Myriad Initials Made Easy

Myriad initials

[Music] welcome to the civil war digital digest I'm your host Felicia and I'm back with Mike washing her today and we're looking at military applications of rubber during the Civil War we have a lot of really great examples here today of that how did we really get to all of these great things we see in front of us basically it started long before the Civil War the ideas anyway as early as 1833 and 1834 while rubber still was not be able to use practically because of the lack of vulcanization we were looking at suggestions by military people to use it for gun covers cartridge boxes and things like that because it was a natural waterproof type material as we went through the 1830s then we saw some suggestions even to use them as a rubber blanket a rubber ground cloth which the military basically totally overlooked at that point in time the first real extensive use by the military was probably pontoon boats here air-filled pontoon boats which were really a significant improvement over the old type pontoons in West wagons to transport they inflated them as they needed them and so as a result of that they were used fairly extensively in the Mexican War I period and also I think though in a Mexican War period we have record of a number of different accoutrements knapsacks haversacks canteens and things that were being used during the Mexican War so that's kind of the time of innovation that's leading to really the success for the Civil War it is in it and it didn't prove very successful in the Mexican War yeah that the troops didn't work very accepting of them rubber was still being kind of experimented with figured out how to how to make these different things out of so some of them didn't work out for and matter of fact they went on to do experiments with a number of those types of accoutrements in the 1850s and they turned out so poorly that I think the quartermaster Crossman at that time said that all the rubber goods should be thrown away except for the remaining good canteens okay so obviously they don't do that and someone keeps improving on they do yeah they did they did so how do we get to really having all of this well Charles Goodyear had issued licenses for the use of vulcanized rubber to for different applications and one of the major companies was the Union India Rubber Company and they were actually licensed to to produce many different articles but the key one for the Civil War is they were the only manufacturer that was licensed to manufacture military goods really so these guys are they they were under license now we have a lot of pirates that were manufacturing illegally outside of the license but Union India Rubber Company manufactured most of the legal all of the legal manufactures and are they manufacturing it all themselves or are they contracting it out how's it really work that's a good question because as the war progressed the need for her request for rubber blankets became so extensive that they couldn't fill them all themselves nothing was approved by the United States military okay made out of rubber and Tolan rubber blanket I was approved in November of 1861 okay they went on by that way to do to buy over 2.8 million rubber blanket montrose during the war but the Union india-rubber couldn't keep up with the demand they had created a subsidiary called Phoenix rubber company so there's some surviving examples that are marked Phoenix rubber and also the Goodyear patent markings yeah this rubber blanket is kind of a cool surviving example because it's in very good shape it has the markings of the Union India Rubber Company it has the Goodyear Patton working and also the inspectors working this was worn by corporal James T Cowan from the believe the 34th Massachusetts he was wounded at 3rd Winchester oh and the blanket was rolled up on his back typical style and he was wounded at 3rd Winchester in the shoulder and it went through the rubber blanket and if you look you can the bullet holes appear symmetrically in eight places Wow that rubber blanket so so this really kind of tell us a cool story it does a whole story behind it's kind of neat there's a little button on there that looks like a button it's a that's a patent spring I like hook that was patented in 1862 and that was made for to be able to convert a standard rubber blanket into into a poncho just by the tortilla around your shoulder I'm hoping it or holding multiple rubber blankets together for a tent so we have some other stuff made out of rubber besides the blanket that soldiers are using and what do we have over here yeah and important to point out these were not accepted by the United States government the roller blanket in the cavalry Tama were the only two rubber goods that were approved by but a lot of them were bought by state units militia units or private privately purchased so we have a knapsack here that's more I believe 26 Massachusetts okay and that's rubber-coated cloth we have a haversack that has no markings it's a soldier's name inside but I haven't been able to make that out at this point of time the robert canteen has an interesting story probably one of the leftovers could be one of the leftovers from the 1850s and also could be