RECAP 2025 – QUARTA PARTE
At the end of 19th century, a particular Southeast Asian tree called palaquium gutta became the center of a technological boom. These trees, found mainly in Malaysia, produce a milky white natural latex called gutta percha. After English scientist Michael Faraday published a study in The Philosophical Magazine in 1848 about the use of this material as an electrical insulator, gutta percha rapidly became the darling of the engineering world. It was seen as the solution to the problem of insulating telegraphic cables in order that they could withstand the conditions of the ocean floor. As the global submarine business grew, so did demand for palaquium gutta tree trunks. The historian John Tully describes how local Malay, Chinese and Dayak workers were paid little for the dangerous works of felling the trees and slowly collecting the latex. The latex was processed then sold through Singapore’s trade markets into the British market, where it was transformed into, among other things, lengths upon lengths of submarine cable sheaths.
A mature palaquium gutta could yield around 300 grams of latex. But in 1857, the first transatlantic cable was around 3000 km long and weighed 2000 tons – requiring around 250 tons of gutta percha. To produce just one ton of this material required around 900,000 tree trunks. The jungles of Malaysia and Singapore were stripped, and by the early 1880s the palaquium gutta had vanished. In a last-ditch effort to save their supply chain, the British passed a ban in 1883 to halt harvesting the latex, but the tree was already extinct.
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