Inventors

by Philip Gengembre Hubert

A day of disaster, however, came. Most of the goods produced in the winter of 1833-1834 became worthless during the following summer. The shoes melted to a soft mass and the caps, wagon-covers, and coats became sticky and useless. To make matters worse they emitted an odor so offensive that it was necessary to bury them in the ground. Twenty thousand dollars' worth of these goods were thrown back on the hands of the Roxbury Company alone, and the directors were appalled by the ruin that threatened them. It was useless to go on manufacturing goods that might prove worthless at any moment. India-rubber stock fell rapidly, and by the end of 1836 there was not a solvent rubber company in the Union, the stockholders losing about $2,000,000. People came to detest the very name of india-rubber.

One day, in 1834, a Philadelphia hardware merchant, named Charles Goodyear, was led by curiosity to buy a rubber life-preserver. And thus began for this unfortunate genius nearly twenty-five years of struggle, misery, and disappointment. Charles Goodyear was born in New Haven, Conn., December 29, 1800. When a boy his father moved to Philadelphia, where he engaged in the hardware business, and upon becoming of age, Charles Goodyear joined him as a partner. In the panic of 1836-1837 the house went down. Goodyear's attention had been attracted for several years by the wonderful success of the india-rubber companies. Upon examining his life-preserver he discovered a defect in the inflating valve and made an improved one. Going to New York with this device, he called on the agent of the Roxbury Company and, explaining it to him, offered to sell it to the company. The agent was impressed with the improvement, but instead of buying it, told the inventor the real state of the india-rubber business of the country, then on the verge of a collapse. He urged Goodyear to exert his inventive skill in discovering some means of imparting durability to india-rubber goods, and assured him that if he could find a process to effect that end, he could sell it at his own price. He explained the processes then in use and their imperfections.

Goodyear forgot all about his disappointment in failing to sell his valve, and went home intent upon experiments to make gum-elastic durable. From that time until the close of his life he devoted himself solely to this work. He was thirty-five years old, feeble in health, a bankrupt in business, and had a young family depending upon him. The industry in which he now engaged was one in which thousands of persons had found ruin. The firm of which he had been a member owed $30,000, and upon his return to Philadelphia he was arrested for debt and compelled to live within prison limits. He began his experiments at once. The price of the gum had fallen to five cents per pound, so that he had no difficulty in getting sufficient of it to begin work. By melting and working it thoroughly and rolling it out upon a stone table, he succeeded in producing sheets of india-rubber that seemed to him to possess new properties. A friend loaned him enough money to manufacture a number of shoes which at first seemed to be all that could be desired. Fearful, however, of coming trouble, Goodyear put his shoes away until the following summer, when the warm weather reduced them to a mass of so offensive an odor that he was glad to throw them away. His friend was so thoroughly disheartened by this failure as to refuse to have anything more to do with Goodyear's scheme. The inventor, nevertheless, kept on.

It occurred to him that there must be some substance which, mixed with the gum, would render it durable, and he began to experiment with almost every substance that he could lay his hands on. All proved total failures with the exception of magnesia. By mixing half a pound of magnesia with a pound of the gum he produced a substance whiter than the pure gum, which was at first as firm and flexible as leather, and out of which he made beautiful book-covers and piano-covers. It looked as if he had solved the problem; but in a month his pretty product was ruined. Heat caused it to soften; fermentation then set in, and finally it became as hard and brittle as thin glass. His stock of money was now exhausted. He was forced to pawn all his own valuables and even the trinkets of his wife. But he felt sure that he was on the road to success and would eventually win both fame and fortune. He removed his family to the country, and set out for New York, where he hoped to find someone willing to aid him in carrying his experiments further. Here he met two acquaintances, one of whom offered him the use of a room in Gold Street as a workshop, and the other, a druggist, agreed to let him have on credit such chemicals as he needed. He now boiled the gum, mixed with magnesia, in quicklime and water, and as a result obtained firm, smooth sheets that won him a medal at the fair of the American Institute in 1835. He seemed on the point of success, and easily sold all the sheets he could manufacture, when, to his dismay, he discovered that a drop of the weakest acid, such as the juice of an apple or diluted vinegar, would reduce his new compound to the old sticky substance that had baffled him so often.

