The Olmec civilization, also known as the ‘rubber people’, utilized rubber in Latin America for various purposes, including making rubber balls.

The introduction of rubber to Europeans by Hernan Cortés, who brought Aztec Mesoamerican Ball Game players to Spain in 1528, showcasing the bouncing rubber balls

1736: Charles Marie de la Condamine sent rubber (latex) to the Académie Royale des Sciences in Paris

1755: François Fresneau presented a scientific paper on it

1770: Joseph Priestly discovered rubber's ability to erase pencil marks leading to its naming

1824: Charles Macintosh invented the Mackintosh raincoat

1839: Charles Goodyear discovered the vulcanization process

1876: Sir Henry Wickham transported Hevea Brasiliensis seeds to the UK

1882: John Boyd Dunlop invented the pneumatic rubber tire

1909: Fritz Hofmann's team began the development of synthetic rubber in Germany

1910: Sergei Vasiljevich Lebedev developed the first synthetic rubber polymer from butadiene in Russia

1930s: Introduction of styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR), Nitrile rubber (NBR), and neoprene

1937: Introduction of butyl rubber

1949: Peter Ganine filed the first patent for a rubber duck

1961: Exxon developed EPDM rubber

2016: Continental introduced tires made from dandelion rubber for commercial vehicles

2019: Continental unveiled bicycle tires made from dandelion rubber