Hey there, it's Josh and it's my turn finally, and I hope you're enjoying our doing science playlists so far. Up next, we have our twenty seventeen episode on elastics. It's one of those episodes like Ballpoint, pens or Zippers, where the topic sounds super boring but it actually turns out to be super interesting, And this episode, as a bonus, has a surprising amount of discussion on pirates for a show on things that snap back.
When you pull them.
Enjoy feeling your brain in large.
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know from HowStuffWorks dot com.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry. This is Stuff you Should Know. The Sick Edition, the annual sick Edition. You aren't well, friend, No, And it really stinks too, Chuck, because like I like to think that I take pretty good care of myself. So to be able to be felled not once, but twice in just a few months by some stupid bug, it's irritating to me.
I know, you get mad every time you get sick, though, just so you know I do.
I hadn't noticed that Actually.
My wife is the same way. Well it's not fun, I know, but she gets like kind of yeah, you both get a little angry like why did this happen to me? I get more pitiful, like, oh somebody helped me.
Oh I've got that going on too.
Listen to this. So does that mean people have the next like eight episodes to look forward to?
This? Or no? No, man, no way, this is it. This is it right here. I think actually, yesterday might have been the worst day.
Oh well good, yeah.
I mean today was a close second, but we'll find out. Yeah, it is bad. I gotta be a pro, man, I gotta I gotta get.
Well, the show must go on.
So today, Chuck Charles, we're talking elastic. Yeah, did you know much about this? No?
I thought this is actually super interesting. And it also contained two uh, what we like to call dinner party factoids that people can bust out.
We need a jingle that says that so we can play it when when it comes up.
Yeah, I mean there's lots of cool stuff in here. And please don't correct us on factoid because.
Oh yeah, man, that's so two thousand and nine, Yeah, and eleven maybe.
Exactly, but yeah, two really cool facts in here that I think people can just keep in their hip pocket.
Okay, are you good? So until we get a jingle made, I'll bet Noel will make one for us. But until we do, maybe you should you want to practice one.
Geez, what's a good dinner party jingle? It should it should be like wine glasses and plates and forks and things clinking.
Right, and then maybe like this Orwellian voice going duner party factor.
Yeah, here we are eight years in, still evolving.
Yeah, it's a work in progress. Okay, so we're talking elastic chuck. Uh huh. I didn't know that much about it either. In this article written by one William Harris, good one, Yeah it is. It makes a pretty good point that it's just one of those things and specifically, say, like a rubber band, you just kind of think it's always been around, and you know you've always you just think, like you know, elastic waistbands have been around for eons.
It was basically the second thing discovered after fire, is what I've always thought, Yes.
Today, since Adam first popped eaves bra strap.
Right, it's been around. Yeah, you'd think that's actually not the case at all. It's elastic itself and elastic, we should say is basically any rubber, natural or synthetic thread woven with another kind of fabric usually like say cotton or nylon or whatever that produces a stretchy fabric that's elastic, right.
Yeah, Like I think a lot of people don't even realize if they took their underwear waistband. Don't do this because then you ruined it. But maybe if you have an old pair, if you just kind of cut it, you would see these these little elastic threads. It's all it is. Yes, sure, little rubber bands.
Or or you could go to like a thrift store or something, buy a pair and then cut those.
If you're buying a thrift store underwear, then I don't know, I wouldn't recommend that. Yeah, I don't think they even slid Actually they do what really? Yep used underwear?
Yes?
Wow, so ten percent skid free.
That's probably. That's gotta be one of the more difficult tasks. It's like getting those things just prepared for resale, you know. Yeah, I don't want to be unprepared for resale duty today. Anyway, when you do, if you cut it open, if you look very closely, have you ever done this. Have you ever seen like an elastic waistband come come loose? Sure as you've got. If you look really closely, you can be like going to like the little threads that are
sticking out, because some just hang limp and loose. That's cotton. Nobody cares about that. But the ones that are just kind of still sticking out a little bit and you can throw them though, that's the that's the rubber or natural or synthetic rubber that that gives that elastic its stretchiness. And again, this is a fairly recent invention, especially if you're talking about waistbands for underpants.
Yeah, and especially if you're talking about elastic. That really kind of worked. There were two sort of dives into making elastic, and one quite a long time ago, and then one more recently that obviously worked much better. And basically the reason it worked much more better more recently is better techniques to making rubber and then better techniques changing that rubber into something that you could actually use, like in a waistband.
Right exactly. But we've known about rubber for a very long time since well, I should say those of us in the West have known about it for a very long time. Those indigenous peoples of the Amazon have known about it even longer.
But I interrupted. You were talking about waistbands.
Oh okay, so yeah, so with underwear, waistbands in particular, right, Yes, apparently humans have felt shame for thousands of years because the oldest pair of underwear, identifiable underwear are seven thousand years old.
