6g6 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lie sees Lis parents and family deprived of tlieir means of support; 

 lie has passed four years in trying to improve a material that has re- 

 sisted all the ingenuity of investigation, that had ruined so many 

 men, and in which large capital had been lost; and he has given his 

 exclusive attention to the subject. " It was generally agreed," he 

 says, " that the man who could proceed further in a course of this 

 sort is fairly deserving of all the distress brought upon himself." 

 His friends urged him to take up some other business, declaring that 

 he was only bringing discomfort upon himself and others. But he 

 kept on and made a few articles by the old process, by which means 

 and the pawn shops the family was able to live. Had machinery or 

 important capital been necessary, he needs must have relinquished his 

 experiments and abandoned the pursuit of what so many regarded as 

 an ignis fatuus. As it was, with a small sum he made experiment 

 upon experiment, trying to retrieve the lost reputation of his inven- 

 tion. The influence of sulphur upon the surface especially interested 

 him. At Woburn his triumphant discovery was to be accomplished. 

 Parlor became workshop. Here with his family and two assistants 

 he manufactured shoes. The family is described as happy in all 

 their extremities; the mother uncomplaining; the father, amid his 

 cares and the struggle to solve the important problem, always 

 genial. 



So, in the spring of 1839, he is trying the effect of heat upon the 

 mail-bag compound. While talking in the kitchen with persons 

 familiar with India rubber, he makes a rapid gesture, and a piece of 

 the gum he holds in his hand accidentally comes in contact with the 

 hot stove. As the substance, in its natural state, melts at a low de- 

 gree of heat, great was his surprise to find that it had charred with- 

 out dissolving, and that no part of it was sticky. His daughter says : 

 " As I was passing in and out of the room, I casually observed the 

 little piece of gum which he was holding near the fire, and I noticed 

 also that he was unusually animated by some discovery which he had 

 made. He nailed the piece outside in the intense cold. In the 

 morning he brought it in, holding it up exultingly. He had found it 

 perfectly flexible, as it was when he put it out." When further ex- 

 periments show that his process " cures " the rubber through, and 

 that the new substance resists heat, cold, and the action of acids, and 

 before he has convinced any one of the value of his invention, " I 

 felt myself," he says, " amply repaid for the past, and quite indifferent 

 as to the trials of the future." Two years passed before he was able 

 to convince any one outside of his family of the importance of his 

 discovery. The world had to be shown, by time and varying tem- 

 peratures, that " metallization " (as the process was first called) was 

 effective. This was a bitter period for the Goodyears. Their condi- 



