Failure™ Magazine

Rubber Stamp

How Charles Goodyear became the first name in rubber.

Written by Jason Zasky   Filed under History

Over the next several years Goodyear worked feverishly to perfect the process, which would eventually become known as vulcanization, a reference to Vulcan, the Roman God of fire. But now he had the same problem as the boy who cried wolf. No one believed his claims after having seen the results of his earlier discoveries. To make matters worse, years of being unemployed continued to take its toll and Goodyear repeatedly found himself in debtor’s prison.

Formula One
Short of funds and having been repeatedly burned by acting rashly, Goodyear avoided initiating the expensive patent process until he was sure of the exact formula. But by neglecting his patent application, Goodyear risked losing credit for his invention. “He was the quintessential absent-minded inventor,” says Slack. “He didn’t think about the realities of business and the things he needed to do in order to protect himself.”

When Goodyear began selling vulcanized products before patenting the process, a rubber manufacturer named Horace Day bought $26.75 worth of Goodyear’s shoes in an effort to learn the secrets of this new invention. Although Day was unable to deduce the formula by studying the shoes he managed to dog Goodyear for the remainder of his life and beyond, claiming that Goodyear was not the inventor and even infringing on the U.S. patent that Goodyear ultimately received. Eventually, Goodyear—represented by legendary attorney Daniel Webster—would take Day to court and would win the landmark Great India Rubber case.

Free Samples
Meanwhile, Goodyear sent a friend named Stephen Moulton to England with sample strips of his vulcanized rubber—he referred to it as “fire-proof gum” or “metallic gum-elastic”—in an effort to attract British investors. One of the potential investors Moulton visited was Thomas Hancock, operator of Charles Macintosh & Company, one of the world’s few profitable rubber concerns. “Hancock was a brilliant scientist and knew rubber better than anyone else, with the possible exception of Goodyear. When he saw the samples he was stunned,” says Slack. He was equally shocked that an American would provide him with samples before securing a British patent.

An astute businessman, Hancock had already built a rubber empire by focusing on consumer goods that weren’t likely to reveal rubber’s flaws. “In England the climate doesn’t have the extremes found in the United States,” notes Slack, “so there was a limited range of rubber products that could be successfully sold.” Hancock had tried to solve rubber’s hot-and-cold problem but was discouraged with the results, and had little motivation to continue his experiments when he already had a thriving business. “I think he had more or less decided that it couldn’t be done,” advises Slack. “He thought we just have to accept rubber the way it is and that it would always be a flawed commodity.”

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