ABSTRACT
I. INTRODUCTION TO ADHESION THEORIES A. General Background We seem to generally prefer to believe that the forces of adhesion were virtually unrecognized and certainly not conjectured about very scientifically until our present time. In reality, some of our most famous scientists of earlier times had already developed a keen interest in adhesion during their times. Patrick (90) reminds us that the Egyptians had to understand the general phenomenon, as demonstrated in the veneering technology applied in their burial coffins. He also records the following words of Sir Isaac Newton some two and one-half centuries ago in his book Optiks. "There are agents in nature able to make the particles of joints stick together by very strong attractions and it is the business of experimental philosophy to find them out." DeBruyne (91) similarly reminded us of this fact in his paper titled ''Fundamentals of Adhesion,'' which he delivered at one of the earliest international conferences on the bonding of aircraft in 1957. It would seem to be an appropriate subject for the managing director of CIBA whose laboratories had conceived the most practical and successful adhesive system (REDUX) for the successful bonding of the early Fokker Netherlands aircraft in 1949.