And he bought them at Goodwill right last week.
Yeah, so these this underwear. Originally, well even before that, I should say, there was something called breechcloth, and that was just basically strips of leather that just kind of hung down and covered you junk, maybe kept the gnats out that kind of thing, right.
Or kept them in.
Yeah, it was your thing. Probably catch some and those are even older than the first underwear, which would be considered a loin cloth, yeah, of course, which is basically that. And there are loin cloths that are at least five thousand years or seven thousand years old, and they are basically in a linen diaper that is folded in a certain way, worn by grown ups, including very famously most recently, Gandhi used to wear a loin cloth everywhere. It was
called a dati. But it's a loin cloth, no matter what you call it, that's right. So those stuck around for quite a while in the West, and it wasn't until basically the Middle Ages that someone said we can do better than this.
Yeah, and they brought around these things that are that were much longer than a loin cloth, most of them. Kind of for my research, these braids b r ai e s went below the knee even.
Yeah. They were like a cross between a loincloth and jams.
Yeah, sort of. It says here that they were lace to the waist and legs, but there may be lace under the waist, but they're also generally kind of rolled over many times at the waist, right, I think, to probably tighten it up a bit.
Yeah, and everyone said, great, this is work.
Yeah.
For a while, I'm happy with this, and you know, then it went a different way. We should do an entire episode just on corsets. I know, there's a good article on the site on it. But after Braisee, the what's called the union suit was invented.
What dinner party fact.
Okay, there you go, that's good.
I never knew. I thought it was called a union suit because it had something somewhere along the line to do with unions, but no. In fact, the word union suit. Now we know them as long John's. Even though long John's are generally two piece. The one piece union suit is called that because it is one piece. It is the union of a top and a bottom undergarment.
Yep, that's right. It's a one piece long John with a flap in the bottom. Uh. They usually button all the way up front, from the growing up to the neck.
Do you have any of these?
I'm wearing a couple of pair right now. Obviously you just can't see him because they're under my clothes.
Do you really have some?
No? I have Long John's. I've got these one called the Silkies that work really well. Oh yeah, But I don't have a union suit. No, do you? No?
I don't.
Neymore.
My brother still Scott squares by the union suit. I think he has the classic red. And then, of course they famously have like you said, the it's either called an access hatch. I've also seen them called a drop seat or a fireman's flap.
Yeah, I saw that too. Where you can see.
That, yeah, where you can unbutton your you know, because generally you're wearing this out in the cold so you don't want to strip down to the naked if you want to go peepee or poo poo. Right, so you just open the old access hatch in there you have it.
Yeah, now that see that to me makes sense in the nineteenth century when the union suit was invented. Today, though, it's like, I guess Scott just likes to add a little panic to when he has to tinkle, like having to get that flap open.
I think he's just a classicist, not classicist, a who's someone who's into the classic things.
Classicist.
Oh okay, that sounds like he doesn't like poor people.
That's a classist. Oh okay, that extra makes a big difference.
Okay, he's a classicist.
Then, yeah, yeah, okay, so you should tell him this. Here's another little sub dinner party factoid. Union suits were originally invented for women from what I understand, all right, and they were invented in response to the corset craze because apparently courses were so out of hand. It was basically like remember our footbinding episode.
Oh yeah, so that's.
Basically what women in Europe and the United States, in the western country were doing with corsets. They were engaging in what was amounted to footbinding, but with their waists right. They were literally deforming themselves right, using corsets. And there was a Reformation movement against the corset and against that look and what it's fall and ultimately was the union suit, which were so great that mem were like these are ours now, right.
Yeah, we should do one corsets. I assume that they did this because men were like, no more of an hour glass?
Yeah yeah, And I think that's where the Reformation came out of, like, just shut up, men, do you have any like we're disfigured now thanks to you idiots?
Well, I hate to pack another dinner party fact right next to the other one, but that's kind of where we are. So my second factoid that you should bring up next time you're among friends, or next time you see an injured friend perhaps is if they're using an ace bandage, ask them what it stands for, and they'll say, uh, well, what do you mean? But it, in fact is in an acronym. Correct, yes it is, And what does it stand for?
All cotton elastic ace ban.
All caught an elastic bandage. I never knew that until today.
And it's been around since nineteen eighteen apparently that the three M company introduced it. Amazing and so so, okay, you've got an ACE bandage, which is essentially an elastic waistband used to keep Shack's elbow in place.
Right, Shaquille O'Neill, Yeah, all right, what your one think?
This is? What's what's crazy is this is nineteen eighteen that that three AM introduced the ACE and it took until the forties before somebody thought, why don't we just like attach like underpants a loincloth to that and as we pull it up, snap it in place and be like, oh baby, modell.
I guess because I mean the only thing I can think of is because they were tying them and they disfigured, well that works pretty well for now.