privately purchased cuz they were still selling them at the time but interesting tag that came with that when I bought that canteen over 25 years ago it says this rubber water bag was taken from a quiet rebel in Virginia oh wow yeah they didn't webpage taken from I did so it's kind of while it's a cool tag it um it's also a little said and it somebody said it tells a story of somebody's son brother or father it didn't come home so that kind of goes over some of our soft rubber objects being in front of us but what's going on with that bucket what's going on with it yeah it's kind of neat because a typical like we see on artillery shells on time it looks like the farmer whoever found this is this was found on the bull run battlefield July of 1864 that the more interesting thing to me as a collector of this stuff are the patent markings on the bottom of that the patent markings are from Daniel Harris patent of 1854 for recycled or reprocessed rubber so okay and you had showed me a picture where a bucket very similar to this goes up with some soldiers there's a lot there's a Library of Congress photo that has a it's pretty famous one of soldiers and it sure looks to me when you look at the whole design of this and the way that the the handle is that it certainly looks like the same bucket is that similar bucket yeah yeah okay so we also have some hard rubber objects right um can you tell me kind of what we're looking at here sure Troy privately purchased of course they weren't necessary for the not issued for the by the government these anyway so we have a u.s. Navy soap box that says don't give up the ship on it the original naval soap is still in it says naval so oh wow and beside it is the kind of the army counterpart that has the military eagle and he's holding a razor in one of his talons and the other Talon has a banner that says morning exercise oh that's pretty neat yeah and that beside it is a typical Indian rubber comb company cootie comb or lice comb okay teeth missing is a little bit there's there's some engraved initials in it and also in addition to the patent markings and manufacturer the other side has an embossed US and a u.s. Navy rather okay so is that something they're being issued or is that a private I believe it's privately purchase I haven't seen any contracts for for anything like that okay Navy yeah well you've brought so many interesting things for us to look at that we didn't have enough space on the table so we're back we've reset the table and kind of are gonna look at innovative things going on in the military with rubber so I kind of want to start off with the foot in the room and place to start artificial lenses you can imagine during the warriors the number of patents issued for artificial limbs went up significantly as the war increased they're like in 1861 in 1862 there was only one patent issued each year for artificial limbs in 1865 there was 24 patents issued for artificial limbs one of the patentees of Massa Marx who went on to patent many artificial limbs for the rest of the century he patented this process of manufacturing artificial limbs out feet or hands or whatever out of combination of hard rubber and rubber he was using hard rubber in the base but he was using sponge rubber on the outside to give it the feel of real human flesh oh wow kind of cool you know on that medical line also you have the use of of rubber to unite separated intestines in some surgeries Oh rubber and also I mean something as simple as ambulance Springs where they were suspending the stretchers with india-rubber rings to ease the the cushion Dinah did the ride along the way oh by the way they I should mention we talked about water beds in one of the previous episodes and the medical department of the Union Army purchased 1144 india-rubber water beds to use for patients with bed sores so that's something that affects even the medical field today yes lots of modern applications with it - yep so see this application for the medical field and kind of all the advancements being made there and we turn our attention to the soft rubber object and what is it it's almost anything the soldier wanted it to be okay I think that this is a patent model by the way which is a miniature version of the intended product that was to be manufactured officer required that to be made up until around nineteen hundred so had to be kind of a working model exactly like you were going to your propose to be produced but this particular model is a combination tent knapsack rubber blanket poncho air mattress pillow hood everything combined everything you would want to use and for through different types of arrangements with as you can see they're miniaturized buttons on it yeah you could make all these different things work for you the problem with these things were they say they sounded like a great idea because the soldier can devilish but they weighed way way way too much for anybody to carry you know even early on a lot of the soldiers discarded their knapsacks and we're just using the rubber blanket - yeah it was just made a lot more sense well and I know just from looking at kind of the rubber blanket and stuff I mean they were able to use that in a myriad of ways and so really they're