Destination Massachusetts:
Goodyear's Accident
 

Our next stop in our rubber expedition is Woburn, Massachusetts. The year is 1839. We're at a small rubber manufacturing plant in the town of Woburn. The rubber business isn't very good these days. While rubber is wonderful at room temperature, it gets very cold here in Massachusetts in the winter, and rubber gets stiff and brittle in the cold. And a hot summer makes it gooey. This is why this rubber company has hired a fellow to help them solve the problem.
 

The Unsuccessful and Broke Inventor

This fellow's name is Charles Goodyear, and he's been trying to get someone to buy into his plan to make a temperature-stable rubber for years. Some years ago he invented a good brass air valve for inflatable rubber items, but it went nowhere because rubber still had so many problems. Thus did Goodyear get the notion of solving rubber's problems. He's run up a lot of debt carrying out his fruitless tinkering, and spent a lot of time in and out of jail for his bad credit. His children survive only because local farmers let them dig up half-grown potatoes to eat.

He has tried lots of things that didn't work. Magnesia did nothing. Nitric acid looked like it might work, but didn't. But today is different because someone does something dumb. In one attempt to make a better rubber, Goodyear has mixed rubber with sulfur and white lead, and painted the mix onto a piece of fabric. This didn't work, either, but somebody, no one knows just who, has left this piece of rubberized fabric on a hot stove top.

Cartoon describing vulcanization.

One can imagine the sound of sizzling rubber and the awful smell as the whole mess begins to burn. Goodyear realizes what was happening, but before he can throw out the charred remains, he notices something. The material may have charred but it didn't become runny under all that heat!

This makes Goodyear think. Maybe heating the mix of rubber, sulfur, and white lead has caused the rubber to become melt-proof. Maybe, he thinks, if he were to use less heat, to keep the rubber from charring, he can make melt-resistant rubber, not knowing that he has just cross linked the stuff

He is absolutely right for once. But by the time he figures out that it is best to heat his rubber and sulfur mixture for four to six hours at 132 ^oC (270 ^oC) with steam under pressure, he will have slid even deeper into debt.

He manages to take out a U.S. patent on his invention, but that is his last good business move. Knowing that two British businessmen, Thomas Hancock and Charles Macintosh are bigshots in the rubber business he sends his agent Stephen Moulton to England to try to sell them his idea.

The Successful and Still Broke Inventor

Goodyear Rubber and Supply catalog from 1901.

The two rubber bigshots bamboozle Goodyear. They give Moulton a warm reception, and ask him to leave some samples of this new rubber with them. Hancock then analyzes the rubber in his laboratory, and figures out that it is sulfur that had made rubber temperature-stable, and files his own British patent. The name vulcanization is given to the process after Vulcan, the Roman god in charge of fire and metallurgy.

A lot of nasty lawsuits will ensue, and Goodyear never will make any money. He will die deep in debt in 1860. But his surviving heirs (six of his twelve children died of malnutrition while Goodyear was losing money in the rubber game) became very wealthy from royalties due to his U.S. Patent.

Goodyear's name would be mud with creditors, but it was still marketing gold. More than one company will adopt Goodyear's name, two of which will survive into the twenty-first century. The first is the small west coast firm Goodyear Rubber and Supply, which would purchase the name from the Goodyear estate soon after Goodyear's death. The second is the much more famous company founded by Frank A. Seiberling in East Akron, Ohio in 1898. Seiberling will name his company in honor of Goodyear, and it is still known as The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company today. Speaking of tires, the tire business will be ready to explode in 1898, because of a new contraption called an automobile, and thanks to a veterinarian trying to make his son's tricycle ride more smoothly.
 

For more information, at other websites...

Charles Goodyear and the Strange Story of Rubber - the story of Charles Goodyear, reprinted from the January 1958 issue of Reader's Digest, hosted by The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company.

Bibliography

1. Reader's Digest, January 1958.

2. Roberts, Royston M. Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science. New York: Wiley, 1989.

3. Goodyear, Charles. Gum-Elastic vol. I. New Haven, Ct: published privately, 1855.

Image credits

Cartoon describing vulcanization: From Wonder Book of Rubber, 1947, copyrighted material of The BFGoodrich Company reproduced with the permission of The BFGoodrich Company.

Goodyear Rubber and Supply catalog from 1901: Courtesy Goodyear Rubber and Supply.

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company's famous blimp above Philadelphia: Photograph by Gregory Brust.