Yeah, I guess, you know. I mean, that's what that's what William Harris says. He says it was basically a sort of fashion inertia. That's everything was fine, like you could use buttons or ties or something like that and keep it in place, so who cares. But it's just so much easier to pull up your underpants, snap them in place, and go, oh baby.
That's right. But regardless of what you're talking about here. These fabrics, including elastic, are made with a loom. And if you've ever seen a loom at work.
Or at work, yeah, it's amazing to want to come into work. You're like, what the hell is this loom doing here?
Well, not at your job, but you know.
I know, to me, sure that was just being a wise.
Have you ever seen a loom doing its thing? It's pretty impressive. And what I mean it's really not that complicated either. Basic. All it's doing is allowing these lengthwise threads to be interlaced with with with wise.
Threads the warp in the weft.
Yeah, which is not a bad band name, by the way.
No, it's not especially like like proto folk.
Yeah, well that's exactly what it would be.
Mm hm.
That would be at least three guys wearing vests in that band for sure. That may have been woven with illum.
Yeah right, you know, and maybe uh pocket watches with the chains.
Oh totally.
Yeah.
But that's all illom does. It goes, you know, it allows this interlacing to take place, and that's what's happening with elastic. It just takes the place of the yarn and it's it's uh.
Well part of the yarn, half of the yarn, or a portion of the yarn.
Well, yeah, because in the in the case of a waste band, you're obviously introducing other fabrics as well, like cotton probably or something else.
Yeah, and that's the case with any elastic. Elastic is again it's it's a type of fiber woven together with some sort of rubber and to create this new, stretchy, resilient fabric that's elastic.
You want to take a nose blow break.
I die here, Thank you, Charles, Sure, all right, we're back.
You good.
Yeah, I should say also, like I keep hammering home what the definition of elastic is. Then we're talking about elastic waistbands, and that's what you think of typically. But again, any fabric with fiber of one type and rubber woven to the other is elastic, and that has tons and tons of uses. Oh sure, Like bungee cords are elastic, right, Uh, you know everything else that's like that, it's like elastic.
Well, you know in your socks a lot of times that they'll be I mean, there's elastic and you know, we'll get to spandex later, but that that stuff is in many, many, many garments that you wear today. You mayn't realize that you have the stuff in your clothing, right, everything from the the neck of your shirt perhaps too, maybe the tongue of your shoes sometimes. Yeah, fancy shoes will have elastic in them.
Those jeans that you wear to Thanksgiving dinner, they have an elastic waste.
Oh, I know what your jeans you're talking about. I don't wear those.
They're pleated jeans, which is just weird looking to.
Just wear buttonflies.
Oh yeah, so you just go, pop.
Yep, pop a couple out. You're all set.
That's right. You can stuff a lot a lot of extra bits in there.
All right, So let's should we get in the way back machine a bit and go back to the eighteenth then I guess the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries. Huh, yeah, all right, we're pirates.
Oh man, I'm glad you brought that up. I read this really interesting article. I found it on I think on long form, but it's from the National Endowment for the Humanities like magazine website. And this guy wrote an article about how just thoroughly we misunderstand pirates and how our conception of pirates took place basically in one decade between seventeen I think twenty six and thirty six, and everything we think of as pirates is crammed into that
ten years. Everything before and after is totally different from our conception of pirates, and that they were actually very frequently they were just sailors who would go attack like a vessel in the Indian Ocean for one big haul and then flee to the colonies and buy a bunch of pigs and set up a farm and live as like upstanding citizens from that point on. And some of them were like lieutenant governors. It was a really interesting article that I recommend tremendously.
Obviously, did we not cover that in our Pirates episode eighteen years ago?
No, we wouldn't have known that. This is a brand new article. I'm sure we just totally fell for everything, right, And apparently that's it's not we like, that's not our fault that this guy's article and idea is pretty new.
It's just one of these things historically everyone kind of bought in on. Interesting. Yep, to me, that way, you got it, all right. So we're talking pirates here, and not just pirates, but sailors explorers basically anyone who got on a ship in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds and went exploring. Yeah, and they you know what they did was they would go off and find things that they didn't have in their home country. Say, oh my god, what is this? Let me bring it back.
Yeah, and cinnamon remember cinnamon episode.
Yeah, absolutely, that's a great example. But one of the things they found in Central and South America was what the French called kouchuok nice and it's an Indian term meaning weeping wood, and it's basically what they're talking about. Are is it an actual rubber tree?
Yep? Hey via brazilansis the rubber tree which literally oozes milky latex?
Yeah, naturally.
Yeah. And the earliest sailors that encountered the indigenous natives of the Amazon were like, what's that stuff you're like putting out on your outerwear and it's keeping the rain out? Or what's that weird flexible bottle you're using? And they explained it to them and those guys said, awesome, you know who love this, my fellow Europeans. So they took it back with them.
