, was able to
accomplish this milestone in 1839 when he vulcanized natural rubber using sulfur and heat, for which he was granted a patent in 1844 [1]. The first major commercial application of vulcanized rubber was as a waterproofing agent for the Macintosh raincoat which did not get sticky in muggy London summers. By 1850, the Naugatuck Valley of Connecticut had become the rubber center of the world. By the time of Goodyear's death in 1860, the rubber industry employed over 60,000 persons. Julius Day, Goodyear's cousin, provided much of the investment that made all of this happen. Austin Goodyear Day, Julius' son, worked with Goodyear and developed an improved rubber formulation. He later created a business empire supplying rubber to mills in the area that was based on the technology he developed
for cleaning rubber. In 1853, A. G. Day cleaned 55,000 lbs of rubber, and in 1859, he cleaned and sold 500,000 lbs of rubber....


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