Mayas and Aztecs adopted a religious ceremony as a sporting competition.The game may have been involved only representatives of the aristocratic families.Played two on two.The game itself is reminiscent of both football and basketball - players could not For heavy rubber ball with his hands and feet, but the hips, shoulders and buttocks.The team, managed to throw the ball into the stone ring, attached to the wall of the temple. After which the losers solemnly cut off the winners head of flint knives and to sacrifice them to Quetzalcoatl.Despite such a strange contradiction, the Aztecs did not play in the giveaway.There was a severe cutting, with
use of force techniques.Armour players resembled modern U.S. armor players.

 The winners were crying from happiness, and the losers weeping and tearing their hair in grief, they
deprived of the honor of becoming a victim of the supreme deity, and thus increase the harvest of maize at
fields, obesity stud naked meat dogs and fecundity of the Aztec women Of the heads of winners
Pyramids reach thirty feet in height -
heights of the sacred tree Hevea, which gave the divine juice production goals the most outstanding forwards inlaid with turquoise, they inserted in their sockets Then they are forever placed in the hall of fame sports the local temples. 
 The fate of the vanquished was sad.Aztecs good for the eyes laughed at them, but loud
expressed their condolences.To sweeten the bitterness of defeat, the losers were allocated
on 52 baskets of fruits cocoa by half a hundred slaves and the allotment for the collection of taxes to the treasury of the empire.
One player who receives the Indians nickname Moctezuma-loser for the series of continuous
defeats for twenty consecutive seasons, eventually gathered under his reign the whole empire.However, the Spanish conquistadors, struck so unsportsmanlike conduct
Moctezuma, in 1520 executed him, Indian football was banned, and the balls were confiscated and taken to  Spain. There's this game, but without the lethal consequences, has become popular under the name of "pelota"
from which both occurred modern football.
 Harsh manners were in the sports business world of the ancient Aztec.Beautiful had a career players.And only the pyramids of skulls in the ancient Tenochtitlan,
tourist center of Mexico City, similar to the current generation of Latin American players
the glory of their ancestors...
 However, "the tears of a tree" was used not only for the production of sporting equipment.Portuguese King Joao II received from their South American possessions cloak soaked
Two hours of subjects, not sparing watered their king, wrapped in a miracle
The king remained dry.Portugal became the first country in Europe to set up production
waterproof fabrics.True, the latex, which was soaked cloth, melted in the sun, but it
could be attributed to the costs of medieval production.Subsequently, the method of impregnation tissue was improved Scottish chemist Charles Macintosh, who proposed impregnation of the latex mixture with gasoline.
Хэнкок A new stage in the development of rubber humanity came in 1826 when Englishman T. Hancock opened the process of mastication of rubber, which is used in all modern methods of its.His plastikator consisted of spiked rotor rotating in a spiked floor this device had manual transmission.It became possible to transform into a soft rubber,
plastic mass, easily mixed with various powder ingredients.
 And finally, v1838, Charles Nelson Goodyear discovered a way to cure rubber mixing it with
sulfur. Rubber and articles thereof have become one of the components of technological revolution,
experienced by mankind in the XIX century.Demand for rubber is growing rapidly. Бразилия под Brazil under penalty of death has banned the export of seeds of Hevea country.Come "rubber boom".
 It was a golden time for Brazilian growers.Manaus, "rubber capital of Brazil, in 1850-1920 he was the most magnificent and richest city in the western hemisphere.If the "rubber
Baron found a whim to listen to French opera, he does not bother a long and exhausting journey to Paris.He walked a lot easier - buy Grand Opera in full
And not only the troupe, but the theater building. Building materials, so as not to spoil the overall impressions of the performances of Bizet and Verdi's lost in the Amazonian jungle, Manaus,
were brought from France. The theater was built best architects and masons in Paris ...
 Manaus Opera House - the best monument to the era.In the words of the unforgettable cat Matroskin:
The funds we have in our mind is not enough.Mind, really, it was not enough.Brazilians have not saved their monopoly on the rubber.Came in 1876 Black tropical night, bulldozed his way through the intertwining vines, champing high boots in the viscous mangrove mud to the river down a man with a backpack.In a bag he had seventy thousand shrunken gray lumps - as seeds protected Called the man Henry Uikgem.