And then they said, and what are those awesome drugs that you give us in liquid form every night after dinner.
They said, oh, yeah, Huska.
Yeah, and they went, we'll take some of that home.
Too, Yeah, can we get it to go bag of that stuff?
So, yeah, they they were already using the stuff because they found out when when it was dried out, basically you could use it for a lot of things, like you said, bottles, shoes, just like this, you know, flexible rubbery material.
Yeah, right, so everything's hunky door. This is a brand new thing. Europe's starting to go crazy for it. But what they figured out pretty quickly was that you you couldn't do a lot with it. Right. As we'll find out later, rubber has an unusual natural chemistry, and it just so happens that in the normal range of temperatures outside of the tropics, it can tend to fall apart pretty easily. Yeah, it has a narrow range of temperatures
that that allow its usefulness. Right, So once you take it up to above the equator to say, like Europe or the United States or whatever, and they did, they thought it was great. They thought it was terrific. People went crazy for it. Joseph Priestley actually came up with a dinner party factoid that I'm sure you'd love to share.
Uh oh which one?
Oh you didn't, This wasn't one of them.
No, I blew mine on the two.
Joseph Priestley, who was very famous chemist, Jason Priestley's triple great uncle. We'll say we.
Made that same joke in the anesthesia episode.
I'll bet we did, because yeah, that's where he popped up. That's right, thanks for that. Oh and the nitrous oxide one. Yeah, yeah, so he got his hands on some of this because everybody's like, he's the only chemist alive, right now, give it to him. And he's like, you know what, this is amazing. I'm writing in pencil and then I'm rubbing this this late text Khachuk, and it's rubbing out the pencil marks. And that gave rise to the term rubber.
Oh that's how the name, yeah came around.
Yep, from rubbing, from rubbing out pencil marks, erasing rubber. Interesting because remember the British loved to change everything with an error on the end, Like soccer is actually shortened association football, like a soccer became soccer right there? You rubber.
That's pretty interesting. I don't know how I screwed it past that one.
I love that one.
So it became a big deal, and everyone you know that had a little money to invest thought, hey, we can make a lot of dough with this stuff. We can transform that into something useful, like, let's say, in a garment. But like you said, they had this problem that it was a very narrow range of temperatures where they could find it useful. So a couple of dudes started working on it. We've talked about mister Charles Goodyear before. We talk about him and I don't know, but I
mean definitely the Goodyear Blumps episode. But it seems like, do we not do one in vulcanization.
I don't remember. I was looking up rubber or something because some of the stuff in the extra source that I sent you was kind of like talked about this before.
Yeah, we haven't done this entire episode, have we?
No? Definitely not? Okay? If so, then I really am just totally out of my mind.
So Goodyear was one. He was working in the US, and then another guy named Thomas Hancock, an English inventor, partnered with a dude named Charles McIntosh and they started making raincoats basically, yeah, the Macintosh, the classic McIntosh.
Yeah. And so Charles Thomas Hancock was already pretty well situated to he was already working on it, right, Yeah, But Charles Goodyear had that breakthrough first. And it was actually a really big deal that he had this breakthrough because in the early eighteen thirties, Charles Goodyear became obsessed with cracking the rubber coat. He just knew it could be used to be made into something useful, right, Yeah, and he became so personally committed to it. He all
of his investors went away. He went into Debtor's prisons so regularly he referred to it as his hotel. Six of his twelve children didn't make it to adulthood. They were just that poor oh man. They had to sell their dinnerware. So he made plates for him out of rubber. It was really, really rough. So the idea that he
had this breakthrough was just enormously rewarding for him, right. Unfortunately, as he was shopping this stuff around, this vulcanization process or the vulcanized rubber, some of it fell into the hands of Thomas Hancock and he reverse engineered it.
Yeah, and what he basically discovered was if you slow cooked latex with sulfur, it could it could basically transform rubber into a very durable material that it hardy under all kinds of temperature ranges. It would always snap back yep, well not always and forever, which we'll get to later too. As you know, that waistband will sometimes leave you disappointed eventually, that's why you end up buying new underwear. Well, one of a couple of reasons you buy.
New underwear, We take it to the thrift store.
Yeah, exactly, But yeah, that is what vulcanization is. And Hancock and Macintosh what they were doing. They didn't crack that code first, but they they developed called something called the masticator. Basically, they had been making elastic threads by slicing it from rubber bottles and raw rubber, but there was just so much waste. They developed this machine called a masticator and it would basically chew up this rubber and make it into meld it together and make it
into a big single sheet of material, which was really helpful. Yeah, but they still had that temperature problem until a Goodyear hit it.
Right, and again they reverse engineered Goodyear's process went and filed a patent on vulcanization.
