Charles Goodyear died in relative poverty in New York City. Born in New Haven, Connecticut on December 29, 1800, he had experimented at length in solving the weaknesses of rubber as a material. In 1844, he took out a patent on a hardening process, later dubbed "vulcanizing," and began to produce items of all kinds. Poor at business and often in debt, he was involved in a long series of patent disputes in the United States, Britain and France. He had no connection with the famous tire company named after him in tribute in 1898. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
Charles Slack, Noble Obsession: Charles Goodyear, Thomas Hancock, and the Race to Unlock the Greatest Industrial Secret of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Hyperion, 2003), 232.
Record Data
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Personal
