Everyone deserves a bit of luck. An Charles Goodyear, he deserved more than most. A self-taught chemist and manufacturing engineer, he got one of those ideas in his head you just can’t shake.
In Goodyear’s case, the fascination – some would call it an obsession – was rubber. One of the original ‘miracle materials’, long before anyone dreamt of graphene, rubber had huge potential. If only there was a way to make it temperature-stable! Natural rubber, you see, becomes brittle and cracks in the cold, and melts into a sticky, stinky goo when hot.
Goodyear had tried everything – including his family’s and creditors’ patience – to solve rubber’s problems, mixing it with magnesia, nitric acid and turpentine to name but a few. Finally, turning out the light one night after yet another day’s fruitless experimentation, he accidentally spilled rubber, sulphur and lead onto a still-hot stove.
Amazingly, the rubber charred but didn’t melt. Nor, as Goodyear went on to discover, did it crack when cold. He called the process vulcanization after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire.
Goodyear’s discovery may have been the answer to rubber’s problems but it wasn’t to his own. Patents followed but so did lawsuits and he died deep in debt, the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company only named in his honour and having no direct connection with him or his family.
How different things might have been for the man who devoted his life to rubber if R&D tax credits had been around in the mid-1800s. Remember, it’s the intention that counts, not the end result.
