No chronicle of "firsts" can avoid what is without a doubt the most significant first to take place in our hometown: the vulcanization of rubber by Charles Goodyear.

The struggle that Goodyear endured in the years during which he strived to solve the riddle of rubber spanned at least four states and countless failed attempts.

Born on December 29, 1800, the oldest of 6 children, Charles Goodyear was raised in Naugatuck. His father, Amasa Goodyear, was a farmer and inventor.

Amasa passed his love for invention on to his children and in 1821 went into business with his son, Charles. They invented, innovated and manufactured new agricultural equipment. After some success, Charles sought to expand the business into burgeoning urban markets. The Goodyear family moved to Philadelphia in 1826 and opened the first hardware store for domestically produced tools in the United States. Many of the implements sold in Goodyear's store had previously only been available as imports from Europe. Unfortunately, the demands of creditors eventually outweighed the profits and the store was forced into bankruptcy.

In the 1830s, things just got worse. His father’s New Haven hardware business also went bankrupt. Charles, then 33 years old, made the decision to get into the rubber products industry. In those early industrial years rubber seemed to be almost a “miracle material.” The sticky, milky sap was gathered in Brazil by tapping rubber trees, much the way maple syrup is obtained in other parts of the world.

"Rubber tapping is the process by which latex is collected from a rubber tree. The latex is harvested by slicing a groove into the bark of the tree at a depth of one-quarter inch with a hooked knife and peeling back the bark. Rubber tapping is not damaging to the forest, as it does not require the tree to be cut down in order for the latex to be extracted." - (see photo)

Natural rubber, often called “India rubber” or “caoutchouc” can be obtained from a number of tropical trees. Once collected into small pots, it remains pliable, soft, and tacky. In the early 19th century, American entrepreneurs got “rubber fever.” Dozens of them began importing latex and opened factories to produce rubber products such as baggage and life preservers.

Called latex in its fluid form and rubber when it hardened, the substance was waterproof and stretchable. It was easy to shape and form for a large variety of uses. Many entrepreneurs staked their entire fortunes on its potential, but there was a major problem. Consumers soon discovered to their great disappointment that rubber had fatal flaws. It melted in the summer, becoming gooey and shapeless. Products on warehouse and store shelves oozed together into huge blobs, a useless, sticky mess. In the winter, the products stiffened up, and cracked in the cold. No longer flexible and now falling into broken chunks, the industry was on the verge of collapse by the mid 1800s.

It's important to remember that Charles was a prolific inventor, just like his father before him. He had a number of patents and ideas for other innovations. In 1834, Goodyear approached a large life preserver dealership in the hopes of selling them a unique air valve that he had invented. To his surprise and disappointment, the company was not at all interested in the device. The Manager was so upset about it that he expressed to Goodyear his regret for ever entering the rubber industry. To illustrate why, he took Charles into their large warehouse. The huge space was overwhelmed by a terrible smell. The unusually hot summer had melted the entire warehouse full of inventory into a worthless, gooey, odorous mess.

"Goodyear’s quest to find a way to stabilize rubber was inspired by a visit to the Roxbury India Rubber Company in New York. Inside the company store, Goodyear spotted rubber life vests the company made and sold, and he thought he could invent an improved valve for the vests. When he returned to the store to present his valve, the store manager said he should have invented a better use for rubber, not the valve.”

While many business owners saw this as the end of the rubber trade, Goodyear, was an irrepressible inventor. Undeterred, he returned to his home and began experimenting with latex and rubber. Turning his kitchen into a laboratory, using simple pots and pans, he tried mixing dry powders into it to make it more durable and less tacky. Goodyear had some minor successes, enough to spur him on to further experiments, but his research was costing him money, and causing his family to suffer poverty and hunger.

"The “rubber fever” of the early 1830s had ended as suddenly as it had begun. At first everybody had wanted things made of the new waterproof gum from Brazil, and factories had sprung up to meet the demand. Then abruptly the public had become fed up with the messy stuff which froze bone-hard in winter and turned glue-like in summer. Not one of the young rubber companies survived as long as five years. Investors lost millions. Rubber, everyone agreed, was through in America."

As Goodyear's quest continued over several years, things got so bad at certain points that the inventor ended up in debtor's prison many times. He began to refer to it as his "hotel," and even while incarcerated, he asked his wife to bring him supplies so he could continue experimenting in jail.

"Neighbors complained about Goodyear’s smelly gum, so he moved his experiments to New York. There a friend gave him a fourth-floor tenement bedroom for his “laboratory.” A brother-in-law came to his squalid quarters, lectured him about his hungry children, advised him that rubber was dead. “I am the man to bring it back,” said Goodyear."

