196 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 194 



later became a part of the United States Kubber Co. In 1843 the 

 firm of Samuel J. Lewis & Co. was organized in Nangatuck, Conn. 

 In the same year this firm received a license from Charles Goodyear 

 to manufacture footwear. This partnership was succeeded by the 

 Goodyear Metallic Kubber Shoe Co., which was incorporated in 

 Connecticut on January 9, 1845. This company likewise became a 

 part of the United States Rubber Co. and has made rubber footwear 

 continuously from the time of the establishment of the plant in 1843 

 to the present. Three of the four original subscribers were related 

 by marriage to Charles Goodyear. It was in the Naugatuck office 

 of one of these, William deForest, that the first vulcanized shoe 

 was lasted. 



The name "Goodyear Metallic Rubber Shoe Company" was pos- 

 sibly suggested by Goodyear himself, for he states (5) : "Soon after 

 the discovery of the heating or vulcanizing process, the inventor 

 applied the term metallic gum-elastic to the improved article." In 

 other parts of his book, Goodyear uses the term "metallic" as 

 synonymous with vulcanization. 



This early application of Goodyear's invention to overshoes is of 

 great interest in relation to the history of the rubber industry in this 

 country. For many years this was the most important branch of the 

 industry. Although later other countries started the manufacture 

 of vulcanized rubber overshoes, the American product was, and still 

 is, regarded as the standard of quality. 



As a result of Goodyear's discovery, a dying industry revived. 

 The footwear business grew with considerable rapidity. Goodyear 

 relates that before 1840 the total annual production of uncured rubber 

 overshoes, made for the most part by the natives of rubber-producing 

 countries, was around 500,000 pairs. About 1851, when he wrote his 

 book (5), 15,000 pairs per day or approximately 5,000,000 pairs per 

 year were manufactured in the United States under Goodyear's 

 patent. 



In 1851 Nelson Goodyear, a brother of Charles, discovered that 

 sulfur used in large amounts would produce hard rubber. 



For the next 40 years the industry itself did not make much 

 progress in the application of chemistry to rubber. Manufacturers 

 and inventors devoted their attention to devising and exploiting new 

 shapes and applications of rubber, many of which were suggested by 

 Goodyear and Hancock. Business during this period was chiefly in 

 waterproof footwear, clothing, druggists' sundries, and certain type:! 

 of mechanical goods such as hose, gaskets, washers, etc. Chemistry, 

 as we understand the teim today, was not in general use in the rubber 

 industry. Those operations which come under the heading of rubber 

 compounding — that is, the designing of mixtures of rubber and other 

 ingredients to produce a satisfactory article — were on a rule-of- 



