Charles Goodyear
Charles Goodyear (December 29th, 1800 - July 11th, 1860) was the inventor of the Vulcanization. He died heavily in debt and rests with the cemetery of the street Grove to New Haven, Connecticut. Neither Goodyear nor its family was in relation to the Société Goodyear named in its honor.
Goodyear received the Brevet for the Vulcanization the June 15th 1844.
the Beginnings In the middle of the summer 1834, a hardware merchant in bankruptcy of Philadelphia, Charles Goodyear, entered a store of Roxbury India Rubber Co., first American manufacturer of rubber product. He wanted to present to his director a new valve which he had developed for life jackets out of rubber. The director sadly shook the head and says to him that its company did not need valve and would estimate itself even happy simply to remain in life. He showed in Goodyear why: whole racks were covered with rubber articles which had melted in a malodorous mass under torrid heat. He entrusted to him that with the factory of the company, in Roxbury (Massachussets), one collapsed under the thousands of articles turned over by furious customers. Its leaders had even met in middle of the night to bury in a pit nearly 20.000 $ of inventory damaged and puant.
The “rush on the rubber” of the beginning of the year 1830 had ceased as brutally as it had started. At the beginning, everyone had wanted articles manufactured in this new impermeable gum discovered in Brazil. Factories had pushed to answer this request. Then, suddenly, the customers had wearied themselves of this matter malcommode which became as hard as cold and soft wood like lime in summer. Of all the companies born during this rush, none survived more than five years. The investors lost million: for everyone, it was finished by it rubber in America.
Disappointed, Goodyear rempocha its valve and, for the first time of its life, on the occasion to observe rubber of near. It had had a few pieces to play in its childhood but, at 34 years, was discovered well of it a sudden curiosity and an admiration for this mysterious elastic gum. There is undoubtedly no other inert substance which pokes the spirit as much, will declare it later.
Of return to Philadelphia, Goodyear was thrown in prison for debts. It was not the first time; it would not be the last. He asked his wife to bring a piece of natural rubber and a roller to him to paste. Only in its cell, it made its first experiments with rubber, kneading gum of the whole hours.
If rubber were naturally adhesive, he wondered, why not to it add a powder to reduce adherence of it -- as magnesia powder which was sold in pharmacy? It is what it did as of its coming out of prison, with promising results.
He persuaded a friend of childhood to financially help it in his modest company. Goodyear, his wife and her young girls manufactured in their kitchen of the hundreds of rubber overboots dried with the magnesia powder. The summer arrived before they could sell them and he saw his production melting in a deformed paste.
The neighbors complaining about the malodorous odors which emanated from at his place, he moved in New York to continue his experiments. A friend got to him a room on the fourth floor of a building which served to him as “laboratory”. One of his/her brothers-in-law saw it in its miserable districts to sermonize it, to recall him that his/her children were hungry and to say to him that rubber had died. “It is me which will ressusciterai it”, Goodyear answered him.
He now added two agents of drying to his rubber, the magnesia powder and lime, improving each time his product. At the time of a commercial living room in New York, it impressed even the jury which allotted a medal to him.
Goodyear used of all its artistic talent to the decoration of its thin samples, painting them, gilding them, applying decorative reliefs to surfaces. With material court, it decided one day to re-use an old decorated sample and soaked it in nitric acid to remove the bronze painting of it. The sample blackens and Goodyear threw it.
A few days later, he believed to remember that the blackened part had a different texture. He recovered it in the refuse and realized that he was right. The nitric acid had had an unexpected effect on the rubber, making it soft and dry like a fabric. It was the best part of rubber than ever nobody had produced.
A business man of New York advanced several thousands of dollars to him to start a commercial production. But the financial panic of 1837 quickly put a term at its funds and its incipient company. Again without the penny, Goodyear and its family were reduced to camp in its inactive factory of rubber of Staten Island and to living fish fished in the port.
Later, Goodyear found once again financing with Boston and knew a few short booms. Its associates obtained a contract of the government for 150 postal bags, manufactured according to the process with the nitric Acid . After having manufactured them, Goodyear was so sure of him that it stored them in a hot part and took along its family on vacation for a month. On its return, the bags had melted. Under dry surface the “as of fabric” the same sticking substance was as before.
After five years futile, Goodyear was found once again on the straw. Farmers around Woburn (Massachussets) where they lived now, gave milk to his/her children and let them collect some Potatoes to nourish itself.
The great discovery occurred during the winter 1839. Goodyear now used sulfur in its experiments on rubber. Although Goodyear itself remained fuzzy on the details, the history more persistente wants that one day of February it went to the general store of Woburn to show its last gum concoction there with suffers. The mocking remarks which fused of the group assembled around the stove made lose capacity with the small inventor of which the manners were generally soft. It holds up a gum handle sticking in the airs but it slipped to him of the fingers to land on the extreme poèle.
When he wanted to take off about it, he realized that instead of melting like molasses, it had taken the consistency of a leather flaring. And, around the calcined part, there was a brown and elastic collar - " gum élastique" once again, but so deeply faded that it was literally a new substance. It had obtained a tight rubber.
This incident is often quoted like example “of happy accident” having led to a discovery. Goodyear was however defended some with vehemence. According to him, as in the case of apple of Isaac Newton, the incident could have direction only for somebody “whose spirit was prepared to deduce an inference from them”. Therefore, he added, only for that which “was proof of greatest perseverance in front of its subject”.
