INDIA RUBBER AND GUTTA-PERCHA. 683 



and to the American, Charles Goodyear, its real discoverer, who 

 indefatigably pursued it many years through prosperity and want, 

 encouragement and discouragement, now with friends around him, 

 and, again, lying in a debtor's prison. La Condamine found In- 

 dia-rubber boots among the South American Indians in 1736. Up 

 to 1820 the seringueiros had sent rubber to European markets in 

 the form of "pears," or bottles, and rude shoes. They were 

 termed " shoemakers " in consequence, but the appellation has 

 fallen into disuse. The gum did not begin to be known in the 

 United States until 1820. Three years later, five hundred pairs of 

 Brazilian shoes of direct importation had been sold in Boston. 

 Between 1845 and 1850, flat balls, " biscuits," as at present, began 

 to be sent. Rubber threads, making elastic suspenders, garters, 

 etc., possible, were first made, in 1830, in France, and speedily 

 became an important manufacture. About this time the child's 

 ball was doing more to popularize the novelty than anything else. 

 Soon after, the manufacture of rubber became so important in 

 New England that from 1834 to 1836 new factories rose on all 

 sides. But the popularity of, the new substance declined when it 

 was found that rubber lost its elasticity at low temperatures and 

 was deteriorated and stuck together at high ones. Then, when 

 many factories in America had closed, and English and French 

 manufacturers were menaced with ruin, Goodyear succeeded in 

 producing rubber unalterable by cold or ordinary heat or sol- 

 vents, and some of his dark-yellcw shoes and bands of perfect 

 elasticity m^t with a glad reception in Europe in 1841. In 1839, 

 Nathaniel Hayward, an American, had patented a process for 

 powdering the sheets of rubber with sulphur. The discovery 

 was simultaneously made in Germany by Dr. Luedersdorf. But 

 neither thought of applying heat. Goodyear, who had been ex- 

 perimenting with India rubber for four years, bought Hayward's 

 patent, and after long investigation accidentally found, in 1839, 

 that heat caused the sulphur and rubber to combine so as to 

 change the nature of the latter. He afterward conceived the 

 idea of plunging the rubber into a bath of sulphur. The process 

 is called " vulcanization." Goodyear's experiments also laid the 

 basis of hard-rubber manufacture. Hancock, in England, scraped 

 the new article, and was led to make and patent the same dis- 

 covery in 1843, while Goodyear, through negligence, did not ob- 

 tain a patent until 1844. Alexander Parkes patented a process in 

 1846, when molding was invented by Hancock, in which rubber is 

 vulcanized almost instantly by dipping in a mixture of chloride 

 of sulphur and sulphide of carbon ; so we now have three pro- 

 cesses: "The Goodyear" by steam (improperly), " the Hancock" 

 in the sulphur bath, and "the Parkes" or dipping. They are all 

 reliable and inexpensive. No important discoveries to change the 



