Charles Goodyear

Charles Goodyear (December 29, 1800 – July 1, 1860) was an American self-taught chemist, manufacturing engineer, and inventor who developed vulcanized rubber, for which he received patent number 3633 from the United States Patent Office on June 15, 1844. He is credited with inventing the chemical process to create and manufacture pliable, waterproof, moldable rubber, a discovery that transformed rubber from a novelty material into a durable industrial commodity. His work initiated decades of successful rubber manufacturing in the Lower Naugatuck Valley in Connecticut, as rubber was adopted for multiple applications, including footwear and, later, tires. The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, founded in 1898, is named in his honor, though it was not founded by him.

Goodyear was born on December 29, 1800, in New Haven, Connecticut, the eldest of six children of Amasa Goodyear. His father was a descendant of Stephen Goodyear, who succeeded Governor Theophilus Eaton as head of the company of London merchants that founded the New Haven Colony in 1638. Charles grew up in a family engaged in small-scale manufacturing and agriculture, an environment that exposed him early to tools, materials, and practical mechanics. He had several siblings, including Nelson Goodyear, Henry Goodyear, Robert Goodyear, Harriet Goodyear Tomlinson, and Amasa Goodyear Jr., many of whom would later assist in his industrial ventures.

Around 1817, Goodyear left his home in Connecticut and went to Philadelphia to learn the hardware business. He worked industriously in that trade until about the age of twenty-five. Returning to Connecticut, he entered into partnership in his father’s business in Naugatuck, Connecticut, where they manufactured ivory and metal buttons and a variety of agricultural implements. On August 3, 1824, he married Clarissa Beecher, whom he met at his Congregational Church. Two years later, in 1826, the family moved back to Philadelphia, where Goodyear opened a hardware store specializing in agricultural implements similar to those his family firm had produced. At a time when most agricultural tools were imported from England, his domestically made implements initially met with skepticism, but as distrust waned, his business prospered and he appeared on the path to considerable wealth. Between 1829 and 1830, however, his health broke down—he suffered from dyspepsia—and a series of business reverses and failed ventures seriously embarrassed his firm, ultimately forcing it into failure.

Between 1831 and 1832, Goodyear first became interested in gum elastic, or natural rubber, after reading newspaper accounts of this new material. The Roxbury Rubber Company of Boston had been experimenting with rubber and believed it had found a way to manufacture goods from it on a large scale. Some of Roxbury’s products, including life preservers, attracted Goodyear’s attention. During a visit to New York, he examined one of these life preservers and concluded that the inflation tube was poorly designed. Returning to Philadelphia, he devised improved tubes and brought them to the manager of the Roxbury Rubber Company. The manager admired his ingenuity but confided that the company was on the verge of ruin: rubber goods that initially appeared sound were rotting and being returned after a period of use. Convinced that the instability of rubber was a solvable problem, Goodyear resolved to experiment with the material himself.

Goodyear’s early experiments were conducted under conditions of severe financial distress. Upon returning to Philadelphia, he was arrested and imprisoned for debt by a creditor. While in prison, he began his first systematic trials with India rubber. At that time the gum was inexpensive, and by heating it and working it in his hands, he managed to incorporate magnesia into the rubber, producing a white compound that appeared to reduce its stickiness. Believing he had made a breakthrough, he secured help from friends and moved to New Haven, where he set up a small operation in his own house. There he and his family produced rubber shoes, using their home for grinding, calendering, and what he then regarded as vulcanizing. His compound consisted of India rubber, lampblack, and magnesia dissolved in turpentine and spread on flannel cloth used as shoe lining. This process initially seemed promising, but the treated rubber still became sticky over time, and his creditors, discouraged, tried to halt his work. Refusing to abandon his experiments, Goodyear sold his furniture and placed his family in a modest boarding house while he moved to New York. Assisted by a sympathetic druggist, he continued his work in an attic laboratory. His family endured extreme poverty, at times reduced to catching frogs and digging half-frozen potatoes for food. Two of his young sons died during this period, deepening the hardship, though his wife and surviving children continued to support his efforts.

Goodyear next compounded rubber with magnesia and boiled it in quicklime and water, a process that appeared to solve the problem of stickiness and brought him international attention. For a time it seemed he had succeeded, until he observed that a drop of weak acid falling on the treated rubber neutralized the alkali and caused the material to soften again. Recognizing that this method was fundamentally flawed, he persisted with further experiments. Preparing mixtures in his attic, he would walk three miles to a mill in Greenwich Village to test them. In the course of these efforts, he discovered that dipping rubber in nitric acid produced a surface cure, and he manufactured many products using this acid treatment. These goods were well regarded, and he even received a letter of commendation from President Andrew Jackson. However, his constant exposure to harsh chemicals such as nitric acid and lead oxide severely affected his health; on one occasion he nearly suffocated from laboratory gases and survived only after a serious fever that nearly cost him his life.

