The car industry transformed the rubber industry
The car industry transformed the rubber industry in the U.S early in the twentieth century. The industry concentrated on producing shoes, bicycle and carriage tires, in the late-nineteenth century.
Prior and up to, World War I, rubber and automobile tires were fairly commonplace. In 1901 28,000 tires, coming with the vehicle, and including 68,000 replacement tires, were manufactured. By 1918, tires formed fifty percent of rubber sales, tires that came with the vehicle exceeded four million for new cars and total tire production reached 24.5 million.
Firms like Goodyear, Goodrich, and Firestone, and the formation of the industry’s center in Akron, Ohio, followed this surge of production. These production increases were possible thanks to improved technology. Basically, this innovation was mechanization. Before 1910, tires were built manually, the stretching, cementing, stitching each ply and the beads around an iron core, was done by men.
In 1909, saw the Goodyear company patent a machine that carried the ply’s, beads, and tread on rollers carried on a central tower. A worker would pull the material over the iron core, an electric motor held the proper tension so the worker could finish cementing and stitching. Although manual skill and dexterity were still vital, the machine simplified and sped-up production from six to eight tires per day per worker, to twenty to forty a day, depending upon the type of tire.
Today, large, efficient factories staffed with skilled workers produce more than 250 million new tires a year. Although automation guides many of the steps in the manufacturing process, skilled workers are still required to assemble the components of a tire.
American inventor Charles Goodyear, discovered the process of strengthening rubber, known as vulcanization or curing, by accident in 1839. During an experiment with a mixture of india rubber and sulfur, Goodyear dropped the mixture on a hot stove. A chemical reaction took place and, instead of melting, the rubber-sulfur mixture formed a hard lump. He continued his experiments until he could treat continuous sheets of rubber.