The winter which followed this discovery was blackest of its life. Suffering from Dyspepsia and drop, damaged health, it continued its experiments out of crutches. It knew now that heat and sulfur deteriorated rubber miraculeusement. But with which degree? For how long? With an infinite patience, it made cook pieces of rubber in hot sand, made them roast like marsh mallows, scalded them with the vapor of a kettle, pressed them between two hot irons. When his heroic wife left her bread the furnace, it slipped there of the pieces of its malodorous gum.
Fear of dying and to carry its secrecy with him made insomniac. It borrowed money by being mortaged its watch and the pieces of furniture of the house.
Once the crockery disappeared in pledge, it made rubber plates. But food itself ends up missing.
This spring, it went to Boston to seek friends, found any no and was thrown in prison for its unpaid hotel bill of 5 $. When it returned to the house, it learned the death from its young infant. Incompetent to pay his funeral, Goodyear transported the small coffin to the cemetery in a borrowed carriage. On the 12 children of Goodyear, six died in low age.
Lastly, he discovered that the application of vapor under pressure to approximately (270° F) gave the most uniform results. He then wrote with his brother-in-law New York - which had formerly sermonized it on its paternal obligations - to inform him of his discovery. This time, the Tisserand rich person was interested. Charles says to him indeed that a weaving of rubber wire would produce the corrugated effect which was then sails about it for the shirts of man. Two factories of " fabric gaufré" were promptly put in function and, being spread out proudly over the drill plates of shirt of the dandies of the whole world, rubber was an international success.
As soon as it could it, Goodyear liquidated its interests in manufacture - which could have made of him a millionaire - to turn over to its experiments. He wanted all to remake out of rubber: banknotes, musical instruments, flags, jewels, veils and even of the boats. He made make his portrait on rubber; its calling cards were out of rubber, its autobiography printed on rubber and was connected same metal; it wore hats, jackets and ties out of rubber.
Goodyear already saw in rubber what we hold for asset today: the most changeable first and of the modern “plastics”. It perceived it like a “vegetable leather” able to defy the elements, a “elastic metal”, a substitute of the wood which could be moulded.
Some of the contemporary achievements, described like “new” applications for rubber; in fact had been proposed by Goodyear one century and half earlier. It is the case of extensible food packing in Pliofilm (a plastic derived from rubber), rubberized painting, springs of cars, stops of cross bars, wheels of wheelbarrow, pneumatic lifeboats, combinations of diving…
The license agreements granted by Goodyear for the commercial exploitation of its many patents were ridiculously unfavourable for him. For example, it perceived royalties of 0,03 $ per fabric rod used in the manufacture of the corrugated drill plates; the manufacturer laid off empochait 3 $ of profit on this same fabric rod.
Goodyear had to continue the “pirates of patents” in 32 causes, some until in Supreme court. In a cause celebrates in 1852, its lawyer was not null other than the Secretary of State Daniel Webster. Goodyear offered 15.000 $ to Webster to give up its station temporarily and to come to defend its cause - at the time, the amount highest never versed in fees with a lawyer. After two days of pleading, Webster obtained a permanent injunction against any counterfeit of patent. The judgment made the cuffs but did not prevent the Contrefaçons.
Goodyear was long in requiring international titles for its patents. However, it had sent in England samples of its hot treated gum to sulfur, without revealing the details of them. The British pioneer of rubber, Thomas Hancock, saw one of these samples and noticed a yellowish trace surfaces some revealing the presence of Soufre. With this index, it hastened to reinvent in 1843 the process of vulcanization of rubber, four years after Goodyear. When Goodyear wanted to obtain an English patent for its invention, he realized that Hancock had preceded it few weeks.
Hancock proposed to him to share the property of the patent to half if it gave up its continuation. Wrongly, he refused - and lost his cause. A friend of Hancock baptized the process “vulcanization”, in homage to Vulcan, god of Fire among Romans.
With the World Fairs of London and Paris of the years 1850, Goodyear was made set up superb rubber houses, floor with the roof. When its French patent was cancelled for a technical detail and its abruptly stopped royalties before it had time to discharge its invoices, the gendarmes gathered it to throw it during 16 days “with the hotel” - thus it called the prison, which was familiar for him. It is there that it was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of honor, allotted by the Emperor Napoleon III.
When he died, in 1860, its debts reached 200.000 $. With time, despite everything, the office plurality of the royalties made it possible its family to comfortably live. His/her son, Charles Junior, inherited a good even more invaluable than the money -- its inventive talent -- and a small fortune in the tools for the industry of the shoe is built.
Neither Goodyear, nor its family had any bond with the company which bears their name, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., today more the large company in the world in industry of rubber, being worth several billion dollars. The only company which goes back directly to Goodyear is United States Rubber, which absorbed formerly a small company of which he had already been administrator.
Today, there is a Hévéa (the tree with rubber) for two inhabitants on ground. Three million people collects the sap of it. Alone, the United States imports about half of world harvest and produces as much if not more synthetic rubber from derived from oil. The processing industry of rubber in the United States makes live nearly 300.000 people and produces each year of the goods of a global value of 6 billion dollars.
All this enormous apparatus owes its existence with an irascible inventor who could have died in the bitterness but decided some differently.
" “The life, said it, could not be evaluated according to the accumulated richnesses. I am not been willing to feel sorry for me that others collected the fruits of what I sowed. A man should regret only when it sows and that nobody collects. ”
External bonds
- Biography by the company Goodyear