Yeah, they could rip him off, like yes, yes, wow.
Fully And apparently it was one of those ones like the phone where Goodyear went to go file a patent and found out that someone else had that Hancock had just a few weeks earlier, so he took him to court. In order to settle, Hancock offered good Year fifty percent of the patent to drop the lawsuit, and Goodyear said no, and he lost the case and he died broke. Oh man, But he was able to He was able to generate enough royalties so that his kids were able to live
the good life thanks to him. But he Yeah, he got ripped off for sure. And one other thing about the about Charles Goodyear, the Goodyear Rubber or Tyre and Rubber Company, he had nothing to do with it. They named it after him in honor of him. Oh wow, Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool.
You don't watch the TV show Shark Tank, do you?
I do not.
I think I've asked you that before. I you know, the whole concept, right, is these people pitch their businesses to them.
Yeah, well, surrounded by sharks swimming.
Well that's it now, they pitch them to the sharks, and they either investor they don't. Everyone kind of knows the show, but you I guess. But uh, I'm always at home just yelling at these people when you know, they'll offer up like twenty percent of their company and then they'll get offered an investment from a shark for you know, and say, but they want like forty percent, and some of these people like turn around and walk away, which, on one hand, I kind of respect that they don't
want to give away that much of their company. M hm. But like I'm always just thinking, wouldn't you rather own sixty percent of a twenty million dollar company than eighty percent of a three million dollar company?
Yeah?
Like sometimes I think pride gets in the way with these people. Sure, yeah, and they don't think about just how big these people can make their company.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Who's that company though, that that turned down a billion dollars from either Google or Facebook and just kept at it And now it's MySpace. No, I can't. It's one of the big social media brands that you know of that that now is just worth gobs more money than oh really yeah.
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's no recipe, like, sometimes it is better to hold on to more of your own company because if it gets big, then you own that much more of it.
But that's right.
I'm always kind of like, man, take the money now.
And run, as Steve Miller suggested. Is you just Steve Miller's a scientologist?
Is he really?
Yeah? Boy?
He went off on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year.
Why did they not vote for nominating him?
No? No, no, he got inducted and like basically trash them on his way in and out the door. Why oh, you'll just have to read it. It's kind of too long to get into. But they were none too happy. I think he came across as just a really crabby old guy.
Oh he didn't have like a point or anything.
No, he had points, but yeah, you'll just have to check it out. I will. We're already getting sidetracked here.
Oh we've been sidetracked baby. So when regardless of who came up with it, even though it was Charles Goodyear, once vulcanization was introduced to the world, all of a sudden, all of these dreams of what you could do with a flexible, durable material that can withstand tremendous pressure and force and heat and cold too, which was a big one. All of a sudden, the whole world just opened up.
And what was interesting, Chuck, was because it also dovetailed with the Industrial Revolution, Brazil, which was the rubber tree capital at the time, went from just being like this kind of old world colony to basically being one of the most important countries on the planet. And it all like virtually within a year or so.
Yeah, And that was true, jeez for a long time until about the mid to late about eighteen seventy six, when these British businessmen said, I'm gonna sneak these rubber tree seeds out, take them back to England, and we're going to see if these things grow in Southeast Asia, where we have a lot of British colonies. And it turns out it did, and just about thirty five years later, the center of the global rubber market shifted to Malaysia, Singapore and Sri Lanka. As British are thieves in this one,
so they kind of like totally ripped that off. Yeah, and Southeast Asia was the dominating rubber capital of the world.
Which was way better for the Brits and the Americans because we're friends with the Brits, because that meant that these were British colonies, which meant that the access to this rubber was basically unfettered. Yeah, there were no trade deals. You didn't have to whine and dine a prince or a king or anything like that. You could just be like, we need more rubber please, yeah, which is I think
how they would order probably. So, so everything's going hunky dory at least as far as the British and Americans are concerned. The rubber supplies being fulfilled thanks to Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka. And it came at no too soon a time too, because the automobile was introduced around this time, the mass produced automobile, we should say, and those needed four good tires made of rubber.
Yeah. And then World War Two really really increased the need for rubber. I think here it says that in total, the Pentagon said that they needed thirty two pounds of rubber for every single ground troop in one way or another. Right, That's amazing.
Yeah, And that's why it was such a big deal that the Japanese invaded the Pacific because the Pacific theater featured those countries that were the rubber producing capital of the world that had been under British control, and now all of a sudden, no rubber supply was either cut off or in danger. So the United States, led by FDR, said, Hey, four biggest rubber companies, we're gonna get together and we need to come up with a synthetic rubber too sweet,
So let's get on it. We're all gonna split the patent evenly, and let's get to work. And in eighteen months they had come up with a synthetic rubber.
