CHARLES GOODYEAR
In 1800 Brazil was the only country manufacturing rubber articles,
and her best market soon proved to be North America. Probably the
first rubber this country saw was brought to New England in
clipper ships as ballast in the form of crude lumps and balls.
Rubber shoes, water-bottles, powder-flasks, and tobacco-pouches
found buyers in the American ports, but rubber shoes were most in
demand.
Soon some Americans began to import raw rubber and to manufacture
rubber goods of their own, and in the old world a Scotchman named
Macintosh found a way of waterproofing cloth by spreading on it a
thin coating of rubber dissolved in coal naphtha. Many people
still refer to raincoats as mackintoshes. Rubber clothing shared
favor with rubber shoes, but its popularity was short-lived for it
did not wear well and was almost as sensitive to temperature as
molasses and butter. The rubber shoes and coats get hard and stiff
in winter and soft and sticky in summer. A man wearing a pair of
rubber overalls who sat down too near a warm stove soon found that
his overalls, his chair and himself were stuck fast together. The
first rubber coats became so stiff in cold weather that when you
took one off you could stand it up in the middle of the floor and
leave it, for it would stand like a tent until the rubber thawed
out, and when thawed it was almost as uncomfortable as is fly-paper
to the fly.
One day Charles Goodyear, a Connecticut hardware merchant of an
inventive turn of mind, went to a store to buy a life preserver.
He could find only imperfect ones, but they drew his attention to
the study of rubber, and presently he was thinking of it by day
and dreaming of it by night. Rubber became a passion with him. He
felt sure some way could be found to make it firm yet flexible
regardless of temperature, and for ten years he experimented with
different mixtures and processes, hoping to find the right one. So
intent was he on his search that he found time for nothing else.
Due to neglect his business went to pieces and he became very
poor.
Finally, in 1839, when he was on the point of giving up in
despair, he accidentally came upon the solution. He was
experimenting in his kitchen, a place which, through lack of
funds, he was often forced to use as a laboratory. Part of a
mixture of rubber, sulphur and other chemicals, with which he was
working, happened to drop on the top of the stove. It lay there
sizzling and charring until the odor of the burning rubber called
his attention to it. As he stooped to scrape it off the stove he
gave a start of wonder as he noted that a change had come over the
rubber during its brief contact with the stove.
To his surprise the mixture had not melted, but had flattened out
in the shape of a silver dollar. When it had cooled enough to be
handled, he found that it bent and stretched easily, without
cracking or breaking, and that it always snapped back to its
original shape. Strangest of all, it was no longer sticky.
Apparently half the problem was solved. Whether his new mixture
would stand the cold he had yet to find out, so he nailed it on
the outside of the door and went to bed. Probably he slept but
little and was up early. At any rate he found the rubber
unaffected by the cold.
Then he knew that he had made a real discovery and he named the
process "vulcanizing" after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
"Vulcanizing" means mixing pure rubber with certain chemicals and
then applying heat. On this process, which is by no means simple,
the great rubber business of the world has been established.
Practically everything made of rubber, or of which rubber is a
part, has to go through the vulcanizing process, whether it is a
pair of Keds, a tire, a fruit jar ring, or a doormat.
So many people had been deceived by previous rubber ventures that
Goodyear had great trouble in finding anyone with enough faith to
invest money in his discovery. It was some time before he was able
to take out the first of the more than sixty patents which he was
granted during his lifetime for applying his process to various
uses. Under these patents he licensed several factories to use the
process in the manufacture of rubber goods, but required them to
stamp all goods with the words "Goodyear patent." Scores of
companies have since used the name Goodyear, but the only
factories that he licensed which are now in existence are parts of
the United States Rubber Company.
Goodyear often had to defend his patents in court. In the most
famous of these suits, he was defended by Daniel Webster and
opposed by Rufus Choate, so that we see interwoven in the story of
rubber the names of two of the greatest statesmen this country has
produced.