I've seem some pretty interesting stuff made from hardened peat (a Scottish friend of mine, used to make peat jewelry. I have a piece he made for me).
Vulcanized rubber was also quite plasticky.
WillAdams · 4h ago
The link requires reading through the specifics of a violent event from U.S. history so as to pivot off the material used to make the device used as a weapon: gutta percha.
Perhaps the Wikipedia article would serve the discussion?
I think your link is broken. Need to scroll past a more recent article on an incident of 19th century American history before the target article on botanicals and golf balls.
crescit_eundo · 4h ago
I clicked again on the link I posted to make sure it’s correct (https://worldhistory.substack.com/p/plastic-before-plastic) and it brought me directly to the blog post without needing to scroll through anything else.
Wondering where the link you clicked on dumped you into?
jonas21 · 1h ago
I think they just missed the segue from the intro (about the caning of Charles Sumner) to the body of the article (about gutta-percha).
The two are only tangentially related in that the cane happened to be made of gutta-percha, and its easy to miss the sentence where they mention this because it's sandwiched between a large image and a form to subscribe to the newsletter.
Gutta-percha is a polymer. It's polyisoprene.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutta-percha#Chemistry
Vulcanized rubber was also quite plasticky.
Perhaps the Wikipedia article would serve the discussion?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutta-percha
The two are only tangentially related in that the cane happened to be made of gutta-percha, and its easy to miss the sentence where they mention this because it's sandwiched between a large image and a form to subscribe to the newsletter.