Word: thiokol
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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There are a dozen varieties. At least four-neoprene, butyl, Koroseal and Thiokol-are wholly American products. Each of the synthetics is superior to natural rubber in at least one respect and for at least one use. Yet none claims to be perfect. Each will improve with further research, and ought to supersede natural rubber in its special field. Rubber itself may never regain its pre-war place, may join natural dyes, lacquers, resins, and perhaps silk in limbo...
...year since 1930 and are still looking for more (except on Washington trains and a few others). But motor transport is another story, because of the rubber shortage. For civilians, who have already cut their driving on the rationed East Coast by 55-65%. Dow Chemical's Thiokol (TIME, June 29) is the great white hope, with serious talk of enough by fall to retread 1,000,000 tires a month (out of 150,000,000 in use). Nonetheless, people who ought to know (like the Petroleum Industry War Council) were still talking last week of a reduction...
...nobody thought of Thiokol as a retread material until Kettering and the Society of Automotive Engineers last April set out to explore every possible form of rubber synthetic and substitute. They pried into the deepest competitive secrets of U.S. rubber processors without finding a quick, cheap answer to the tire problem. Then they called in the U.S. chemical manufacturers, again examined every possibility. Only one appeared good: Thiokol. To test its usefulness, they crowded a year's research into the last two months...
...Thiokol advocates were sure that big-scale production could begin at once. Said jubilant President Willard Dow of Dow Chemical Co.: "The caustic soda we shall derive from salt. Texas alone can supply all the sulfur we shall ever need. Chlorine at present is being allocated, but we can step up production to meet all requirements. Ethylene we can get from oil or from corn, wheat or any other agricultural waste or surplus by first converting it into alcohol...
...take quite so rosy a view, but assigned priority-guarded materials for erection of a small Thiokol plant which will turn out 40,000 retreads a month. If all goes well, more priorities will be forthcoming to increase production to 160.000 retreads a month, or some 2,000,000 a year. (U.S. civilian traffic moves on some 150,000,000 tires...