Despite these setbacks, Goodyear and an old business partner eventually built a factory to produce clothing, life preservers, rubber shoes, and a wide variety of rubber goods. They also established a large plant with specialized machinery on Staten Island, where Goodyear moved his family and briefly enjoyed a more stable home life. The financial panic of 1837, however, destroyed the fortune of his associate and again left Goodyear penniless. He then went to Boston, where he became acquainted with J. Haskins of the Roxbury Rubber Company, who proved a steadfast supporter, lending him money and encouragement when others dismissed him as a visionary. Another associate, Mr. Chaffee, suggested that some of the persistent difficulties with rubber might stem from the solvents being used and devised a large machine to mix the rubber mechanically. The resulting products were visually impressive and seemed to overcome earlier problems, but they still lacked true stability in varying temperatures. During this period Goodyear also developed a new method for making rubber shoes and received a patent, which he sold to the Providence Company in Rhode Island. Yet no one had yet discovered a process that would allow rubber to withstand both heat and cold and resist decomposition, and manufacturers continued to see their goods grow sticky, rot, and be returned.

From 1834 through 1839, Goodyear worked wherever he could find investors, frequently moving among New York, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, and Connecticut. In 1839, while working at the Eagle India Rubber Company in Woburn, Massachusetts, he made the crucial discovery that combining rubber with sulfur and exposing the mixture to heat—famously over a hot stove—caused the rubber to become firm and elastic rather than sticky or brittle. He called this process vulcanization, after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, because of the essential role of heat. For this discovery he received U.S. patent number 1090 on February 24, 1839. Several years earlier he had started a small factory in Springfield, Massachusetts, to which he moved his primary operations in 1842. The Springfield factory was largely managed by his brother Nelson and other family members, and his brother-in-law, Mr. De Forest, a wealthy woolen manufacturer, also became involved. There the practical development and refinement of the vulcanization process continued. By 1844 the process had been sufficiently perfected for Goodyear to receive U.S. patent number 3633, which mentions New York but not Springfield. In the same year, his brother Henry introduced mechanical mixing of the rubber compound, replacing earlier solvent-based methods and improving consistency. Goodyear subsequently sold some of his patent rights to Hiram Hutchinson, who founded Hutchinson SA in France in 1853, helping spread vulcanized rubber technology to European markets.

In 1852, Goodyear undertook a long-planned trip to Europe to promote his process and secure foreign patent rights. In Britain he encountered Thomas Hancock, associated with Charles Macintosh & Company, who claimed to have independently invented vulcanization and had initiated a British patent in 1843, finalized in 1844. Goodyear became involved, directly and indirectly, in a series of British patent disputes, particularly those involving Hancock and another rubber pioneer, Stephen Moulton. In the final of three such disputes, in 1855, Hancock’s patent was challenged on the grounds that he had copied Goodyear’s work. Goodyear attended the trial, hoping that if Hancock’s patent were invalidated, his own British patent application would be granted, allowing him to claim royalties from both Hancock and Moulton. Although both men had examined samples of Goodyear’s vulcanized rubber in 1842, several chemists testified that the method of manufacture could not have been deduced from the finished material alone. Hancock ultimately prevailed, and Goodyear did not secure the broad British rights he sought. Despite these legal and financial disappointments, he reflected philosophically on his career, writing that a life’s success should not be measured solely in “dollars and cents” and that a man has cause for regret only “when he sows and no one reaps.”

Goodyear continued to work and travel in connection with his inventions until his final illness. On July 1, 1860, while traveling to see his dying daughter, he arrived in New York City only to learn that she had already died. He collapsed soon after receiving the news and was taken to the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where he died that same day at the age of fifty-nine. His innovations, however, continued to shape industry long after his death. In 1898, nearly four decades later, Frank Seiberling founded The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and named it in Goodyear’s honor, recognizing the foundational importance of vulcanized rubber to the emerging tire industry. In 1855, during his lifetime, the Government of France had made him a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in recognition of the significance of his work. On February 8, 1976, he was among six individuals selected for induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. His legacy is also commemorated in other ways: an elementary school in Woburn, Massachusetts, bears his name; the ACS Rubber Division awards the Charles Goodyear Medal to principal inventors, innovators, and developers whose contributions have significantly changed the rubber industry; and the Goodyear welt, a durable shoemaking technique, was named for and developed by his son, Charles Goodyear Jr. His family included other notable figures, such as his son William Henry Goodyear, and his work laid the foundation for later industrialists and manufacturers, including Leverett Candee, the first person to manufacture rubber footwear under the Goodyear vulcanization process.