1. Charles Goodyear was an American self-taught chemist and manufacturing engineer who developed vulcanized rubber, for which he received patent number 3633 from the United States Patent Office on June 15,1844.
27 Facts About Charles Goodyear
1. 2.
Charles Goodyear's discovery initiated decades of successful rubber manufacturing in the Lower Naugatuck Valley in Connecticut, as rubber was adopted to multiple applications, including footwear and tires.
3.
Charles Goodyear was born on December 29,1800, in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Amasa Goodyear, and the oldest of six children.
4.
Charles Goodyear's father was a descendant of Stephen Goodyear, successor to Governor Eaton as the head of the company London Merchants, who founded the colony of New Haven in 1638.
5.
Around 1817, Charles Goodyear left his home and went to Philadelphia to learn the hardware business.
6.
Charles Goodyear worked industriously until he was twenty-five years old, and then, returning to Connecticut, entered into a partnership in his father's business in Naugatuck, CT where they manufactured not only ivory and metal buttons, but a variety of agricultural supplements.
7.
Charles Goodyear had siblings Nelson Goodyear, Henry Goodyear, Robert Goodyear, Harriet Goodyear Tomlinson, Amasa Goodyear, Jr.
8.
Two years later the family moved to Philadelphia, and there Charles Goodyear opened a hardware store.
9.
Between the years 1831 and 1832, Charles Goodyear heard about gum elastic and examined every article that appeared in the newspapers relative to this new material.
10.
The manager was pleased with the ingenuity that Charles Goodyear had shown in manufacturing the tubes.
11.
Charles Goodyear confessed to Goodyear that the business was on the verge of ruin and that his products had to be tested for a year before it could be determined if they were perfect or not.
12.
Charles Goodyear thought he had discovered the secret, and through the kindness of friends was able to improve his invention in New Haven.
13.
Charles Goodyear had no mind to stop here in his experiments.
14.
Charles Goodyear seemed on the high road to success, until, one day, he noticed that a drop of weak acid, falling on the cloth, neutralized the alkali and immediately caused the rubber to become soft again.
15.
Charles Goodyear therefore continued experimenting, and after preparing his mixtures in his attic in New York, would walk three miles to a mill in Greenwich Village to try various experiments.
16.
Charles Goodyear survived, but the resulting fever came close to taking his life.
17.
Charles Goodyear's next move was to go to Boston, where he became acquainted with J Haskins, of the Roxbury Rubber Company.
18.
Charles Goodyear found him to be a good friend, who lent him money and stood by him when no one would have anything to do with the visionary inventor.
19.
Charles Goodyear therefore invented a huge machine for doing the mixing by mechanical means.
20.
Charles Goodyear discovered a new method for making rubber shoes and received a patent which he sold to the Providence Company in Rhode Island.
21.
From 1834 through 1839, Charles Goodyear worked anywhere he could find investors, and often moved locations, mostly within New York, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, and Connecticut.
22.
In 1839, Charles Goodyear was at the Eagle India Rubber Company in Woburn, Massachusetts, where he discovered that combining rubber and sulfur over a hot stove caused the rubber to become rigid, a process which he called vulcanization because of the heat involved.
23.
Several years earlier, Charles Goodyear had started a small factory at Springfield, Massachusetts, to which he moved his primary operations in 1842.
24.
In 1844, the process was sufficiently perfected and Charles Goodyear received US patent number 3633, which mentions New York but not Springfield.
25.
Charles Goodyear sold some of these patents to Hiram Hutchinson who founded Hutchinson SA in France in 1853.
26.
Charles Goodyear died on July 1,1860, while traveling to see his dying daughter.
27.
Charles Goodyear collapsed and was taken to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, where he died at the age of 59.