The history of natural rubber goes back many, many centuries. This material is tapped from a plant appropriately called the "rubber tree". Centuries passed before man understood the usefulness of the liquid secreted by this precious tree. The first to have direct contact with this material, latex, were the indigenous peoples of South America who called in "cahuchu", literally "weeping wood", from which the word "caoutchouc" derives.In around the 16th century the first tales surfaced about the laticiferous white liquid which exuded/oozed from incisions on the tree, and dried to form a dense elastic mass.The indigenous peoples used this material for a long time in its raw state to waterproof clothes and to make tools that required considerable elasticity.Europe recognised the importance of this product for the improvement of the quality of life and undertook to understand its features and apply it to various articles. The fundamental problem was transporting the latex from South America while preserving its characteristics. The best preservation method was to completely dry the cauotchouc, but this limited its malleability and processing.One of the first uses of dried latex was the eraser. The chemist Joseph Priestly noticed that when rubbed on paper, the pencil line was erased. From this simple use originates the English word "rubber", from the verb "to rub".Many attempts to use the cauotchouc followed, from pipe covering, to elastics, to weatherproofing of civilian and industrial clothing, but the same fundamental problem remained: structural instability. Heat, cold, humidity, and abrasion, seriously modify characteristics such as elasticity, fatigue ratio, and strength.The first step toward processing cauotchouc was the introduction of mastication and mixing. Hancock, an Englishman, discovered that the instability of the rubber could be improved using a mill to make it more workable, but did not resolve problems linked to temperature. Only in 1844, Goodyear, an American, patented a procedure called "vulcanization" which involved adding new chemical substances such as sulphur and lead to the latex during mixing and mastication processes. By heating this formula a non-sticky product is attained which is much more stable under heating and cooling.The process of mixing, mastication and vulcanization was an important step towards the broader use of rubber, in particular with the advent of tyres for automobiles, patented by the Irishman, Dunlop.Following the diffusion of automobiles, it was necessary to increase the availability of latex, which at the time was only available in Brazil, by optimising production, transport and storage. Noteworthy attempts were made to plant cauotchouc trees in Europe, but the climatic characteristics and the ground severely hindered growth. The ideal place for the plant was identified as south-east Asia, where the greatest cauotchouc plantations in the world are now found. The most important producers of latex today are Thailand, Malaysia, India and Indonesia. Later, the continuing spread of rubber in all sectors triggered continuous search to find new compounds and to lower costs in order to create synthetic rubber mixes, which were increasingly multifunctional and of higher quality.