Amazing yep. And we'll get to synthetics a bit more in a minute. But jumping back to the mid eighteen hundreds, the story of the rubber band is pretty interesting. These two chaps, Stephen Perry and Thomas Barnabas Daft great name TBD, actually invented the rubber band, the modern what we know is the rubber band because they started slicing these They had a rubber tube and started slicing these narrow rings from a vulcanized rubber tube and they were like, here
you go. It's called a rubber band. You can put it around your asparagus. Yeah, and everyone was super psyched.
Except people who hate us fergus. That was a good one, man. Uh.
And today they still kind of do it in the same way. Rubber band wise, they create this. They mix us latex together with all these chemicals. It depends on, you know, what kind of rubber band you're making. And they get this raw rubber compound into a long hollow tube, slip it over a round pipe called the mandrel, expose that to high heat and pressure to vulcanize it. It cures it, and then they slice that up into rubber bands. Yep, pretty neat.
It is pretty neat. You want to take a break and then talk some more about how it's made.
Yeah, right after this, all right, So we've been talking about rubber in its most natural form and how they transformed that into usable rubbers. Pretty remarkable. But immediately after World War Two, like we were talking about, this creation of synthetic rubber was probably the second biggest invention of all time. Well maybe not of all time, it's up there though, Yeah, but when it comes to stretchy things for sure.
Yeah. And apparently the World War two research and development produced not just one, but three different types of easily manufactured synthetic rubbers.
Yeah.
One was a beteddyinge rubber. Another was a styrene butted diyinge rubber, and that was the one that the government went with for World War two, and it was actually ripped off from a German from the Germans, which they'd come up with something similar previously. And then there's an ethylene propylene monomer, and all three of those make up most of today's synthetic rubbers.
Yeah, and they found that this stuff worked really really well, just as good as natural rubber had all that flex resistance, it didn't deteriorate eventually it would again I keep teasing like we're going to get to that, which we will. But they found it was really well suited to replace rubber.
Well in most applications like an industrial application like a tire or a fan bell or something like that. But it didn't have that resilience that natural rubber has, so there was an issue still, there was a kink that needed to be worked out.
Well. Yeah, as far as using it in textiles for.
Sure, exactly. And they actually overcame it in nineteen fifty nine by day, I mean DuPont Corporation, who employed two chemists that got to work trying to crack this code, the final code of synthetic rubber, how to make it flexible and resilient. Right, that's right. And they started by
using a polymer, a polyurethane. Right. So well, we'll talk about polymers in a little bit, but basically, they took a polymer, a eurethane based polymer, and watered it down and forced it through a plate with tiny little holes in it. And what came on the outside were these tiny little threads.
Yep.
And those tiny little threads were a magical creation known as Spandex, the trade name of which originally is Lycra.
Yeah, it's amazing. And Spandex, they found, had a lot of great applications. Namely, it could accept dyes, so it wasn't just this sort of dull white color. You could make it any color you wanted to, and you could wash it. It didn't absorb a lot of moisture, and it remained really stable when it was washed and dried, you know, kind of normal moderate temperatures. So hey, you can make this, weave it into clothing, throw it in the washer, diet whatever color you want, and you're good to go.
And most importantly, chuck, it would snap back, it would retain its original shape. That's right after being stretched. So, yes, Spandex changed everything. I didn't realize it was from the fifties Italy. Yeah, and William Harris makes a pretty good point. He says that Spandex might be considered the modern elastic. Like it is, it's basically the base of anything stretchy that you use today.
Yeah, and it said here, we said it's in all kinds of stuff. They said, it's in about eighty percent of all clothing bought by Americans. So even if you don't think Spandex is in something, it may have a little Spandex in there.
It's in eighty percent of all clothing bought by Americans. One hundred percent of all Spandex pants bought by Americans. Think about that stat for a little while.
Yeah, that's amazing.
Yeah, including jaggings, he points out, he calls them pajama jeans, but I've always called them jaggings.
Oh is that the same thing?
I believe?
So yeah, interesting, we can hope. So Emily, when we put them on her daughter, she calls him jazzy pants.
Oh yeah, that's a good one too.
But that's usually I think, usually due to the pattern more than the snap back.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
So we can sit here and procrastinate for several more minutes if you want, but ultimately we're gonna end up on the chemistry part, you realize.
Yes, And because I don't understand chemistry at all, take it away.
We'll get you for this, chuck.
I'll throw in some words here and there.
So I don't really know chemistry either, but I know both of us crammed on this. Yeah, so forgive us, all you chemists out there. If we get something wrong, let us know. But from what we understand, it's magic. Yeah. There you go the end. So, rubber, whether it's natural or synthetic, is a polymer, yes, right, And it's a specific kind of polymer called an elastomer. It's an elastic polymer.
