United States Synthetic Rubber Program, 1939-1945
When the natural rubber supply from Southeast Asia was cut off at the beginning of World War II, the United States and its allies faced the loss of a strategic material. With U.S. Government sponsorship, a consortium of companies involved in rubber research and production united in a unique spirit of technical cooperation and dedication to produce a general purpose synthetic rubber, GR-S (Government Rubber-Styrene), on a commercial scale. In Akron and other U.S. locations, these companies, in collaboration with a network of researchers in government, academic, and industrial laboratories, developed and manufactured in record time enough synthetic rubber to meet the needs of the U.S. and its allies during World War II.
| The
Quest The quest to synthesize materials that can be substituted for naturally occurring substances has long been a challenge to chemists. By 1914, natural dyes from plants had been replaced by synthetic dyes derived from coal tar, celluloid had taken the place of ivory, and Bakelite was replacing insect-based shellac. Nonetheless, these products were produced on a relatively small scale. By contrast, natural rubber was a commodity of vast economic and military importance. Automobiles, a key element of American social life, could not run without rubber tires, and by the 1930s, the U.S. automotive industry had grown rapidly to a size unmatched anywhere. A modern nation could not hope to defend itself without rubber. The construction of a military airplane used one-half ton of rubber; a tank needed about one ton and a battleship, 75 tons. Each person in the military required 32 pounds of rubber for footwear, clothing, and equipment. Tires were needed for all kinds of vehicles and aircraft.
Shortages of natural rubber caused by the advent of World War II led the U.S. government to embark on a program to produce a substitute for this essential material¼quickly and on a very large scale. There was a real danger the war would be lost unless American scientists and technologists were able to replace almost a million tons of natural rubber with a synthetic substitute within 18 months. To work this industrial and scientific miracle, the U.S. government joined forces with the rubber companies, the young petrochemicals industry, and university research laboratories. The resulting synthetic rubber program was a remarkable scientific and engineering achievement. The partnership of the government, industry, and academe expanded the U.S. synthetic rubber industry from an annual output of 231 tons of general purpose rubber in 1941 to an output of 70,000 tons a month in 1945. The impact on the rubber industry proved to be permanent. Today 70 percent of the rubber used in manufacturing processes is synthetic and a descendant of the general purpose synthetic GR-S (government rubber-styrene) produced by the United States in such great quantity during World War II. |
The
American rubber industry became the largest and the most technologically
advanced in the world. By the late 1930s, the United States was
using half the world's supply of natural rubber, most of it coming
from Southeast Asia.NEXT | BACK | MAIN
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