Destination France and Great Britain:
Balloons and Raincoats
< Back | Main menu | PSLC | Next >
Up, Up and Away...
What is important to us is what the balloon is made out of. It is made from rubberized canvas. Making rubberized balloon fabric is not that difficult. One first dissolves natural rubber in turpentine, then applies the solution to a sheet of canvas. When the turpentine evaporates, one is left with rubber coated fabric, which works well for containing hot air, the kind used to make balloons float.
This is nothing new. People in the Americas had been making rubberized cloth since pre-Columbian times. But it is the first big use for rubber in the Old World. Rubber still has problems when it's cold, but one can presume that since balloons are filled with hot air, that this isn't a problem for the Montgolfiers. But other uses for rubberized fabric are soon to follow, and wintertime will still spell trouble for rubber.
Let's go now across the English Channel to Britain, and ahead in time to 1819 to see what a fellow named Charles Macintosh is up to.
|
Hancock is also interested in rubberized fabric, and he figures out how to make multi-piece items from rubber by sticking the pieces together while they are hot, and thus melding them together. This works better than to try to stitch them. This solves the problem of the leaky stitch holes. Hancock and Macintosh will go into business together making raincoats, and in Britain raincoats will be called "macks" from now on.
But the British rubber market was booming, and soon Hancock and Macintosh are using more rubber than they can import from Brazil. But don't worry Hancock has a solution to his supply problem...
Next stop: London - Hancock's Pickle
While Macintosh is making raincoats, this is going on in the rest of the world:
1821: In west Africa, free African-Americans establish the nation of Liberia. (Liberia will eventually become an exporter of natural rubber.)
1827: In New York City, daycare as we know it is born when Joanna Bethune and Hannah L. Murray open the first modern nursery school, caring for the children of low-income working mothers.
The History Of Ballooning: The Feat of the Montgolfier Brothers - the story of the first balloon, by Gérard Chauvy for the Arizona Balloon Club.
Charles Macintosh - a biographical sketch, part of "Science on the Streets" from the University of Strathclyde.
1. Burke, James. Connections. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1978.