The Man Behind The Rubber: Charles Goodyear

Winter is coming and with it time to change tires for our cars. Most of Steemians know Charles Goodyear as the man behind the rubber. But what exactly has he done? Today we are going to investigate that and discover a little bit more about him and interesting story behind.

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From tires to gloves and shoes, rubber is used in many applications and products. Its praised for its resilience, stretch ratio and waterproofness.

As it is widely known latex is required in order to make rubber. It is usually collected from rubber tree, which contains the highest ratio of latex than of any other plant. But did you know that this sticky, milky fluid is also found in dandelion? Yes, dandelion. Not only that but various species of lettuce also contain it.

Rubber tree is tapped to harvest the latex from it. This process does not harm tree's growth but the incision has to be deep enough to tap the vessels. In attempt to close its wounds the tree responds by producing even more latex. Rubber trees produce sufficient latex output for 25 to 30 years, but its production declines with age. After that the tree is usually harvested for furniture.

Archaeological evidence points out that the first use of rubber dates as early as 1600 BC. The cultures of Maya and Aztec used it for making balls for their popular game and other rituals. They also used it for containers and waterproofing textiles by impregnating them with latex sap.

Why is Charles Goodyear so widely known for rubber?

His education lead him to become hardware worker. He opened a hardware store, where he did most of his work. After he read about this wonderful material called natural rubber in a newspaper article in 1831 his interests moved into its direction. He read every article related to this material.

To find out more about it he went to a company that already produced live preservers. Their products had a major flaw. After a short period of time they became sticky, started to rot, decompose and became useless.

His hardware business struggled for some time and when he returned, creditor had him arrested and imprisoned due to his debts. While in jail he asked his wife to bring him rolling pin and some rubber. He mixed rubber with anything he could find, from castor oil, cream cheese to acids. After he thought he finally got it right, treating rubber with nitric acid laced with sulfiric acid, he got order of 150 bags for US post office. But the bags disintegrated in summer heat and product failed.

In 1839 he spilled a rubber and sulfur mixture onto a hot stove by accident. He was surprised to see that rubber maintained elasticity and only charred on the edges. The areas that were not burned maintained elastic properties and when exposed to cold the piece maintained its flexibility. Goodyear had discovered a process called vulcanization.

His patent on this discovery, which was licensed at extremely low prices, didn't bring him fortune. In fact he struggled through all his life being in debt and jailed many times. I didn't write about many obstacles that he had to overcome, mostly financial, to discover what we use in our daily life. To discover more details you can read further through the links provided below.

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References:

[1] Life of Charles Goodyear
[2] Natural Rubber
[3] Vulcanization
[4] History of Cars
[5] Charles Goodyear

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