It has stretchiness and resilience, it's flexible, And any kind of polymer is basically if you look at the molecular structure of it, it's made up of these long repeating chains of the same unit over and over again, and the units are called monomers, and depending on what the monomer is, that leads to different kinds of polymers. And with elastomers in particular. If you look at some polymers, the structure is bulky and big and compact, and it's
rigid and heavy and not flexible at all. Still, other kind of polymers, say like a plastic or a resin, are crystalline and structure and they fit so well together. They're also rigid and not very flexible either. Then you have elastomers, which are a kind of polymer, and because of their molecular structure, they are super flexible and they snap back into place.
Yeah, and normally they're I mean they liken it to this article like a coiled like a big mass of snakes. Yeah, but they have this really neat quality, these elastomers. When you apply force to it, the molecules actually straightened out in the direction that you're pulling it, and that's sort of the snapback you're talking about. But as soon as you release it, it goes back to that coiled up arrangement.
Right when you pull it, when you apply force, they line up basically like those snakes head to tail in one single long line.
It's a scary snake.
Yeah. And then when you release it, it goes back into its original form of that coiled mass, right, perfect, Okay. One of the reasons why any kind of rubber, natural or synthetic, is flexible a flexible polymer is because it's glass transition temperature is actually pretty low.
Yeah, this is where i'd kind of just got foggy.
So this is it's as simple as this, chuck a glass transition temperature. It's not a melting point. A melting point is where the substance actually basically just turns into a liquid state, a disordered liquid state. The glass transition temperature doesn't affect the molecular makeup of the substance. Instead,
it basically applies this property, the flexibility or rigidity. It's as simple as that, right, And so anything that has a low glass transition temperature relative to what we have is normal temperatures outside in the world or in our homes or whatever, is going to be flexible and floppy. Anything with a high glass transition transition temperature is going
to be rigid and hard and not flexible. So it's just suffice to say anything rubber, whether it's natural or synthetic, has a low glass transition temperature, so it's flexible under normal temperatures. But even if you took a piece of rubber, natural rubber, and you applied you apply the temperature of negative seventy degrees celsius or negative ninety four degrees fairy height,
it would crystallize. It's below the glass transition temperature, so it would just basically turn rigid and crystallize and ultimately would break apart. And that was part of the problem with those early pre vulcanized rubbers. They would fall apart because the glass transition temperature is not like an exact moment where the where the thing converts from flexible to rigid. It's the median of a large thermal window where it starts to get crystalline and rigid and then is completely
crystalline and rigid on the other end. So of course you would think, you know, if you get down to say twenty degrees like it would in Boston or New York in the nineteenth century, and you're walking around with rubber soled shoes, they're going to crystallize and break off, right, That's what's going on, and all has to do with the glass transition temperature.
Okay, So during vulcanization, they heat that up with sulfur and that makes those polymer chains linked together with sulfur atoms. I guess that's like almost like a glue.
Yeah, Like it's like a molecular glue from what I understand.
Yeah, okay, it makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, so even when you apply intense heat or extreme cold, it will maintain its molecular shape. Yeah.
But here's the thing I've been talking about why your elastic band doesn't last forever and why your socks will eventually be around your ankles. This elastic Eventually you will lose that snapback due to ox oxidization. Oxidization oxidation, I like oxidization natural rubber. This oxygen and in particular ozone is going to start breaking those bonds within just days. So it happens pretty quickly, and that's why we heat
and treat rubber like we do. But even still over time that ozone and combine that with light UV radiation, it's another culprit that's what's going to cause that to eventually break down over time.
That would make sense because with vulcanization, what you're doing is adding sulfur to the polymer, right, Yeah, and if it would, it would make sense then that either UV radiation or something else could break those bonds between the sulfur and the other the other ingredients, and then they would be replaced by oxygen, so oxidation would take place, right.
Yeah, so it's pretty much ozone UV radiation and then cold actually does make a difference. It's not gonna hold up quite as well on cold weather. Like if you take if you take a pair of underwear out and like you know, negative twenty degrees in Minnesota and you start really stretching it out a lot, it's gonna it's gonna lose its elasticity really fast.
Oh yeah, anybody from Minnesota can tell you that.
Yeah. I mean, who know, they may have to buy more underwear than like Hawaii. I have no idea.
They all wear Union suits up there.
Now, that's true.
So do you want to finish with Pat Benatar?
Oh? Man, let's bring her out.
Okay, he's gonna do an acoustic set.
Man, how great would that be.
So we did a little digging and we were trying to figure out who basically started the eighties spandex rocker trend. Ye spandex trend.
She was the first thing that came to my mind. Oh really, Yeah, I just didn't know exactly how I would have guessed.
It went back beyond Pat Benatar, And then I found out that Pat Benatar has been a musician for much longer than I realized. But apparently the whole thing happened on Halloween of nineteen seventy seven. Awesome, And by this time Pat Benatar was already like a pretty regular fixture on the New York City club circuit. And so she dressed up as a character from Catwomen of the Moon.
