ARTIFICIAL RUBBER

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 233, 20 February 1913, Page 8

ARTIFICIAL RUBBER

PROGRESS OF DEVELOPMENT. The production of artilical rubber has not proceeded as rapidly as the announcements made a few months ago led laymen to expect. The famous German corporation known a= the Badische Avilin und Noda-Fabrik is stated to have put aside a very large sum of money for the purposes of research in connection with rubber and British chemists are studying the problem keenly. But the processes which have been devised already apparently are, not completely satisfactory. Dr. Mollwo Perkin, who holds the patents for the process which he discovered last, year, told a meeting of the Royal Society of Arts in London recently that he expected to see rapid progress made, but there seemed to be no immediate prospect of the artificial product taking the place entirely of natural rubber. When starch and sawdust were used for the purposes of manufacture the synthetic rubber should not cost more than Is a pound, as compared with the present price of about 4s a pound, but it was "on,' thing to produce a pure product in the laboratory and quite a different thing to manufacture it in bulk." The difficulties which had been encountered were being removed, of fermentation.