NOBLE OBSESSION BY

CHARLES SLACK
 The book is a short autobiography of American
inventor, Charles Goodyear.
 It highlighted the highs and lows of his life
especially on his quest for discovering a process for
improving rubber (vulcanization).
 Patent Disputes (esp. w/ Thomas Hancock) on the
said process in UK.
Who is Charles Goodyear?
 Charles Goodyear was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of
Amasa Goodyear, and the oldest of six children. His father was a
descendant of Stephen Goodyear, one of the founders of the colony
of New Haven in 1638.
 In 1814, Charles left his home and went to Philadelphia to learn the
hardware business. He worked industriously until he was twenty-one
years old, and then, returning to Connecticut, entered into
partnership in his father's business in Naugatuck, where they
manufactured not only ivory and metal buttons, but a variety of
agricultural implements.
 He was married to Clarissa Beecher and eventually to Fanny
Wardell and had 12 children, seven of them died.
How did Charles Goodyear come into
the rubber phenomena?
 In 1830’s gum elastic or rubber was then called a
“miracle” substance and new companies sprang up
virtually overnight to meet the expected demand
for rubber goods.
 However, rubber had a fatal flaw. That is, it would
melt in the heat and crack in the cold.
 He was at first unaware with the hype for rubber as he
was doing good in his business until he succumbed into
debt and incarcerated in a debtors prison
 Goodyear would be first acquainted with rubber when
he developed an improved valve for a life preserver
at a rubber goods store hoping to recover his
misfortunes, when the owner of the store told him that
the demand for the valves is going down and invest in
rubber instead which currently is on a decline due to its
“fatal flaw”.
 He invested the remainder of his life by improving
rubber, mainly by trial and error, he has used
various substances, turpentine, magnesia, quick lime,
lead oxide among others until he accidentally
discovered the process by leaving a strip of rubber
mixed with sulfur on a hot stove
 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
Thomas Hancock and Patent Disputes

 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.
 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,”
 “Sulfur has a tendency to rise to the surface in what’s
called a sulfur bloom,” says Slack. “Hancock noticed a
rash of sulfur on one of the strips and the pieces were
darkened as though they’d been heated. Hancock went
to his locked laboratory in London and spent close to a
year using sulfur, rubber and heat and trying to
reverse-engineer. Ultimately, he was successful. He beat
Goodyear to the patent office (UK) by just a few
weeks.”
 “He lost out on the French patent because they have
this rule in France where if you have ever sold a
product before patenting it then it becomes public
property,” notes Slack. Ultimately, Goodyear was
limited to the U.S. patent, which was approved on
June 15, 1844.
Death and legacy of Charles
Goodyear
 Goodyear died July 1, 1860 on his travel to New York
to go to his dying daughter, just to be informed that she
had already passed away.
 Thirty-eight years after Goodyear’s death, the
Seiberling brothers founded the Goodyear Tire &
Rubber Company in Akron, Ohio. “Everyone assumes a
connection but there really was no formal association,
and no member of the Goodyear family ever held a
high position or got rich off the company,”
 The city of Goodyear, Arizona was named after
Goodyear.