Have you seen that movie? H No, I haven't either, but apparently cat Women on the Moon is a cult classic sci fi movie, Okay, and I guess they wear a lot of spandex. So she dressed up in some a spandex get up and decided to play a show that night at Catch a Rising Star, which is basically her house club. You're in there? No, I haven't either.
Is it still around? I don't know, is it?
I think I know of it from like Comedy Central in the nineties.
Yeah, I think that was the name of a show.
But I think it was from that club.
Oh was it filmed there?
Yeah? I think so. I could be wrong, but anyway, she was used to playing shows there, but she played the show in this get up, the spandex get up, and noticed that the crowd was like into it a lot more than usual.
Then they said wowie, wow, what's she wearing?
Pretty much, it was about as simple as that. She she was like, Okay, let me try this. I want to do a little experiment and I'm going to do this again, but not on Halloween. I'm going to dress up again and do the same show. And she didn't got another response like way better than usual response. So she's like, that's it. I'm doing Bandix from now on.
Wow.
And then that was that. Nineteen seventy seven, Pat Benatar starts the eighties Bandix rocker trend.
I would count that as the fourth dinner party factoid.
Yeah, I would say so too.
And if you want a fifth catch a Rising Star is a chain of comedy clubs and was also a TV series in Canada.
To Now you got anything else? Uh no, Well that's it for Elastic everybody. If you want to know more about it, type that word into the search bar HowStuffWorks dot com and who knows what amazing things will come up? That's right, And since I said search bar, it's time for listener mate.
Uh yeah, I'm gonna call this short but kind of funny. Hey, guys, quick and trivial email from a fan in Pittsburgh. I too appreciated in your uh's the episode on body Snatching, a live episode on Grave Robbie, I too appreciated how cool Charlie Chaplin's Body robbers partner's name was Gancho Geneff. And I tell you we did that show a few times, and you and I never ceased to not crack up
at the words Gancho Ganeff. Sure it's still happening. Being Jewish, I thought a little Hebrew Yiddish languages were involved, and Ganev in fact does mean thief. Oh really, And then he stretches it a bit. Then he says, guancho for that matter, seems to be Spanish for hook like dance moves. And he said Charlie Chaplin was a dancer. He said, so, maybe that's a stretch on the second part, but it seems as though Gancho Ganev was born just the old
Charlie Chaplin's body Wow. I'll give you props on the Ganef part at least, And that is from B. D. Wahlberg, And he said, ps, you might remember me from Pittsburgh at your live show. I asked a question in the Q and A about how you find new ways to rip on the post office, and I still remember I gave my Trader Joe's bag to somebody in the audience, and that was BD. He still still have Chuck's Trader Joe's bag hanging in my kitchen.
Nice man. Well, thanks a lot, b D. We appreciate it.
That was.
It would have been even more ironic had he been referencing the DV Cooper episode.
Oh did you hear about the new info?
I did, and it actually makes a lot of sense to me.
Yeah, So for anyone that hasn't seen, they found some actual new science that seems to indicate they found these four elements in the tie that b dB Cooper wore. And apparently these elements are very specific to work being done by the Boeing company.
Yep.
So it gives a lot of credence to the theory that he was a Boeing employee.
And even more specifically because it was on his tie, if he were like working the actual machines that were manufacturing this thing, he would have been wearing like cover all something, not a tie. So it indicates that if he worked for Boeing, he would have been like an engineer or a manager who would have been wearing a tie on the floor while he was out there.
Like, I think this is like the biggest lead they've ever had. I think so too, pretty amazing.
Yeah, you know who's excited about it? Secret?
Yeah? Boy?
If you want to know what we're talking about, we did a DV Cooper episode and this popped in. That's right up.
It's a live episode that we hope will be available to you.
So what else?
Oh? And actually, wow, boy, this is exciting. We just got literally an email reply from BD because I said we were going to be reading this and I think this bears mentioning. What a day maker. Guys, if you use a pronoun for me, I go by they and them rather than.
He or she.
I know you're talking about because I am a non binary listener. What up?
What up? B D. Thank you. It's good to hear from.
You, and I'd love to surprise my BFF Carlisle with a great big audio high five.
Well I think that just happened.
Wow. All right, this is like real time correction slash back and forth with BD.
Let's just see what happened. Email Obama real quick. We'll sit here, Let's see what happens next. We're just gonna take this for We're gonna take this ride.
All right. Well, thank you, b D.
Yeah, thanks a lot, b D. Good to hear from you. All right, Well, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us. I'm at Josh Underscore Underscore Clark. You can also hit me up at the official s y SK podcast handle. You can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant and at stuff you Should Know. You can send us both an email to stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com and has always joined us at our home own the web, stuff youshould Know dot com.
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