His first important discovery on the road to real success was the result of accident. He liked pretty things, and it was a constant effort with him to make his productions as attractive to the eye as possible. Upon one occasion, while bronzing a piece of rubber cloth, he applied aqua fortis to it for the purpose of removing part of the bronze. It took away the bronze, but it also destroyed the cloth to such a degree that he supposed it ruined and threw it away. A day or two later, happening to pick it up, he was astonished to find that the rubber had undergone a remarkable change, and that the effect of the acid had been to harden it to such an extent that it would now stand a degree of heat which would have melted it before. Aqua fortis contained sulphuric acid. Goodyear was thus on the threshold of his great discovery of vulcanizing rubber. He called his new process the "curing" of india-rubber.

The "cured" india-rubber was subjected to many tests and passed through them successfully, thus demonstrating its adaptability to many important uses. Goodyear readily obtained a patent for his process, and a partner with a large capital was found ready to aid him. He hired the old india-rubber works on Staten Island and opened a salesroom in Broadway. He was thrown back for six weeks at this important time by an accident which happened to him while experimenting with his fabrics and which came near causing his death. Just as he was recovering and preparing to begin the manufacture of his goods on a large scale the terrible commercial crisis of 1837 swept over the country, and by destroying his partner's fortune at one blow, reduced Goodyear to absolute beggary. His family had joined him in New York, and he was entirely without the means of supporting them. As the only resource at hand he decided to pawn an article of value—one of the few which he possessed—in order to raise money to procure one day's supply of provisions. At the very door of the pawnbroker's shop he met one of his creditors, who kindly asked if he could be of any further assistance to him. Weak with hunger and overcome by the generosity of his friend the poor man burst into tears and replied that, as his family was on the point of starvation, a loan of $15 would greatly oblige him. The money was given him on the spot and the necessity for visiting the pawnbroker averted for several days longer. Still he was a frequent visitor to that person during the year, and one by one the relics of his better days disappeared. Another friend loaned him $100, which enabled him to remove his family to Staten Island, in the neighborhood of the abandoned rubber works, which the owners gave him permission to use so far as he could. He contrived in this way to manufacture enough of his "cured" cloth, which sold readily, to enable him to keep his family from starvation. He made repeated efforts to induce capitalists to come to the factory and see his samples and the process by which they were made, but no one would venture near him. There had been money enough lost in such experiments, these acquaintances said, and they were determined to risk no more.

Indeed, in all the broad land there was but one man who had the slightest hope of accomplishing anything with india-rubber, and that one was Charles Goodyear. His friends regarded him as a monomaniac. He not only manufactured his cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it, wearing it for the purpose of testing its durability, as well as of advertising it. He was certainly an odd figure, and in his appearance justified the remark of one of his friends, who, upon being asked how Mr. Goodyear could be recognized, replied: "If you see a man with an india-rubber coat on, india-rubber shoes, and india-rubber cap, and in his pocket an india-rubber purse with not a cent in it, that is Goodyear."

In September, 1837, a new gleam of hope lit up his pathway. A friend having loaned him a small sum of money he went to Roxbury, taking with him some of his best specimens. Although the Roxbury Company had gone down with a fearful crash, Mr. Chaffee, the inventor of the first process of making rubber goods in this country, was still firm in his faith that india-rubber would at some future time justify the expectations of its earliest friends. He welcomed Goodyear cordially and allowed him to use the abandoned works of the company for his experiments. The result was that Goodyear succeeded in making shoes and cloths of india-rubber of a quality so much better than any that had yet been seen in America that the hopes of the friends of india-rubber were raised to a high point. Offers to purchase rights for certain portions of the country came in rapidly, and by the sale of them Goodyear realized between four and five thousand dollars. He was now able to bring his family to Roxbury, and for the time fortune seemed to smile upon him.