Goodyear, Charles

SUBJECT AREA: Chemical technology, Land transport

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b. 29 December 1800 New Haven, Connecticut, USA

d. 1 July 1860 New York, USA

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American inventor of the vulcanization of rubber.

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Goodyear entered his father's country hardware business before setting up his own concern in Philadelphia. While visiting New York, he noticed in the window of the Roxburgh India Rubber Company a rubber life-preserver. Goodyear offered to improve its inflating valve, but the manager, impressed with Goodyear's inventiveness, persuaded him to tackle a more urgent problem, that of seeking a means of preventing rubber from becoming tacky and from melting or decomposing when heated. Goodyear tried treatments with one substance after another, without success. In 1838 he started using Nathaniel M.Hayward's process of spreading sulphur on rubber. He accidentally dropped a mass of rubber and sulphur on to a hot stove and noted that the mixture did not melt: Goodyear had discovered the vulcanization of rubber. More experiments were needed to establish the correct proportions for a uniform mix, and eventually he was granted his celebrated patent no. 3633 of 15 June 1844. Goodyear's researches had been conducted against a background of crippling financial difficulties and he was forced to dispose of licences to vulcanize rubber at less than their real value, in order to pay off his most pressing debts.

Goodyear travelled to Europe in 1851 to extend his patents. To promote his process, he designed a spectacular exhibit for London, consisting of furniture, floor covering, jewellery and other items made of rubber. A similar exhibit in Paris in 1855 won him the Grande Médaille d'honneur and the Croix de la Légion d'honneur from Napoleon III. Patents were granted to him in all countries except England. The improved properties of vulcanized rubber and its stability over a much wider range of temperatures greatly increased its applications; output rose from a meagre 31.5 tonnes a year in 1827 to over 28,000 tonnes by 1900. Even so, Goodyear profited little from his invention, and he bequeathed to his family debts amounting to over $200,000.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

Grande Médaille d'honneur 1855. Croix de la Légion d'honneur 1855.

Bibliography

15 June 1844, US patent no. 3633 (vulcanization of rubber).

1853, Gum Elastic and Its Varieties (includes some biographical material).

Further Reading

B.K.Pierce, 1866, Trials of an Inventor: Life and Discoveries of Charles Goodyear.

H.Allen, 1989, Charles Goodyear: An Intimate Biographical Sketch, Akron, Ohio: Goodyear Tire \& Rubber Company.

LRD