Charles Goodyear

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Richard Korman. The Goodyear Story: An Inventor's Obsession and the Struggle for a Rubber Monopoly. San Francisco, CA: Encounter Books, 2002.

Charles Goodyear (1800-1860): Vulcanized Rubber

Acknowledged as the inventor of vulcanized rubber, Goodyear spent many years trying to develop a method to remove the stickiness of natural rubber. He experimented with various forms of rubber – gum rubber and India combining the rubber with various chemicals.  He was a self-taught manufacturing engineer who developed a process to vulcanize rubber in 1839. Though he is credited with the invention, evidence indicates that the Mesoamericans used stabilized rubber for balls. Goodyear received a patent in 1844 for the invention, which is documented in the scarce publication Gum-Elastic and Its Varieties (2 vol.; 1853–55). The invention involved the heating of natural rubber with sulfur to create vulcanized rubber. Goodyear manufactured many useful products with his invention such as waterproof shoes and boots (the Goodyear Welt), clothing and life preservers. In 1889, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company was founded by Frank Seiberling but named in Goodyear’s honor. In 1976, Charles Goodyear was named to the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The American Chemical Society’s Rubber Division created the Charles Goodyear Medal in his honor.


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