modifier to the recipe not only produced a lower molecular weight and more tractable rubber, but it also increased the polymerization rate. Use of a mercaptan modifier became standard in the Mutual recipe.

Although German scientists had become familiar with the actions of chain transfer agents in the 1930s, Germany continued to make unmodified rubber to the end of the war and did not fully exploit their knowledge.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, progress was made in the understanding of the chain transfer reaction and the behavior

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