Early History of Plastics

Early History of Plastics

Humans have benefited from the use of polymers since approximately 1600 BC when the ancient Mesoamericans first started to use natural rubber in different applications.

They made solid rubber balls, solid and hollow rubber human figurines, wide rubber bands to haft stone ax heads to wooden handles, and other items (. They used liquid rubber for medicines, painted with it, and spattered it on paper that was then burned in ritual.

The raw material for most Mesoamerican rubber balls and for other Mesoamerican rubber artifacts is a latex acquired from the Castilla elastica tree. The tree is indigenous to tropical lowland Mexico and Central America. Castilla latex is a sticky white liquid that when dried is too brittle to retain its shape. Sixteenth-century Spaniards relate that ancient Mesoamerican peoples processed the raw material by mixing C. elastica latex with juice from Ipomoea alba (a species of morning glory vine), one chronicler noting that “ulli is the resin from a tree that grows in the hot lands … when they mix it with another, the resin coagulates”. Pedro Martyr, the Spanish royal chronicler, commented that “they make these balls from the juice of a certain vine … once transformed into a mass they give it the form they desire”. In the present study, we investigated this processing technology, the extent to which it improves the mechanical properties of latex for balls, rubber bands, and hollow figurines, and the chemical changes responsible for property development.

Source: 

Hosler D., Burkett S. L., Tarkanian M. J. 1999. Prehistoric polymers: rubber processing in ancient mesoamerica. Science 284, 1998–1991 

Europeans discovering properties of rubber

The first Europeans to discover rubber were the Spanish Conquistardos who invaded South America in the sixteenth century. The Peruvians used latex rubber to make cloaks and galoshes as well as ornamental goods, and it was from them that the Spanish Conquistadors learned how to coat their stockings, and then their boots and cloaks in latex rubber to make them comfortable and waterproof in the jungle.

Natural Rubber was first brought to Britain in 1792 by the french explorer and physicist Charles Marie de la Condamine. Initially natural rubber was used by architects and draftsmen as erasers.

Source: Fantastic Plastic product design consumer culture by Susan Mossman, Black dog publishing

Problems with rubber

The rubber and gutta percha were not without a human cost. The local indigenous workers, who obtained the sap from the trees in South America and Congo, which gave latex rubber and gutta percha, were exploited on the plantations and often suffered brutal punishments if they were did not fulfil their quota. It was estimated that in Congo at the end of the nineteenth centry a rubber workers life was worth 10 kg of rubber. In South America, according to Sir Roger Casement's report of 1912, 4000 tons of rubber cost the lives of at least 30 000 indigenous Indians.

Source: Fantastic Plastic product design consumer culture by Susan Mossman, Black dog publishing

Timeline of plastics (1st version)

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