Bribery, flattery, lies, and sometimes arms, a citizen of the British Empire Uikgem infiltrated inner circle Brazilian government.Posing as a harmless nerd, student flora of the Amazon rain forest, he managed to penetrate the protected plantation rubber trees and stealing treasure, surpassing the cost of any state belonging to the wealthiest family in the world.Secretly dipping them into English ship, he brought to the Botanical Gardens at Kew. Семена Seeds were sown, but rose only four percent.However, a few days old seedlings reached the half-meter height.1,900 seedlings were packed in 38 boxes and under the supervision of gardener sent to the island of Ceylon, and from there sent to Java, Burma, Australia, in
Trinidad, where he unexpectedly appeared for Brazil's vast plantation gevey.
 I do not know, put a bust of a hero in his homeland.But Uikgem deserves.Brazilians still pronounce his name through clenched teeth.Nowadays Manaus - unimportant town in a backward Brazilian.Soon, Java, Sumatra, Borneo - a former Dutch colony - also covered bald patches cut down the jungle, where tropical breeze gently swayed emerald seedlings of a new plant for these places - hevea.From a single tree by cuttings and collecting the latex received from 3 to 7.5 kg of rubber per year.Without tropical colonies of the industrialized countries have gradually become dependent on competitors.
 oetomu not surprising that the search for replacements, obtained from a chemical reactor, was employed a lot of bright minds.In 1906, the Board of Directors of the company Bayer has announced that those who before November1909 "will find a way to manufacture rubber substitute or a full-fledged" will receive no more,
nor less than 20,000 marks.If desired, this call may be called "chemical landing on the moon. 20,000 stamps were then considerable sum: in 1900 for 50 marks, you could buy chic
men's suit, the workers in the metallurgical industry in 1909 earned an average of
About 1,300 brands.So it was worth to hurry.
 At the factory of the dyes in Elberfeld 100 years ago, worked Fritz Hoffmann - while leading
chemistry department of pharmacology.Now his name is more associated with the production of the first
  synthetic rubber.
 Production of the main element condition - isoprene - in spite of special expertise, developed by employees of Hoffmann, was given with great difficulty.First, Hoffmann had to accept so that valuable bubbles with isoprene should remain in the closet, and for the experiments had to resort to chemically close relative of this substance - so-called which at the time was more affordable.Patent number 250,690 on the first synthetic rubber in the world was issued September 12, 1909 - one hundred years ago.
It should be noted however that a small amount metilkauchuka obtained Hoffmann, distinguished by high cost and low quality.In the 1910's, many chemists have begun intensive work on the synthesis of rubber.It is to this
С.В. period were the first works SV.Л. Lebedeva, Kondakova, Ostromyslenskogo.First World War interrupted this work. In 1920, trying to get a new antifreeze from ethylene chloride and sodium polysulfide, Dzh.Patrik instead opened a new rubbery substance, which he called Thiokol. В 1931DuPont began production of chloroprene rubber "neoprene.The Soviet government also took steps to provide the raw materials of independence and.In April 1926 the Supreme Economic Council announced an international competition for the best method for synthetic rubber. С.В. SV Lebedev won this contest and led the effort on the practical implementation of the technological scheme of production butadiene rubber.Interestingly, when a great American, Thomas Alva Edison learned about Russia's success in the field rubber, he was all over the world, said that these reports are false because he was personally involved in obtaining
synthetic rubber and was convinced that this is impossible. Historically, the first synthetic rubber, who had commercial value, was С. В.polybutadiene (divinyl) Rubber. The manufactured by the method of synthesis of SV Lebedev (Anionic polymerisation of butadiene in the presence of liquid sodium), but due to low mechanical properties have found limited application.
 Isoprene rubber - synthetic rubber, obtained by polymerization of isoprene in the presence of catalysts - lithium metal peroxide compounds.Unlike other synthetic rubbers, isoprene rubbers like natural rubber, have high adhesiveness and slightly inferior to him in elasticity.Currently, most of the produced rubber is butadiene-styrene, or butadiene-styrene-acrylonitrile copolymers.The most massive use of rubber - is the production of rubber for the automotive aircraft and bicycle tires.
Rubbers are made from special rubber seals for a huge variety of purposes thermal, sound and air-sealing detachable elements of buildings, sanitary and ventilation technology, in hydraulic, pneumatic and vacuum technology.Rubbers are used for electrical insulation, medical devices and tools contraception. In rocketry, synthetic rubbers are used as a polymer backbone with manufacture of solid rocket fuel, in which they play the role of fuel, as well as filler powder used saltpeter (potassium or ammonium) or ammonium perchlorate,
which plays a role in the fuel oxidizer