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Updated: June 29, 2025
As opposed to men of the latter class, what a sublime picture of determination and patience was that of Charles Goodyear, of New Haven, buried in poverty and struggling with hardships for eleven long years, to make India rubber of practical use!
This man, afterward so famous in the history of India-rubber manufacture, was CHARLES GOODYEAR. He was born at New Haven, Connecticut, on the 29th of December, 1800. He attended a public school during his boyhood, thus acquiring a limited education. When quite a youth, he removed with his family to Philadelphia, where his father entered into the hardware business.
Goodyear felt that he had now all but conquered his difficulties. It was plain that sulphur was the great controller of India-rubber, for he had proved that when applied to thin cloth it would render it available for most purposes. The problem that now remained was how to mix sulphur and the gum in a mass, so that every part of the rubber should be subjected to the agency of the sulphur.
Indeed, in all America he seemed to be the only man who had the slightest hope of accomplishing anything with India-rubber. His friends regarded him as a lunatic, and especially when he made himself a suit of clothes out of his India-rubber cloth, and wore it on all occasions. One day a man looking for Goodyear asked one of the latter's friends how he would recognize him if he met him.
Goodyear listened carefully to his statements, forgot all about his disappointment in failing to sell his improved inflating apparatus, and went home firmly convinced that he had found his true mission in life.
He explained his process to a friend, who, becoming interested in it, loaned him the money to manufacture a number of shoes, which at first seemed all that could be desired. Fearful, however, of meeting the fate which had befallen the Roxbury Company, Mr. Goodyear put his shoes away until the next summer, to ascertain whether they would bear the heat. His doubts were more than realized.
The occasion, and the certainty of success, warranted the measure which, in other circumstances, would have been sacrilege." His itinerary during those years is eloquent. Wherever there was a man, who had either a grain of faith in rubber or a little charity for a frail and penniless monomaniac, thither Goodyear made his way.
Goodyear accumulated a large fortune, and won a high reputation for integrity. The following is a column of business cards from the "ONEONTA WEEKLY JOURNAL," of July 1, 1841. Headquarters at the foot of Chestnut street. New Fall and Winter goods.
It was found out that if sulphur was mixed with rubber, the disagreeable stickiness would vanish; but the rubbers continued to melt and to freeze by turns until an American named Charles Goodyear discovered that if rubber mixed with sulphur was exposed to about 300° F. of heat for a number of hours, the rubber would remain elastic, but would not be sticky and would no longer be affected by heat or cold.
"Well there are birds which fly in the air, seldom lighting, but often hovering. Now I think this is a question not to be hovered over, not to be brooded over, and not to be dealt with as an infinitesimal quantity of small things. It is a case calling for a manly admission and a manly defense. I ask again, if there is anybody else than Goodyear who made this invention, who is he?
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