692 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was attained by E. M. ChafFee (1830), wlio invented a macliine for 

 spreading his oil-of-tnrpentine solution on cloth. Not to invest in 

 rubber companies about 1833 was thought to indicate a lack of finan- 

 cial insight. 



Goodyear read of the success of these companies and, in casting 

 about to help himself, naturally turned to the substance which had 

 earlier attracted his attention. Having made an improvement in the 

 valve of a life-preserver, he returned to the Roxbury Company and 

 tried to sell them his invention. The agent recognized its merit, and, 

 hoping to enlist a clever intelligence in their interests, unfolded to 

 him the startling condition of rubber manufacture in the United 

 States: that the seeming prosperity was not real; that the company 

 had made and sold large quantities of goods in the cool months of 

 1833-34, but the following summer the greater part had melted; 

 and that new ingredients and machinery had been vainly tried. He 

 urged him to try to solve the secret, intimating that almost any price 

 would be gladly given. By the end of 1836 the "India-rubber 

 fever " had spent itself, not a solvent company was left, and the very 

 name was detested. 



Charles Goodyear at once began his experiments, melting his 

 first gum in the debtors' prison, Philadelphia. He continued them the 

 winter of 1834-35, making his mixtures with his own hands and 

 rolling them with a rolling pin. He considers it fortunate that rub- 

 ber is five cents per pound, for as long as he can command that sum 

 he will be able to continue experiments. And he soon discovers 

 that chemists, physicians, and researchers have been baffled in all 

 attempts to make the substance take on the qualities desired. He is 

 thirty-five, bankrupt, and in poor health, yet does not shrink from 

 what to the strongest might well have seemed a superhuman task; 

 and is sustained by " the reflection that what is hidden and unknown, 

 and can not be discovered by scientific research, will most likely be 

 discovered by accident if at all, and by the man who applies himself 

 most perseveringly to the subject." With a friendly loan he makes 

 shoes of fine appearance, but summer finds them reduced to an 

 offensive mass. He thinks there must be some substance to mix 

 with the gum, and tries almost everything he can obtain. None of 

 the learned men indicate the course to be taken; he is on an un- 

 known sea. 



He has the best success with magnesia, producing the first white 

 goods; but his beautiful book and piano covers began to ferment, 

 and soon turned brittle and hard. At New Haven he recommenced 

 the work which was to occupy his attention to the end of his life, 

 shoes being the first goods offered, as they were of easy manufacture. 

 This was the beginning of the long-continued family employment 



