ABSTRACT
Rubber is a very versatile raw material. In 1889 the Pneumatic Tyre and Booth's Cycle Agency was formed to produce it commercially, and in 1890 this firm became the Dunlop Rubber Company that later grew into one of the world's biggest rubber goods manufacturers, which is now part of the Sumitomo group. The automobile was introduced in the 1880s in Germany and soon spread to other European countries and North America. The non-tyre rubber items have grown steadily in absolute volume and range, and are usually grouped in three categories. Raw rubbers start off life as high polymers possessing long, flexible molecules, which are able to be crosslinked to form a three-dimensional molecular network. Vulcanization was the crucial technological breakthrough enabling rubber to become a pre-eminent industrial raw material. Mixing has been greatly streamlined through computer-controlled techniques, and these often involve continuous procedures joined to integrate processing that also includes the shaping stage.
