RESULT OP AN EXPERIMENT. 115 



portion acted upon being very superior, and the interior equally 

 as good as the native gum, the improvement, on the whole, 

 gave satisfaction, and the inventor imagined that he had done 

 all that could be done to improve the material. He therefore 

 now entered, (as he thought,) upon a successful career for the 

 future. A far different result, however, awaited him. While 

 the invention, and the numerous applications of it were getting 

 highly into favor with the public, he received an order from the 

 Government for a considerable quantity of mail-bags. This 

 fact was much known, and looked upon as a test of the utility 

 of the improvement. If the mail-bags proved satisfactory, it 

 was admitted that the invention would be completely success- 

 ful. 



They were being finished in the warm season, and were 

 purposely exposed for inspection in his factory, which was much 

 visited from motives of curiosity, but while he was absent a few 

 weeks, they were discovered to be decomposing, and to be 

 dropping off the handles. 



The inventor had been recently in the habit of using chromes, 

 white lead, and vermilion, and a variety of articles for the pur- 

 pose of producing colors ; some of which he used in the mail- 

 bags, with the view of giving them a good leather color. These 

 proved deleterious to the goods, as the manufacture was then 

 conducted, and destroyed them.* The reputation of the acid 

 gas process, upon which he wholly relied, had been theoretically 

 established, and, it was supposed, fairly tested, previous to the 

 decomposition of the mail-bags before alluded to. Since the 

 true cause of the decomposition of the goods at that time has 

 become known, it has been considered, as before, a real improve- 

 ment, and is practiced in the manufacture in connection with 

 the vulcanizing process, with great advantage. But at that time 

 he relied too much upon its efficacy to change the character or 

 properties of the gum, and to prevent the effects of other in- 



* These articles are not injurious when mixed and vulcanized with India rubber, but rather 

 serve to facilitate the process, and 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. 



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