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Article: Tire and Rubber Industry
- Article from:
- Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
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TIRE AND RUBBER INDUSTRY
Rubber is an unsaturated organic compound made of carbon and hydrogen. Natural rubber is collected from wild plants or plants cultivated on plantations. It is made from a secretion of certain plants that is called latex. It is tough, can stretch, and is a poor conductor of electricity, making it useful for a wide array of products, the most noteworthy of which are tires.
Rubber may have been used by the Maya Indians of Central and South America as far back as the eleventh century. Christopher Columbus (1451
–
1506) saw Native Americans playing with balls of tree gum on his second voyage to the New World about 1493. During the early nineteenth century, ...