Charles Goodyear, born on December 29th 1800 in New Haven, Connecticut. He was Amasa Goodyear's son. Charles left Philadelphia in 1816 and then returned to help his father who run business on ivory, agricultural implements and metal buttons. Later in August 1824 he married with Clarissa Beecher, who was a strength's pillar and stayed with him through his hard work.
A couple years later, he opened a hardware store in Philadelphia. However he suffered bad health and the business was almost collapsed. But material known as gum elastic, a rubber, caught his eye and he dug out every piece of available information on it. He started developing experiment with that material, and write several articles about his researches.
As soon as he returned to Philadelphia, Goodyear was thrown into jail for bad debt. While in the jail, he rolled magnesia with the rolling pin into the material brought by his wife. Beautiful white compound appeared which seemed to solve the problem.
Soon out of jail, Charles, his wife and her daughters made a number of rubber shoes with that new formula in their kitchen. But came summer and the shoes sagged into shapeless mass. He was thrown out his house for obnoxious smells. His brother-in-law gave him a dressing down advising him to feed hungry children first and forget the dying rubber. Goodyear answered him, "I am the man to bring it back."
He went on experimenting, making it better, even making decorated models with it. A New York trade show awarded him a medal. When nitric acid was applied on a decoration piece to remove the bronze coating, it turned out to be better than all others made so far. He received several thousand dollars as advance by a New York businessman for the new development. But the great depression of 1837 promptly wiped all of them out.
Goodyear got a government order for 150 mailbags, to be manufactured by this new nitric-acid process. He lived in a temporary glory, made them and went on holiday. When he returned, the mailbags were mass of sticky gum. His process failed. His children were back in the backyard digging half-grown potatoes for food.
His greatest day came in the winter of 1839. The discovery is often mentioned as one of the most famous accidents resulting in a scientific discovery. There is story that he rubbed a little sulfur on a piece of rubber and forgot it overnight. There is a story that he threw a piece of rubber in a store and it fell on a hot stove accidentally. A major breakthrough occurred by heating natural rubber and sulphur, the process known as vulcanization, named interestingly by a rival after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
By 1844 he perfected the process sufficiently and factories were started at Springfield and Naugatuck. He lived with rubber and made every conceivable product with it like banknotes, musical instruments, flags, jewelry, rubber hats, vests, and ties. At the world's fairs in 1850s, both in London and Paris, Goodyear built pavilions entirely of rubber, floor to roof. But that did not bring riches to him or place him in the high corporate profile. Instead he pawned everything in his household including his watch and crockery. He did make rubber crockery, but where was the food?
And then there are patent robbers. He had to prosecute 32 infringement cases right up to the US Supreme Court. He made headlines, but not money. His French patent was cancelled on technical grounds; he was bundled off for a 16-day and night free stay at his well-known 'hotel' as he called it, the prison. He had $200,000 debt, when he died, in 1860. However, royalties from his inventions made his family comfortable.
Sources:
50 Timeless Scientists by K. Khrisna Murty
50 Timeless Scientists by K. Khrisna Murty
