Charles Goodyear

Charles Goodyear (1800-60), American inventor, born in New Haven, Connecticut. He had no formal education, and in 1821 went into partnership with his father in a hardware business that later failed. Goodyear experimented for many years, with no success, to find some means of improving the quality of natural rubber so that it would not become brittle when cold or soft and sticky when hot. He purchased from a rival inventor, Nathaniel Hayward, the patent rights to a process for impregnating rubber with sulfur, although this process had not been particularly successful. In 1839 Goodyear discovered, by accidentally dropping on a hot stove a piece of rubber that had been treated with sulfur, that when rubber and sulfur are heated together at a high temperature a rubber with the desirable properties results. This process, called vulcanization, is still the basis of the rubber-manufacturing industry. In the United States and Europe he was engaged in generally unsuccessful litigation over his patents, which brought wealth to others while his own business ventures failed. He died in poverty.