Also, if anyone has been to the national park named after him in Missouri, how is it?

  • niktemadur@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    peanut rubber for WWII

    Ok, it sounds like you’re making shit up, although I know it’s true.
    There was also hemp oil and hemp rope, used extensively in planes and ships. Then it got criminalized (or re-criminalized, I forget) right after the war ended. Gotta keep those Dupont execs rolling in the patents money, amirite!

    Still, this is some gourmet Willy Wonka fantasy material.
    Has a comic/manga made GWC into a steampunk superhero scientist yet?

  • spujb@lemmy.cafe
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    10 days ago

    sad when the guy used by many to celebrate the role of Black innovation in US history doesn’t even get a full picture painted of him most times he’s brought up!

    • Theo@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 days ago

      And that I was lied to in school about him inventing it. I didn’t know peanut butter was so old.

  • Gork@lemm.ee
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    10 days ago

    Peanut Rubbers are the condom of choice for Mr. Peanut. 🥜 🧐

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    It didn’t really get interesting until the day George Washington Carver ran into the guy that popularized chocolate.

  • hark@lemmy.world
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    I am intrigued by this peanut rubber. What sort of properties did it have and why aren’t we using it now? Or are we?

    • aramis87@fedia.io
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      10 days ago

      I didn’t find the peanut rubber, but did find that

      Dr. George Washington Carver’s work resulted in the creation of more than 300 products from peanuts, contributing greatly to the economic improvement of the rural South. source

      OP’s article states that

      He helped Henry Ford make peanut rubber for cannons for World War II.

      But I can’t find a actual source for that just endless repeated comments to that effect. I wonder if whoever-originated-that-idea conflated Carver’s peanut work with his other work with Ford:

      By the time World War II began, Ford had made repeated journeys to Tuskegee to convince Carver to come to Dearborn and help him develop a synthetic rubber to help compensate for wartime rubber shortages. Carver arrived on July 19, 1942, and set up a laboratory in an old water works building in Dearborn. He and Ford experimented with different crops, including sweet potatoes and dandelions, eventually devising a way to make the rubber substitute from goldenrod, a plant weed. Carver died in January 1943, Ford in April 1947, but the relationship between their two institutions continued to flourish. Source