CAOUTCHOUC. 149 



industry and ingenuity of Charles Goodyear, of New Haven, 

 Connecticut. During a series of years of patient investiga- 

 tion, he performed numberless experiments with a single object 

 in view, viz. such a modification of caoutchouc, as would ob- 

 viate all objections to its use, all defects in its properties, 

 without impairing, and if possible, by increasing, its valuable 

 qualities. Repeated failure did not discourage him, but 

 seemed to nerve him the stronger in his toilsome pursuit, 

 until at length success crowned his efforts. After he had been 

 engaged some years in these investigations, and had already 

 met with a degree of success which would have satisfied most 

 persons, in the year 1841 he placed specimens of his manu- 

 factured rubber in the hands of one of the writers of this 

 report, for the purpose of testing its properties under chemical 

 agency, in comparison with the native caoutchouc. This writer 

 has known him personally, and been acquainted with his suc- 

 cessive improvements from that period to the present time. 

 His first improvement, which constituted the basis of others, 

 consisted in the discovery by himself, that sulphur, under the 

 influence of a higher temperature than usual, imparted the 

 wished-for properties to caoutchouc, and that when conjoined 

 with oxide of lead, these properties were still further improved. 

 He called the compound Metallic Rubber. All processes for 

 vulcanizing caoutchouc employed in England and on the con- 

 tinent of Europe resulted from this important discovery of 

 Goodyear. A fuller account of the process he pursued, was pub- 

 lished some five years since in the Encyclopgedia of Chemistry, 

 to which reference is here made. Many other important im- 

 provements have been made under Goodyear's direction, both 

 of a chemical and mechanical nature, some of which will 

 doubtless be brought into successful employment, as soon as 

 he conceives them to be sufficiently perfected. The present 

 advanced state of the manufacture of elastic goods leads us 

 to look onward to the time, when the manifold applications 

 of caoutchouc, as a substitute for leather, with or without 

 elasticity, — for various kinds of cloth, whether the coarse cloth 

 of a tent exposed to the weather, or the more delicate fabric 

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