Charles Goodyear was an American inventor who spent years experimenting with natural rubber after his father's hardware business failed, searching for a way to stop the material from turning brittle in cold weather and sticky in heat. In 1839, while working at the Eagle India Rubber Company in Woburn, Massachusetts, he accidentally dropped a rubber and sulfur mixture onto a hot stove and found that the scorched sample had become smooth, firm and stable across a wide range of temperatures, a process he later named vulcanization after the Roman god of fire. He spent five more years refining the process before receiving a US patent on it in 1844, but he never secured the wealth the invention created: he died in 1860 while traveling to see his dying daughter, with his estate roughly two hundred thousand dollars in debt. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company that later carried his name was founded decades after his death by people with no direct connection to him. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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Source A History of TechnologyCharles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors
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Vulcanization, Methods Why this is disputed. American accounts credit Goodyear's accidental 1839 discovery, confirmed by his 1844 US patent, as the invention of vulcanization. Thomas Hancock filed a British patent on the same sulfur-and-heat process in November 1843, several weeks before Goodyear's US patent was granted, and always maintained he reached it independently.
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Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationPerfection and patent of vulcanization section
discovered that combining rubber and sulfur over a hot stove caused the rubber to become rigid, a process which he called vulcanization because of the heat involved
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July 1, 1860, in New York City (aged 59)
Invented: Vulcanization, Court cases regarding vulcanization section
claimed to have invented vulcanization independently, and received a British patent, initiated in 1843, but finalized in 1844
Invented: Vulcanization, Article body
In 1839, Goodyear was at the Eagle India Rubber Company in Woburn, Massachusetts, where he discovered that combining rubber and sulfur over a hot stove caused the rubber to become rigid, a process which he called vulcanization because of the heat involved.
View the Source A History of Technology
Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall and Trevor I. Williams, editors, Oxford University Press, 1954- In Category: Engineer
- In Field: Chemical Engineering
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How did Charles Goodyear discover vulcanization, and did he profit from it?
A rubber and sulfur mixture dropped on a hot stove in 1839 led to vulcanization, but he died in debt.
In 1839, while working at the Eagle India Rubber Company in Woburn, Massachusetts, Goodyear accidentally dropped a rubber and sulfur mixture onto a hot stove and found that the scorched sample had become smooth, firm and stable across a wide range of temperatures. He named the process vulcanization after the Roman god of fire and spent five more years refining it before receiving a US patent in 1844. He never secured the wealth it created and died in 1860 with his estate roughly two hundred thousand dollars in debt.
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