Charles Goodyear (December 29, 1800 – July 1, 1860) 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.
Goodyear is credited with inventing the chemical process to create and manufacture pliable, waterproof, moldable rubber.
Goodyear's discovery of the vulcanization process followed five years of searching for a more stable rubber and stumbling upon the effectiveness of heating after Thomas Hancock. His 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. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company is named after (though not founded by) him.
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Early life, family and education
Charles Goodyear was born on December 29, 1800, in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Amasa Goodyear, and the oldest of six children. His 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.
Around 1817, Charles left his home and went to Philadelphia to learn the hardware business. He 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, Connecticut, where they manufactured not only ivory and metal buttons, but also a variety of agricultural supplements. He had siblings Nelson Goodyear, Henry Goodyear, Robert Goodyear, Harriet Goodyear Tomlinson, Amasa Goodyear, Jr.
Marriage and early career
On August 3, 1824, he married Clarissa Beecher, whom he met at his Congregational Church. Two years later the family moved to Philadelphia, and there Charles Goodyear opened a hardware store. This is where he did most of his work. His specialties were the valuable agricultural implements that his firm had been manufacturing, and after the first distrust of domestically made goods had worn away—for all agricultural implements were imported from England at that time—he found himself heading a successful business.
This continued to increase until it seemed that he was to be a wealthy man. Between 1829 and 1830 he broke down in health, being troubled with dyspepsia. At the same time, the failure of a number of business endeavors seriously embarrassed his firm. They struggled on, however, for some time, but were finally obliged to fail.
Between the years 1831 and 1832, Goodyear heard about gum elastic (natural rubber) and examined every article that appeared in the newspapers relative to this new material. The Roxbury Rubber Company, of Boston, had been for some time experimenting with the gum, and believed it had found means for manufacturing goods from it. It had a large plant and was sending its goods all over the country. It was some of Roxbury's goods that first attracted Goodyear's attention. Soon after this, Goodyear visited New York, and his attention went to life preservers, and it struck him that the tube used for inflation was not very effective nor well-made. Therefore, upon returning to Philadelphia, he made tubes and brought them back to New York and showed them to the manager of the Roxbury Rubber Company.
The manager was pleased with the ingenuity that Goodyear had shown in manufacturing the tubes. He 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. To their surprise, goods that they had determined to be of good quality were being returned, the gum having rotted, making them useless. Goodyear at once made up his mind to experiment on this gum and see if he could overcome the problems with these rubber products.
However, when he returned to Philadelphia, a creditor had him arrested and imprisoned. While there, he tried his first experiments with India rubber. The gum was inexpensive then, and by heating it and working it in his hands, he managed to incorporate in it a certain amount of magnesia which produced a white compound that appeared to take away the stickiness.
Perfection and patent of vulcanization
From 1834 through 1839, Goodyear worked anywhere he could find investors, and often moved locations, mostly within New York, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, and Connecticut. In 1839, 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. For this Goodyear received US patent number 1090 on February 24 of the same year.
Several years earlier, Goodyear had started a small factory at Springfield, Massachusetts, to which he moved his primary operations in 1842. The factory was run largely by Nelson and his brothers. Charles Goodyear's brother-in-law, Mr. De Forest, a wealthy woolen manufacturer became involved as well. The work of making the invention practical was continued. In 1844, the process was sufficiently perfected and Goodyear received US patent number 3633, which mentions New York but not Springfield. Also in 1844, Goodyear's brother Henry introduced mechanical mixing of the mixture in place of the use of solvents. Goodyear sold some of these patents to Hiram Hutchinson who founded Hutchinson SA in France in 1853.
Court cases regarding vulcanization
As soon as Goodyear patented his process in 1844, he became the subject of lawsuits from jealous rubber entrepreneurs, who had failed in their own attempts but falsely claimed that Goodyear had stolen ideas from them or others. Goodyear's star and fortunes slowly rose as he prevailed in these trials, and by 1851 he was able to hire famed orator and jurist Daniel Webster as his company's lawyer.
In 1852, Goodyear went to Europe, a trip that he had long planned, and saw Thomas Hancock, then in the employ of Charles Macintosh & Company. Hancock claimed to have invented vulcanization independently, and received a British patent, initiated in 1843, but finalized in 1844. In 1855, in the last of three patent disputes with fellow British rubber pioneer, Stephen Moulton, Hancock's patent was challenged with the claim that Hancock had copied Goodyear. Goodyear attended the trial. If Hancock lost, Goodyear stood to have his own British patent application granted, allowing him to claim royalties from both Hancock and Moulton. Both had examined Goodyear's vulcanized rubber in 1842, but several chemists testified that it would not have been possible to determine how it was made by studying it. Hancock prevailed.
Despite his misfortune with patents, Goodyear wrote, “In reflecting upon the past, as relates to these branches of industry, the writer is not disposed to repine, and say that he has planted, and others have gathered the fruits. The advantages of a career in life should not be estimated exclusively by the standard of dollars and cents, as is too often done. Man has just cause for regret when he sows and no one reaps.”
In 1855, Goodyear was sent to debtor's prison in both England and France, both relating to debts he had incurred demonstrating uses of vulcanization at the Exposition Universelle. These would be his last of many incarcerations in debtor's prison. He was inducted into the Legion of Honour while imprisoned.
In 1858, Goodyear won a seven-year extension on his American patent on the grounds of financial hardship. Although he had earned nearly $163,000 from the patent, he owed far more to creditors who had supported him in his journey to develop the vulcanization process and bring vulcanized products to market. He had now become famous as the inventor of vulcanization due to continuous newspaper coverage of his court battles, and this final court victory reportedly won him mental peace after decades of struggle. He continued to think of new applications for rubber until his death.
Death and legacy
Goodyear died on July 1, 1860, while traveling to see his dying daughter. After arriving in New York, he was informed that she had already died. He collapsed and was taken to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City, where he died at the age of 59. Goodyear had never made a proper accounting of his debt, and at the time of his death his estate was in almost $200,000 of debt. His son Charles Jr. untangled the mismanaged books, paid off creditors, and provided a modest income for his family.
In 1898, almost four decades after his death, The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company was founded and named after Goodyear by Frank Seiberling.
On February 8, 1976, he was among six individuals selected for induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
In Woburn, Massachusetts, there is an elementary school named after him.
The Government of France made him a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1855.
The ACS Rubber Division awards a medal named in Goodyear's honor, the Charles Goodyear Medal. The medal honors principal inventors, innovators, and developers whose contributions resulted in a significant change to the nature of the rubber industry.
The Goodyear welt, a technique in shoemaking, was named after and in honor of its inventor, Charles' son; Charles Goodyear Jr.