A real breakthrough came in 1834, when he discovered that nitric acid made the rubber surface smooth, dry, and non-sticky. This process improved the rubber enough to earn a contract from the U.S. Post Office in Boston. But once again Goodyear’s rubber mailbags also melted into a sticky mess when the weather was too hot. Despite yet another setback Goodyear kept researching and experimenting. He was certain he could unlock the molecular structure of rubber, and solve what has been called the "greatest industrial puzzle of the 19th century."

Charles sunk his whole family into debt in order to finance his research and experiments. He was obsessed with making rubber suitable for industrial use. Poverty forced the Goodyears to move several times: New York, Massachusetts, Philadelphia, and back to Connecticut. Charles moved anywhere he could to find investors and suitable lodgings in which he could conduct his experiments.

Goodyear's next scientific breakthrough came about after adding sulfur to the rubber. The result was a less sticky and more temperature resistant substance, but one other problem still remained. The rubber was still too soft to make durable products. But he knew he was getting closer. Each small success built upon his past successes, each failure was a learning opportunity. Goodyear doggedly persisted.

He inhaled the fumes of toxic concoctions, including nitric acid, lime, and turpentine, while mixing them and kneading them into the rubber. The toxic fumes no doubt contributed to his later failing health.

"The constant and varied experiments that Goodyear went through with affected his health more or less, and at one time he came very near being suffocated by gas generated in his laboratory. That he did not die then everybody knows, but he was thrown then into a fever by the accident and came very near losing his life."

But there was simply no stopping him. He would not be denied, despite the dangerous chemicals, despite even the threat of debtor's prison. When he ran out of money, he resorted to begging for loans, and sold his family’s furnishings, even his children’s textbooks.

“He spared a set of china teacups, not out of sentiment but because they could double in the evenings as mixing bowls for rubber and turpentine. He had no mind to stop here in his experiments, but, selling his furniture and placing his family in a quiet boarding place, he went to New York, and there, in an attic, helped by a friendly druggist, continued his experiments. His next step in this line was to compound the rubber with magnesia and then boil it in quicklime and water. This appeared to really solve the problem, and he made some beautiful goods. At once it was noised abroad that India rubber had been so treated that it lost its stickiness, and he received medals and testimonials and seemed on the high road to success, till one day he noticed that a drop of weak acid, falling on the cloth, neutralized the alkali, and immediately the rubber was soft again. To see this, with his knowledge of what rubber should do, proved to him at once that his process was not a successful one. He therefore continued experimenting...”

Finally Charles Goodyear had achieved some success in his quest to make rubber a viable commercial substance. That success was short-lived however. In 1837 things became much worse, when his family lost everything in a national financial panic.

"Now that he appeared to have success, Goodyear found no difficulty in obtaining a partner, and together the two gentlemen fitted up a factory and began to make clothing, life preservers, rubber shoes, and a great variety of rubber goods. They also had a large factory, with special machinery, built at Staten Island, where he moved his family and again had a home of his own. Just about this time, when everything looked bright, the great panic of 1836-1837 came, and swept away the entire fortune of his associate and left Goodyear without a cent, and no means of earning one."

Fortunately, Goodyear's luck changed again two years later, in 1839. History cites a factory in Woburn, Massachusetts, as the location where Charles had his "happy accident." He had moved his family there so he could be close to the rubber factories that had sprung up in the city.

"During one particularly lean period, his family survived thanks to charity from local farmers in Woburn, Massachusetts, where the family had settled. The farmers gave his children milk and let them dig for potatoes."

Charles obtained work at the Eagle India Rubber Company in Woburn. Whether they knew he was conducting his experiments or if he was simply doing so surreptitiously, Goodyear accidentally dropped a combination of rubber and sulfur upon a hot stove during one of his tests. Much to his surprise, the rubber didn’t melt, and furthermore, when he raised the heat, it actually hardened. This was his eureka moment. He himself wrote that he did not appreciate the discovery being referred to as an "accident." Goodyear wrote in a peculiar style, referring to himself in the third person, as "the inventor," or "the writer."

"While the inventor admits that these discoveries were not the results of scientific chemical investigations, he is not willing to admit that they were the result of what is commonly termed accident; he claims them to be the result of the closest application and observation. It may, therefore, be considered as one of those cases where the leading of the Creator providentially aids his creatures, by what are termed 'accidents,' to attain those things which are not attainable by the powers of reasoning he has conferred on them."

Charles Goodyear returned to his hometown of Naugatuck and spent the next several years creating the chemical formula and perfecting the process of mixing sulfur and rubber at a high temperature. He patented the process in 1844, the year after establishing the Naugatuck India-Rubber Company in Naugatuck. Goodyear named his discovery vulcanization, after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. The breakthrough would spread around the world remarkably fast for the time period. Testament to the perceived value of vulcanized rubber to the global economy.

