Noble Obsession by Charles Slack, Theia Books, New York, $24.95, ISBN 0786867892 Reviewed by Mick Hamer
RAW rubber is pretty useless. It’s sticky when it’s hot and cracks up when it’s cold. It was only when the American inventor Charles Goodyear discovered vulcanisation that rubber became the practical industrial product that we know so well today.
For five long years Goodyear worked his way through the periodic table trying to find an additive that would make rubber stable. The breakthrough came in 1839, when he added sulphur and baked the samples in his wife’s kitchen stove.
Charles Slack’s absorbing book…
