Gutta Percha Source Note

Title: @tullyVictorianEcologicalDisaster2009 date: 2023-03-07 type: reference

tags:: #Memex2

Tully, J. 2009 A Victorian Ecological Disaster: Imperialism, the Telegraph, and Gutta-Percha. Journal of World History 20(4): 559–579.

The telegraph's popularity began to grow along with the need to communicate over longer distances. This means that the cable would at some point needed to be submerged under the water of the ocean to connect continents together. Plastic was and rubber were used as insulators, but they could not survive being submerged underwater for lengthy periods of time. The key to the success of the new cable for the Atlantic was gutta-percha gum, as it was easily moulded and worked perfectly underwater. This is because the system relied on a good insulator as it sent electrical signals through a copper wire. In modern times, the gutta-percha tree is forgotten, whereas during the 1800s the tress was a household name. This is because it was used in the creation of many things. This included shoe soles, waterproof clothes, canes, knife handles, dentistry, and more. It was a resource most factories relied on in east-London. There were 100s of thousands of miles of cable created and ran throughout the world, meaning that an immense amount of gutta-percha was required. This led to many shortages as the world was ever-growing technologically, but the gutta-percha tree was a primitive source. The British government soon realized that they had used too much gutta-percha and tried to slow production but they were too late as there was too big of a demand for such short supply.