WONDERFUL DISCOVERY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 71, 19 March 1912, Page 2

WONDERFUL DISCOVERY.

A SUBSTITUTE FOR RUBBER. Considerable excitement has been occasioned in industrial circles by the announcement of a cheap and practicable substitute for rubber and other substances that meets the hardest tests. The inventor of the article, which is made from any waste iibrous substance, is John B. Hall, a wealthy resident of Philadelphia. Tests were made last December before a committee of unimpeachable scientists, but the identity of the inventor was not disclosed. Upon the announcement to the world of the favourable verdict of the scientists, however, newspaper reporters succeeded in unearthing the modest inventor. Cotton stalks, coin stalks, and other fibrous material, hundreds of thousands of tons of which are wasted every, year, are the raw material of thp rubber substitute. -Not alone can the inventor make a substitute for hard rubber, equal to and in many instances superior to hard rubber itself, but he can also make fibre, porcelain, cork and horn. The substance is made at a cost greatly below the cost of rubber. George R. Henderson, a mechanical engineer known all over the United States, who was a member of the committee of scientists, said of the discovery; “I consider the invention a wonderful one. It is destined to becoiqo.a new world material, with illimitable commercial possibilities,. It promises to be of inestimable value not only .to the electrical industry, but also in many other industries of our modern civilisation.” Already a prominent New York financier has offered to organise a £10,000,000 company for the manufacture of the product. Mr Hall is holding the offer in abeyance. He does not seem to be anxious to make money out of it himself. “I want to dispose of the process where it will do the most good for the greatest number of persons,” he stated. The dominant idea in Ids mind is to benefit the 'Southern States by providing a use for cotton stalks. Pie proposes to bide his own time in determining what he will do about manufacturing and marketing the product.