SKETCH OF CHARLES GOODYEAR. 695 



piano covers, table and carriage cloths superior to any that had been 

 produced up to this time in the United States. A demand arises; he 

 is enabled to sell licenses for manufacture, realizing five thousand 

 dollars in a single year; and the family is glad to be united and com- 

 fortable in Eoxbury. The hopes of the friends of India rubber were 

 rising high. 



In the summer of 1838 Goodyear met ISTathaniel Hay ward, of 

 Woburn, Massachusetts. He had been the foreman of a rubber com- 

 pany, and manufactured on his own account. Hayward had tried 

 powdered charcoal and lime to dry the gum, but now sprinkled sul- 

 phur upon it and hardened it by the rays of the sun, claiming to have 

 received the process in a dream. The same discovery was made 

 simultaneously in Germany by Dr. Liidersdorf. (This chemist was 

 yet to discover that the process only " cured " the surface.) Hay- 

 ward's discovery had attracted no attention, and had the serious 

 objection of causing a very disagreeable smell whenever employed. 

 Goodyear is surprised to find much the same effect upon the surface 

 of the gum as that produced by his " acid-gas " process. He pur- 

 chases Hayward's patent of February 24, 1839, gives him employ- 

 ment, and manufactures at Woburn and Roxbury. He and others 

 supposed that the process also " cured " the body of the gum. The 

 increased attention excited by rubber at the time led to an order from 

 the Government for mail bags, and he gave it the widest possible 

 publicity. At last the world shall see what he can do ! He hastened 

 to gather his family around him to share in the beckoning pros- 

 perity, and his aged parents and two younger brothers, sufferers from 

 his failure, joined him. What was his mortification to find his 

 beautiful mail bags decomposing and dropping from their hooks ! In 

 late experiments he had been using coloring matters, white lead, 

 vermilion, etc. Introduced freely into the bag composition, they 

 had proved deleterious, as the gum was then " cured." After his 

 final invention he was enabled to make use of them. He says, " Had 

 it not been for this misfortune from the use of these articles, in all 

 human probability the vulcanizing process would never have been 

 discovered." 



Our inventor was now at the stage where he could fabricate thin 

 sheets, somewhat durable. How to produce the effect in a mass of 

 the substance? He feels himself near the solution of the question. 

 Outwardly the worst discouragement besets him. Instead of the large 

 fortune his friends had anticipated, his whole invention seems now 

 to be worthless. The public, so often misled by experimenters, be- 

 comes utterly disgusted with the business and the material. From 

 comparative ease and comfort Goodyear is once again reduced to 

 absolute want. Everything salable is sold for the payment of debts; 



