Synthetic rubber invented

This highly sought-after commodity would be highly useful to the emerging auto industry and many other growing ones. But it was proving difficult to obtain. For one thing, it was only located in remote locations, with usually less than hospitable climates. Extraction, too, was troublesome and expensive. The biggest limiter, however, was natural occurrence: simply speaking, it was taken out at rates much faster than at which it could be replenished. But it wasn’t the oil industry (yet); it was rubber. With prices in by the early 1920s spiking into the $3 per pound range, a world-wide rush was on to develop the first artificial rubber.

On this day, April 10, in 1930, the German chemical consortium IG Farben unveiled their newest creation, the artificial Buna-S rubber. The name Buna came from the first two letters of the words “butadiene” and the chemical symbol for sodium – Na. While not the first artificial rubber produced, it did prove to be the most useful.

Its production now unrestrained, rubber became the material of choice for everything from tires to raincoats. Another version of the synthetic material developed by the American chemist Norman Stingley proved to be remarkably springy: dropped by the average sized adult, a ball of it could bounce over a three-story building. Stingley took his invention to the Wham-O toy company, makers of the Hula Hoop, where after several years of further development to keep the balls from shattering, it entered the market as “SuperBall.”