In Search of a Miracle

Rubber used to grow on trees (Hevea brasiliensis): now it flowers in the imagination of would-be inventors all over the U.S. They cook strange messes on the kitchen stove, squeeze out plant juices in home laboratories, and set out for Washington bearing black or tawny samples. Last week's arrival was Dr. Glenn L. Casto, dentist of Spencer, W. Va.

He told Rubber Coordinator Arthur B. Newhall, a former Goodrich official, that he had put together natural gas, wood pulp, coal, lamp black and other ingredients into a rubber-substance which had already given 10,000 miles of service as a tire retread. He had 50 pounds of it in his car, right outside the building. But his pilot plant back home, worse luck, had just been smashed by robbers and couldn't be inspected by government experts just then. For Coordinator Newhall the amateur rubber-makers pose a problem: among many crackpot processes, is there one he dare not miss? To date at least 20 ideas have been considered worth investigation. Nothing new has turned up. There are half a dozen ways to make rubber--about 50, if impracticable processes are included. More than 1,000 plants are known to contain latex, from guayule (TIME, Dec. 29) on down. WPB experts are open-minded, but rubber samples are hard to analyze. So chemists often don't know what they contain.

They may contain new or reclaimed rubber, which makes them useless in solving the rubber shortage; or the process may be a marginal one, already rejected. Some of the scores of ideas, good & bad:

> Kok-sagyz, a Russian cousin of the American dandelion, was recommended by Dr. Paul J. Kolachov, Louisville scientist, to the National Farm Chemurgic Council as better than guayule. On 7,000,000 U.S. acres, 600,000 tons of rubber could be produced. Russia has been asked to send seeds. But ten years may be needed for such large-scale development.

> One delegation to Washington advised seaweed, which is technically possible. Drawback: too much seaweed produces too little rubber.

> Soybeans, released from duty as basic material for Ford car parts, are well regarded by the Department of Agriculture.

> From an unpainted shack near Tampa came J. Andrew Tatro, displaying a "biscuit" of "rubber" produced (said he) in jig-time from a mysterious hybrid of two latex-bearing plants, suitable for Florida cultivation. Only J. Andrew and his son Andrew Orvill know the secret.

> At Los Angeles, Nelson J. Hansen, geologist, teamed up with Dr. Carl Omeron, dentist, to extract rubber from the red-flowered poinsettia.

> A mysterious plant growing on his Maryland farm, treated with chemicals, was the basis for a rubber substitute produced by one Homer Pilkington.

> In the nonfloral field, Dr. E. P. Schoch, University of Texas, worked on the extraction of acetylene (base of neoprene) from natural gas. What the U.S. needs are not new sources of rubber so much as new processes of manufacture or improvements on those known. Example: M.I.T. rubber research chemist Dr. Desiree le Beau is working on a new process to reclaim synthetic rubber for reuse. (Methods used to reclaim natural rubber won't work on synthetics, where each type must be differently treated.) But rubber experts are skeptical of most inventions or improvements. Said President L. Collyer of Goodrich last week: "No laboratory or garden miracle that may be performed now can be capitalized in time to lessen in any degree the necessity that faces this nation today of taking every rubber-saving step that it can."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.