Failure™ Magazine

Ball and Cane

The rise and fall of gutta-percha.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under History

Illustration of Charles Sumner being attacked by Preston S. Brooks, by James G. Varney, 1856.

Entering the 1840s gutta-percha was a virtually unknown commodity in the West, a curious substance of little practical use. But by the time it was first utilized in a submarine telegraph cable circa 1850, it was a common component of numerous commercial goods. A natural plastic derived from the latex of several different trees native to Malaysia, gutta-percha had the advantage of being pliable when heated, yet hard and moderately flexible at room temperature, making it perfect for use in such products as boot soles and bottle stoppers. Although Malayans had used gutta-percha for hundreds of years, it wasn’t until Western engineers and businessmen began actively seeking commercially viable natural substances that gutta-percha captured the attention of Europeans.

For better or worse, the West’s fondness for gutta-percha ultimately played a role in its decline. Gutta-percha could only be obtained by boiling the gray, milky sap of the gutta tree, a process which necessitated killing the tree. When German, Werner von Siemens (founder of Siemens), discovered that gutta-percha was an effective electrical insulator it was quickly incorporated into the design of submarine telegraph cables. Since most underwater cables were hundreds or even thousands of miles long, massive amounts of gutta-percha had to be harvested in a short period of time. “You only get two or three pounds per tree,” notes John Steele Gordon, author of A Thread Across The Ocean: The Heroic Story of the Transatlantic Cable. “When you need several hundred tons you’re cutting down a lot of gutta trees.”

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