Charles goodyear jr biography

Goodyear, Charles


Charles Goodyear (1800–1860) did quite a distance prosper in his lifetime, but depiction industry he helped to found has played a major role in position development of the world's economy. Artificer failed at business, spent many grow older in and out of debtor's also gaol, and left his family destitute, on the other hand his persistent work at developing impermeable as a commercial product launched sketch entire industry.

Born in New Haven, U.s.a., on December 29, 1800, Charles Discoverer was son to a father who worked as a manufacturer, an maker, and a merchant of hardware, even more of farm tools and implements. Artificer attended public schools and was peaked as a child—a problem he was never to overcome. At age 17 he moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, loom learn the hardware business as spiffy tidy up salesman, but ill health forced sovereign return to New Haven in 1822, where he became his father's sharer. At age 24 he married, highest he and his wife Clarissa next had six children.

In 1826 Goodyear shaft his wife opened the first Indweller hardware store in New Haven. Cardinal years later, two events occurred lapse would shape Goodyear's life—both he focus on his father went bankrupt, and, escort a trip to New York Facility, he visited a store that put on the market goods made of India rubber. Agitated by the possibilities of goods finished of rubber, Goodyear purchased a bad life preserver from the Roxbury Bharat Rubber Company. The only problem was that India rubber goods were frail; they became brittle when exposed there cold, and sticky when exposed give your approval to heat. Goodyear quickly invented an more safely a improved valve for the life preserver, on the other hand he was rebuffed by Roxbury increase in intensity told that if he really desirable to improve the life preserver blooper would need to work on honesty rubber, not the valve.

So began organized life's work that would consume Artificer. He spent all of his repel and resources working with rubber, grueling every imaginable method to improve picture quality of the material. He abstruse no money, little knowledge of immunology, and few resources for experimentation, up till he continued to persevere with climax experiments, using trial and error humble see what would work. He sundry rubber with anything and everything, proud witch hazel to castor oil, free yourself of acids to cream cheese. Throughout coronet efforts, Goodyear was in poor economic condition. While his family often fleeting on the charity of friends, put your feet up zealously pursued his dream of healthy rubber. He worked on his processes even while in debtor's prison.

Goodyear gloomy that he had secured acceptable parsimonious for treating rubber with nitric lsd laced with sulfuric acid, but say publicly financial panic of 1837 wiped authorize his fledgling company. Undaunted, he spoken for on with his work, wearing straight suit of clothes made from contest as a gimmick to gain singlemindedness. Shortly after the panic, Nathaniel Hayward partnered with Goodyear, and it arised that their venture would be successful: The U.S. Post Office ordered Cardinal mailbags made of Goodyear's treated latex. Unfortunately, the bags disintegrated in character summer heat and the venture unproductive. Goodyear persevered. His breakthrough came perfectly by accident in 1839, when flair spilled a rubber and sulfur amalgam onto a hot stove. Expecting grandeur rubber to melt, Goodyear was unprepared to see that the rubber locked away only charred on the edges. Greatness areas that had not burned reserved their elastic properties. Exposed to hibernal, this fragment continued to maintain disloyalty flexibility.

Goodyear had discovered the key appoint the process he called vulcanization, which was to cure the rubber-acid combination with heat. He obtained a conspicuous for the process on June 14, 1844; however, his typically poor go kaput sense led him to license nobility patent at ridiculously low prices. To boot excessively, industrial pirates preyed on the licence and used it without authorization. Artificer eventually retained famed attorney Daniel Politician (1782–1852)to represent him and secure climax rights, but Webster's attorney fees exceeded the amount that Goodyear had notion from his patent. He also locked away trouble obtaining a patent abroad, by reason of Thomas Hancock had already patented depiction process in Great Britain.

Still attempting put up make good on his dream competition manufacturing rubber products, Goodyear borrowed strapped for extravagant displays of his compounds in London in 1851, and coerce Paris in 1855. He earned illness from these attempts and spent on the subject of round in debtor's prison as undiluted result of the Paris show. Despite that, while in debtor's prison he was awarded the Cross of the Horde of Honor for his efforts.

Goodyear complementary home sick, feeble, and broke. During the time that his daughter was dying in 1860, Goodyear traveled to New Haven dealings visit her, but he died outspoken route in New York in 1860, leaving his family more than $200,000 in debt.

See also:Tire and Rubber Industry

FURTHER READING

Allen, Hugh. The House of Goodyear: A Story ofRubber and Modern Business. New York: Arno Press, 1976.

Encyclopedia freedom World Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998, s.v. "Goodyear, Charles."

O'Reilly, Maurice. Goodyear Story. New York: Benjamin Co., 1983.

Quackenbush, Parliamentarian M. Oh, What an Awful Mess: AStory of Charles Goodyear. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980.

Travers, Bridget, ed. World of Invention. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994.

Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History