"In 1852 a French company were licensed by Mr. Goodyear to make shoes, and a great deal of interest was felt in the new business. In 1855 the French emperor gave to Charles Goodyear the grand medal of honor and decorated him with the Cross of the Legion of Honor in recognition of his services as a public benefactor."

Because Charles Goodyear licensed his vulcanization process to businesses in the valley, Naugatuck became the hub of the global rubber industry. One of its major thoroughfares is named Rubber Avenue in honor of his achievement.

In addition to licensing his patent to manufacturers Goodyear also showcased it at exhibitions. The vulcanization process put Naugatuck, Connecticut on the map as the leading site of rubber manufacturing during the 19th and 20th centuries. Numerous rubber companies operated in the town under the Goodyear license.

In 1892, nine Naugatuck rubber companies consolidated into the United States Rubber Company. Just four years later, the massive company became one of the original 12 stocks making up the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company opened in 1898, almost four decades after Charles had passed. The company was named in his honor, and still exists today.

U.S. Rubber would later form the Keds brand in 1916, and release the iconic Champion, the first major shoe featuring rubber soles. While these were not the first shoes specifically designed for athletics, they were the first shoes iconically dubbed “sneakers,” because the rubber-soled shoes were quieter and perfect for “sneaking” around.

In 1961, (the year I was born, and also many of my readers I'm sure,) U.S. Rubber consolidated all their holdings under the new unified brand name of Uniroyal, Inc. Naugatuck remained a major hub of the rubber industry well into most of our young lifetimes. Eventually the company went through a series of buyouts and mergers. Manufacturing was moved from Naugatuck and the sprawling factory complex slowly disappeared. The very last remaining building was finally demolished in 2014, the lone holdout from Naugatuck's glorious, global prominence as a center of industry, and the birthplace of rubber.

“It’s the end of an era. Building 25 was the last remaining remnant of the rubber shop, which was a significant economic force in the town for quite some time.”

The borough received permission from the National Register of Historic Places, on which it was listed, to demolish the building, known as Building 25, located at 58 Maple Street in Naugatuck. Though the factories are now completely gone, our town's rich legacy as a manufacturing capital lives on in the form of archival records, photos and exhibits on display at The Naugatuck Historical Society, housed in the equally historic Tuttle Building.

"The Naugatuck Historical Society is an organization keeping the stories of Naugatuck alive and accessible to the public through exhibits, research and presentations. We maintain and preserve collections for the purpose of inspiring a love of local history and contributing to civic pride."

Charles Goodyear's groundbreaking, world-changing invention never made him wealthy or even financially secure during his lifetime. He seemed to purposely eschew the wealth he might have gained from it, preferring instead to continue his experimenting and research, seeking to create even more innovations for the greater good of society.

His death on July 1, 1860, was yet another example of the misfortune which had long plagued his life. Goodyear was informed that his daughter was on her deathbed in New York. The grief-stricken father rushed to the city in order to be by her side, but upon arrival, he was informed that she had already passed. He collapsed from the shock, and was taken to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City. Charles Goodyear died just days later, at the age of 59, perhaps from a broken heart.

At the time of his death, he was $200,000 in debt, approximately $5,000,000 in current value. As a result of his long-time struggles with finances, and the debt he had when he passed, many historians have said that Goodyear "died relatively unknown and a poor man." Let me strongly disagree. Charles Goodyear lived to see his life's work become the revolutionary change he'd worked so hard to achieve. He lived to receive praise, awards and the recognition of world leaders. He achieved financial wealth several times in his life, but money was never the goal for him. He was, in his heart and soul, an inventor in service to his fellow man.

Goodyear himself summed it up so eloquently in his own writings:

“Life should not be estimated exclusively by the standard of dollars and cents. I am not disposed to complain that I have planted and others have gathered the fruits. A man has cause for regret only when he sows and no one reaps.”

Let me proclaim that Charles Goodyear died a VERY RICH man. He earned the love and respect of his family, friends, business associates and every forward thinking person who realized the enormity of what he had at last accomplished. When Charles Goodyear passed away, he was wealthy in so many ways much more important than money, and he was well known, and still is to this day. His powerful legacy certainly lives on in his hometown – our hometown of Naugatuck, where he will always be remembered.

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Charles Goodyear
BORN: December 29, 1800, New Haven, Connecticut

RAISED: Naugatuck, Connecticut

DIED: July 1, 1860 (aged 59), New York, NY

BURIAL: Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, Connecticut