Established in 1833, David Moseley & Sons of Manchester manufactured a range of india rubber and gutta percha goods. The company is notable as one of the first in Britain to be involved in telecommunications. In November 1877 Charles Moseley recruited the engineer William Fereday Bottomley, who had worked for the Magnetic and Indo-European Telegraph Companies. The company began providing private telephone services to local customers as a telephone agent. Wishing to connect his premises on Dantzig Street and Shudehill by telephone, hardware merchant Thomas Hudson became the first customer. The next step for David Moseley & Sons was to become telephone manufacturers. Alexander Marr joined the company as head of the construction department, patenting a granular carbon transmitter in 1879. The company began supplying apparatus to the Post Office, railway and private companies. Marr soon developed another granular carbon transmitter especially for the transmission of opera, which was used in Manchester theatres in 1880 to 1881. In 1880, Charles Moseley, William Bottomley and William Edwin Heys (local consulting engineer and electrician), patented a system for erecting telephone wires, called the ‘twist’ system, which was designed ‘to diminish or prevent the results of inductive action’. Although the patent was never enforced (Professor Hughes having previously described the same principle), the ‘twist’ system was adopted universally in Britain. Moseley patented another three types of telephone apparatus in 1881 and 1882. As well as in-house designs, the company also made telephone equipment under licence, such as the Gower-Bell wall telephone. David Moseley & Sons advertised plans to open a telephone exchange at its offices and warehouse in New Brown Street. The business received a licence in August of that year, but by October the Lancashire & Cheshire Telephonic Exchange had bought the licence to head off its competitor. Moseley & Sons continued to trade as telephone constructor and erector until around 1890, but by 1897 its entry in the Manchester street directory no longer listed these activities. The Moseley company maintained its original business of manufacturing india rubber and gutta percha, branching out into plastic products. David Moseley & Sons moved to the Chapelfield Works in Ardwick in 1845, and kept a warehouse in New Brown Street. From 1906 to 1961 there was also a separate waterproof clothing factory on Dolphin Street in Ardwick. In 1964 David Moseley & Sons was taken over by Avon Rubber and was renamed Avon-Moseley in 1968. In 1981, economic recession led Avon Rubber to rationalise its operations, and the Avon-Moseley factory was closed.

Charles Macintosh, chemist and textile businessman, discovered and patented a method of using waste products from the gas industry together with latex to waterproof cloth. At first he may have started manufacturing this waterproof material at his father’s Glasgow dye works, or perhaps at his own premises on Hill Street in the city. In 1824 Macintosh persuaded the influential cotton manufacturers and textile merchants J and Hugh Hornby Birley to build a factory next to their Cambridge Street mill in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester, to produce waterproof products. Macintosh’s waterproofs were not initially popular with polite society, as they had an unpleasant smell. Demand from the armed services, stagecoach travellers and others sustained the business, but it took time to become profitable. Meanwhile another chemist, Thomas Hancock, had improved upon the waterproofing process and patented his own method. From 1825 he and Macintosh slowly began to cooperate, improving their products, until Hancock became a partner in Macintosh’s business in 1831. At this point Hancock and Macintosh merged their businesses. Charles Macintosh and Co acquired a speciality rubber products business belonging to Hancock’s brother in 1833. By 1836 the company was sufficiently successful that the word ‘mackintosh’ was being used to describe any raincoat. A major fire caused significant damage to the factory in 1838, which was reported in the press at the time. Charles Macintosh died in 1843. In the same year Hancock discovered the process of rubber vulcanisation (at the same time as Charles Goodyear made the discovery in the United States). Vulcanisation enabled the company to create a range of vulcanized rubberized fabric products as well solid rubber goods. By the time of the 1851 Great Exhibition, the business won an award and was highly successful. In 1889 Charles Macintosh & Co became a private limited company. The company prospered during the First World War, due to the demand for waterproof and rubber materials for the war effort. In 1918 they acquired a larger factory in Brook Street. In 1925 Dunlop Ltd acquired Charles Macintosh & Co, in order to expand their business in general rubber products. In 1940 part of the mill complex was destroyed in bombing raids, but Dunlop Ltd continued to manufacture rubber goods in the surviving buildings until 2000. The company carried on as a subsidiary of Dunlop until at least the 1960s.

The india rubber manufacturing company William Warne & Co was established in Tottenham in 1837 as a private manufacturer of india rubber products. Its registered office was in Gresham Street, London. The company name was variously styled as W Warne & Co and Wm Warne & Co. By 1870, the company was also engaged in the manufacture of india rubber and, in 1885, received a gold medal for invention in relation to india rubber manufacture. Consolidation of the india rubber products business with the india rubber manufacturing business in 1895 led to the company being registered on the stock exchange as a joint stock company. The company opened its India Rubber Mills factory in Barking in 1907, moving its headquarters there. Although Barking suffered from enemy bombing during the Second World War, India Rubber Mills escaped serious damage. During the war, despite military orders for rubber, trading conditions were difficult because of a shortage of raw material. In 1945, William Warne & Co merged with the St Alban's Rubber Co Ltd and set up The London and Provincal Rubber Co Ltd as a holding company. The broad range of products was mainly aimed at the defence, pharmaceutical and postal markets, and included precision seals for pharmaceutical inhalers, refuelling hoses for military aircraft and rubber bands for the Post Office. William Warne & Co became part of the Rubber Division of Lindustries in 1968. In 2000, the company was purchased by Icon Material Technolgies (Holdings) Ltd, changing its name to Icon Warne.