The history of rubber hoses
Little known is that the history of the rubber hose is also the history of the discovery and production of latex for innumerable industrial uses, large and small, over the course of almost five centuries. Now more than 4 million tons of natural rubber and 7 million tons of synthetic rubber are produced worldwide. But before our current era of mass production, the indigenous peoples of the Americas, especially in the Amazon, knew of rubber before the entry of Europeans in the 15th century.
Who would have guessed that before our modern age, handmade shoes, balls, and waterproof buckets were three utilitarian objects made of rubber? Later, in the 18th century, interest in the properties of latex by Charles de la Condamine in Peru led to the first scientific report on the subject, ushering in our modern day fascination and scientific experimentation with the raw material. Around the same time, Pierre Joseph Macquer of Paris, author of the first chemical dictionary, followed up on Codamine’s research and found that the substance could be made into tubes.
However, it was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that rubber, and especially the advent of rubber hoses for widespread use in firefighting, the automotive industry, and the medical field, came into prominence. 1821 saw the first fire hose patent from James Boyd of Boston, Massachusetts. That first behemoth weighed nearly eighty-five pounds, but it replaced the leather hoses of yesteryear, which had been prone to splitting and cracking under intense water pressure. Boyd’s invention was made with a rubber-lined cotton web, a rudimentary method with basic principles that are still widely applicable today.
Only twenty years later, when BF Goodrich discovered how to vulcanize rubber in the 1840s, helping it to withstand extreme temperatures, he expanded the possibilities of rubber as a protective surface and container. In the following five years, the rubber band was also patented. Only years later, the rubber industry flourished in Brazil, where rubber trees were extracted for their raw latex. To accommodate this growth, its seeds were shipped to Africa and South East Asia via London, where large-scale production began and continues to this day. At all times, the material had been used to make tires and textured treads for horse-drawn carriages. As we now know, cars adopted this same technology, helping passengers to feel the vibrations of the road.
As with many other industries, the war created the circumstances for even more extensive use of raw materials such as latex. Blood transfusions with latex tubes emerged with World War I along with oxygen breathing systems in aeronautics, while naval ships used the rubber hose for refueling at sea in World War II. Hydraulic systems large and small, from heavy machinery to dishwashers, continue to rely on rubber hose to transport pressurized fluids, making rubber components ubiquitous in a plethora of machinery. It would not be an exaggeration to say that it is one of the most important and widely used materials of our time.