ABSTRACT
The development of Synthetic Rubber (SR) again involved technical change, which enabled an increasingly wide range of elastomers to be produced. SR was first made in the late nineteenth century, probably by the English chemist Greville Williams, when isoprene prepared by distilling turpentine was reconverted to an elastic mass on prolonged standing. The new SRs were much improved during the Second World War, when they became widely used. Their preparation methods were streamlined, and types suitable for particular applications were developed. Several more commercially significant new rubbers were developed from the 1950s to the 1990s, although the pace of innovation hardly matched that of earlier decades. The technical advances explored above are now related to economic and political developments from the 1900s to the 1990s. This part of the SR story helps complete the picture of how the industry has evolved up to the present.
