Home page and access point for the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) website. Home page and access point for the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) website. Skip to main content
Latex is a natural ingredient that comes from rubber trees in the form of a milky liquid. There are thousands of species of plants that produce different types of latex, including the Chicle tree that yields the raw material for producing the rubbery material in chewing gum.
In 1912, a German named Julius Fromm developed a new, improved manufacturing technique for condoms: dipping glass molds into a raw rubber solution. Called cement dipping, this method required adding gasoline or benzene to the rubber to make it liquid. Latex, rubber suspended in water, was invented in 1920. Latex condoms required less labor to produce than cement-dipped rubber condoms, which had to be smoothed by rubbing and trimming.