In 1747, French engineer François Freneau made the world’s first raincoat. He used the latex obtained from rubber wood, and put in cloth shoes and coats in this latex solution for dipping and coating treatment, then it could play a waterproof role.
In a rubber factory in Scotland, England, there was a worker named Mackintosh. one day in 1823, Mackintosh was working and accidentally dripped the rubber solution onto his clothes. After he found, he rushed to wipe with his hands, who knew that the rubber solution seems to have seeped into the clothes, not only did not wipe off, but coated into a piece. However, Mackintosh is a poor worker, he could not throw away the clothes, so still wear it to work.
Soon, Mackintosh found: the clothes coated with rubber places, as if coated with a layer of waterproof glue, although the appearance of ugly, but impervious to water. He had an idea, so the whole piece of clothing are coated with rubber, the result is made of a rain-resistant clothes. With this new style of clothing, Mackintosh no longer worry about rain. This novelty soon spread, and colleagues in the factory knew that they had followed Mackintosh’s example and made a waterproof rubber raincoat. Later, the growing fame of the rubber raincoat attracted the attention of the British metallurgist Parks, who also studied this special clothing with great interest. Parks felt that, although coated with rubber clothing impervious to water, but hard and brittle, wearing the body is neither beautiful, nor comfortable. Parks decided to make some improvements to this kind of clothing. Unexpectedly, this improvement has taken more than ten years of work. By 1884, Parks invented the use of carbon disulfide as a solvent to dissolve the rubber, the production of waterproof technology, and applied for a patent. In order to make this invention can be quickly applied to production, into a commodity, Parks sold the patent to a man named Charles. After it began to mass production, “Charles Raincoat Company” business name also soon became popular around the world. However, people did not forget the credit of Mackintosh, everyone called the raincoat “mackintosh”. To this day, the word “raincoat” in English is still called “mackintosh” .
After entering the 20th century, the emergence of plastic and a variety of waterproof fabrics, so that the style and color of raincoats become increasingly rich. A non-waterproof raincoat appeared on the market, and this raincoat also represents a high level of technology.
Post time: Nov-04-2022