Notes

PAGE 1, Charles Goodyear and the Invention of Rubber





Without the invention of the process that makes rubber easy to use, life would be dramatically different. Charles Goodyear spent his life working to make rubber easy to use and stable in temperature changes.

Most natural rubber comes from a tree that first grew in Brazil but is now grown in Asia as well. The tree has a thick sap, called latex. When a worker shaves some bark from the tree, the latex oozes into a collection cup. Then the latex is processed to create rubber.




PAGE 2, Charles Goodyear

Charles Goodyear was born in 1800 in New Haven, Connecticut. As a young man, he worked to make valves that were to be used in rubber life preservers. Unfortunately, there was no market for the valves because the rubber was so unstable. In the 1830s, “rubber fever” struck. People wanted things made out of this new material, but they quickly learned that the rubber was not very useful. It melted in the heat and froze and cracked in cold weather. Charles was inspired to find out how to make rubber more useful.

Charles’s quest to find out how to use rubber was difficult on his family. He was married and had 12 children, but only six of his children survived past childhood. His family was frequently penniless and had to depend on relatives for food and other needs. Eventually, he invented a way to treat rubber and make it more useful, but he was never able to make a profit from it. After he died, his family gained a modest income from the royalties.




PAGE 3, You Are Charles Goodyear

Pretend that you are Charles Goodyear and need to write a letter home to your wife. You want to describe how you feel about the failures that you are encountering during your experiments. How do you think you would keep the enthusiasm to continue your experiments? Write the final draft of the letter in your notebook.




PAGE 4, Vulcanization

In 1839, Charles Goodyear invented the process for stabilizing rubber, which came to be known as vulcanization. After years of experiments, Charles found that when rubber was mixed with sulfur and heated, it turned into another substance that was resistant to heat and cold, making it much more stable.

When he first began experimenting with rubber, Charles mixed the soft, sticky rubber gum with talc powder. This made the rubber less sticky but did not make the rubber usable. He also tried nitric acid, but not until he mixed the rubber with sulfur did he solve the problem of instability. The real test came when Charles accidentally threw his sulfur/rubber experiment on a hot stove and the rubber gum changed into the substance we know today as rubber. Unfortunately, his idea was stolen by Thomas Hancock, who profited from it.



The Effect of Rubber
on the Northeast

In part because of the invention of processes such as Goodyear’s vulcanization of rubber, industry in the northeastern United States boomed in the late 1800s. Many people moved to the cities, and populations in large cities multiplied dramatically as much of the Northeast became urban. Before the mid-1800s, most people lived in farming communities.







PAGE 5, How Would Your Life Be Changed?

If the process of vulcanization had never been invented, how would your life be changed? What do you use that is made of rubber?

List all the things you used today that were made of rubber, and then write a journal entry in your notebook describing how your life would be changed if you could not use these things.


The History of Rubber

Ask your guide to help you visit the Goodyear Tire Company Web site about the history of rubber and Charles Goodyear.