Gutta percha, its discovery, history, and manifold uses.

Date:
1851
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Gutta percha, its discovery, history, and manifold uses. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    before quitting the machine encounters a range of knives set upright in a frame, edge foremost, distant from each other bj the breadth wanted. These slice the material, without inter¬ rupting its progress, into bands, which as before are severally wound upon a drum. The sheeting thus prepared, is susceptible of an almost in¬ finite diversity of treatment. And accordingly several busy workshops are crowded with artizans, actively engaged in pro¬ ducing every variety of form and article with the self-same all- potent instruments—boiling watee, the plastic hand, the knife, the mould and the press. Softened by the first, Grutta Percha may be turned into anything by the latter. Here Wilson’s Patent Paper Cutting Machine is in full work, shear¬ ing through a heap of broad stout bands to divide them into squares for shoe-soles; there a sharp edged frame is borne down upon piles of these square pieces, cutting out the soles themselves, in half-dozens at a time. There workmen at re¬ volving tables bearing inverted iron moulds, are turning out buckets, bowls, bottles, “ sou-westers,” and cabmen’s hats!— Others are modelling bosses for flax-mills, pump-buckets, rings, Vvrhips and cricket-balls. Elsewhere, cord and even thread are being manufactured with curious ingenuity. A stamp bearing
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