A “rubber” could be a hard brush (1664), a rough towel to stimulate the skin (1577), a horse towel (1598), a whetstone (1553), tooth powder (1558), a polished brick (1744), a person who takes brass rubbings (1840) and a masseur at a Turkish bath.
Erasing rubber
When samples of the dried sap of a South American tree began arriving in England in the late 18th century, they were soon being stocked in half-inch cubes in Edward Nairne’s scientific instrument shop at 20 Cornhill in London. Nairne claimed that while drawing he had picked up a piece of the substance instead of the breadcrumb that was traditionally used to erase pencil marks. The cube of sap proved more effective.
The discoverer of oxygen and inventor of soda water, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), was an early customer, paying a hefty three shillings (£17 in today’s money) for a single cube.
India rubber
This substance became known as “India rubber”, although it came from South America rather than India (“Indian” just meant something exotic from abroad; Indian ink was actually from China). The rubber had found its way from Brazil to Europe via the French.
In 1735, poet, mathematician and friend of Voltaire, Charles Marie de la Condamine, sent a sample back to the Académie Royale enclosing the local Indian word for the material, caoutchouc, and for the tree it came from, heve. La Condamine also coined the term latex for the white sap, from the French word for “milk”.
The word “rubber” had a lively existence long before it became attached to the elastic substance we associate it with today.
