Badyears

Hard work, risk, ingenuity and a little luck should’ve worked for the now gone unsung sorcerer by the nifty name of Charles Goodyear. Fiercely forcing his family and friends into debt in the 1830s, as he alchemied radically with countless rations of rubber.

In those days, India rubber, as it was known, was not widely used due to its fated failing faults. Viscid when temperatures rose, and delicate when they dropped. It’s shape was lost and warped when weight was introduced.

Charlie, had a small list of petty patents which included: steel spring forks, safe-eye buttons, etc. A madman running through space and time trying to find the formidable method of improving the condition of rubber. He maniacally mixed  with all manner of matter from bronze powder to quicklime to cream cheese to three-eyed dog sneeze, to absolutely no avail. On a regular drab day, perhaps, like any other day, the Goodyear magician, diabolically, but accidentally, mixed a collection of natural gum coupled with sulphur, as a blob landed on the stove, and no doubt forgot to clean it off. The concoction had become leathery. He fiercely forced the ear of all who would listen, despite his prior wacky worthless ideas, without gain. The recently cooked flubber was taken by Goodyear and hung outside of his home on a nail in the biting winter weather.

Vulcanization was born the next morning—strong and flexible. The timely technique had metamorphosed a novelty item into one of the most significant substances in worldwide manufacturing.

Goodyear spun out of control with debt, despite his devilish discovery in the year 1839. The family couldn’t even afford a proper burial for his two-year-old son. In the two decades that followed, Charlie attempted to find profitable application to his new discovery, from safety jackets for ice skates, stopper plugs for cannonball holes, and perhaps entertained novel notions of pleasure puds.

The poor sap only dreamt of commercial success, as he drained his relatives and backers dry until the bitter end. $200, 000 in debt was the way he expired.

 

Enter Sieberling, A. Frank, an entrepreneur of thirty-eight years old. He founded a rubber company in Akron, Ohio in 1889 and named it after Charlie ( Goodyear ).The Goodyear family never got a cent for the use of the name, no patent royalties ever respected or honored.

 

A royal statue stands in the lobby of the World Of Rubber museum in Akron.

∞