doing with just a blanket what what do people are doing with the combination it sounded like a good idea just didn't turn out to be a good idea now a lot of these patent models we have - no - there was a lot of things that were patented that were never produced okay just because they're just like today if you get a patent today you might have a patent but you have to get some capital or some company to say I'm gonna make this for you and you have to be a market for it well then you had talked about you know the Union Army really only approving of the gum blanket why not and so you know they're not funding then no they're not okay so now that we've covered this kind of move on I see you have a what looks like a rubber cartridge what is that - it's kind of a transition I think from the paper and linen cartridges - the metallic cartridges this was specifically it was a this is not a patent model this is the cartridge in many that went with the Smith carbine it was patented by Gilbert Smith specifically for use in that carbine and it is rubber so it was waterproof and function just like a metallic cartridge but it was rubber they were kind of unserviceable after they were used but there was a patent a few years after that but I believe a man named English who patented a some type of a brass fitting for the block that they could make it reusable Oh so so I see we have kind of a variety of buttons and I know we touched on that what are the buttons doing here for the military okay yet the heart rubber implants for the military were kind of specific so the one on the end for instance is a US Navy hard rubber button made under a good years patent to our rubber patent and so marked important to the Navy because unlike metal buttons it wouldn't groped from the corrosive sea salt water and that is by the way the same type of button that was found from the commander of the recently recovered CSS Hundley submarine no piranha he had been a Union Navy officer they were his buttons Oh a same type that was found beside it is a pretty rare Confederate Navy button it has across cannons in the sea n on it it's marked on the back mantains patent which is not exactly a hard rubber it's a type of composition material but very very similar to similar to hard rubber in appearance okay different different yeah yeah in the center we have two varieties of the bird and sharpshooter type officers button it has the eye infantry eye in the middle one type is an earlier version which I saw on the prototype of the burn and burdens sharpshooter uniform latina Smithsonian okay it's it's different because the buttons are very crude they seemed to have been an early attempt they were made by the novelty rubber company under a good years patent but they're very uneven and just misshapen a few yeah whereas the later manufacture a hard rubber bottom by novelty rubber are pretty regular pretty much pretty normal why are the sharpshooter's opting for this instead of just a normal millage why good I tell ya step toward camouflage if you're well because the the one thing that could give away a sharpshooters position and tree or whatever would be brass buttons that glistened in the Sun okay yeah when will bird and when he'd put his specs in for the uniform he specified green coats and he specified that type of button give me you so that it wouldn't shine in the Sun and give away the position well that's pretty innovative and forward-thinking yeah I see you have some other objects here and I kind of want to ask what are those soldiers doing with their hard rubber that they have besides using it how it is is in whatever yeah well it they'd found that especially soldiers that were in things like winter camp or in prisons they had a lot of time on their hands so hard rubber became a very popular item to carve into different things different kind a lot of jewelry items have been carved out of hard rubber they've recovered a lot in sites like Johnson's Island and other prison sites we see here a couple examples of that there's kind there's a book that's kind of like a necklace or what have you with a ring on it for hanging we have a little padlock that's been carved and most frequently I think we find a lot of rings and jewelry items of that type that particular ring there which has sterling silver inlays was carved by a Arkansas cavalry man who was imprisoned at Rock Island ok prison so they're making this out of things like buttons are you know we talked about other things like the the chart rules and cutting those up and doing inlays of mother and pearl and even a silver and gold in some cases this was coin silver that they were hammering out and he had jewelers that were in prison that were making these little designs for the inside they were using a little pen stick and set them into the hard rubber so we've seen a lot of innovation in this part of the episode with you know things with patent models things that the Army is doing in the Navy and finally things that soldiers are doing on their own right so thank you for coming and bringing all of this to share with us today and be here thank you for watching make sure you click the subscribe button to make sure that you will see future episodes and we'll see you in two weeks