Sulfur vulcanization in the processing and compounding of rubber by Hancock and his colleagues led to a more reliable process. Around 1900, disulfiram was introduced as a vulcanizing agent, and became widely used. In 1905 George Oenslager discovered that a derivative of aniline called thiocarbanilide accelerated the reaction of sulfur with rubber, leading to shorter cure times and reducing energy consumption. This breakthrough was almost as fundamental to the rubber industry as Goodyear's sulfur cure. Accelerators made the cure process faster, improved the reliability of the process and enabled vulcanization to be applied to synthetic polymers. One year after his discovery, Oenslager
Rubber toughening and crazing interaction theory, and more recently those including the effects of critical ligament thickness, critical plastic area, voiding and cavitation, damage competition and others. In 1956, the microcrack theory became the first to explain the toughening effect of a dispersed rubber phase in a polymer. Two key observations that went into the initial theory and subsequent expansion were as follows: (1) microcracks form voids over which styrene-butadiene copolymer fibrils form to prevent propagation, and (2) energy stored during elongation of toughened epoxies is released upon breaking of rubber particles. The theory concluded that the combined energy to initiate microcracks