For Charles Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber, life was always a struggle. But even frequent incarceration in debtors’ prisons did not stop him achieving his goal of perfecting the rubber manufacturing process. Unfortunately, he never benefited financially from his hard work.
Charles Goodyear
The family hardware business produced a wide range of products, from ivory, pearl and metal buttons to heavy agricultural implements, and was initially successful. In 1830, however, the business failed leaving Goodyear with large debts. This professional collapse coincided with a first period of personal ill-health.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, the Roxbury Rubber Company had started to manufacture waterproof clothing, shoes and other products from leather treated with India rubber. Although early sales were good, many of the products were returned after they melted or became sticky in the summer heat. The garments also became rigid in extreme cold.
Goodyear came into contact with the Roxbury Rubber Company in 1834 when he purchased a life jacket from their New York store. Noticing that the jacket’s inflation tube was of poor quality, Goodyear improved the design, made some new tubes and returned to New York to show the store’s manager his work. It was then that he learned of the problems with the rubber and the company’s impending failure.
So began Goodyear’s ten-year crusade to improve the rubber manufacturing process. Unfortunately, before he could start, he was imprisoned as a debtor by one of his creditors, the first of several periods of imprisonment during his life. Undeterred, Goodyear began his experiments in the prison with a small amount of raw gum provided by a friend and the help of his wife, Clarissa, and their children.
His first experiments produced sheets of white rubber by mixing the raw gum with magnesia and boiling it in lime. These sheets did not become sticky but could be ruined if they came into contact with a weak acid.
Goodyear thought he had solved this problem in 1836 by applying nitric acid to the surface of the rubber. He found financial backing and started a business in the abandoned factory at Roxbury to make mail bags for the government. Unfortunately his solution only worked on the surface of the bags and they rotted before they could be delivered.
What was needed was a process that worked all the way through the rubber, not just on the surface. Nathaniel Hayward, a former employee of the Roxbury Rubber Company, had been experimenting by treating rubber with sulphur. In 1838, Goodyear bought the right to use this process from Hayward, and in 1839, possibly as a result of an accidental spill, he found his solution.
While trying to harden the raw gum by boiling it with sulphur, a lump of the mixture fell onto the surface of the stove. The result was vulcanized rubber. Goodyear spent the next five years refining the vulcanization process (named after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire), determining the exact mixture of ingredients and the precise temperature. He and his family spent much of this time in debtors’ prison or relying on the charity of friends.
With new financial backers Goodyear opened a factory in Springfield, Massachusetts, and, on 15 June 1844, he patented the vulcanization process. The patent was challenged, however, and it was not until 1852 that the final case was settled in his favour in the USA. Goodyear was not so fortunate in Europe, losing patent battles in both Britain and France. The failure of his business in France led to his imprisonment once again for debt in Paris.
Although he was recognised as the inventor of the vulcanization process, and despite filing more than sixty patents for rubber products, Goodyear never made any money out of his discovery. The cost of fighting patent infringement cases and the failure of his businesses left him with increasing debts. When Charles Goodyear died in New York on 1 July 1860 his creditors were owed $200,000. But to Goodyear, to have created a process that benefited society was more important than money.
