Vulcanization is the process, credited to Charles Goodyear, of heating natural rubber together with sulfur to transform it from a sticky substance into a durable, resilient material. This chemical treatment made rubber usable for industrial and manufacturing applications, including tires and O-rings, and enabled major advances in transportation and industry.
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The hosts describe the sulfur-heating step but do not explain the underlying chemical mechanism, referring to it only as 'whatever chemistry happens'.
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11:03Massachusetts. Basically, you you take natural rubber, you heat it up with sulfur and then whatever chemistry happens, it transforms this like sticky substance into a durable resilient material. So now it's something that you can use in manufacturing, for example, for O-rings, obviously tires, and so on and so forth. Very big deal. Enabled countless transportation and industrial applications. If you like life on the highway, I'm gonna ride it all night long. >> Thank you, Charles Goodyear. 1844, first commercial longd distance telegraph line. Yes, this was huge. Samuel Morse, he actually utilized Joseph Henry's electromagnetic designs and he sent the
11:45historic message, "What hath God wrought?" from Washington DC to Baltimore, Maryland over a over a electric wire. This was huge because instantaneously the guy in Baltimore got