Mr. Goodyear’s attention had for some time been attracted to the wonderful apparent success of the India-rubber companies of the country, and he was hopeful that his improvement in the inflating apparatus of the life-preserver would bring him the means of partially extricating himself from his difficulties. Repairing to New York, he called on the [...]

The friend of the inventor was thoroughly disheartened by this failure, and refused to have any thing more to do with Goodyear’s schemes; but the latter, though much disappointed, did not despair. He set to work to discover the cause of his failure, and traced it, as he supposed, to the mixing of the gum [...]

His next step was to mix quicklime with the gum. In order to work the compound thoroughly, he used to carry the vessel containing it, on his shoulder, to a place three miles distant from his laboratory, where he had the use of horse power. The lime, however, utterly destroyed the gum, and nothing came [...]

Indeed, in all the broad land there was but one man who had the slightest hope of accomplishing any thing with India-rubber, and that one was Charles Goodyear. His friends regarded him as a monomaniac. He not only manufactured his cloth, but even dressed in clothes made of it, wearing it for the purpose of [...]

Just before the failure of his mail-bags had brought ruin upon him, he had taken into his employ a man named Nathaniel Hayward, who had been the foreman of the old Roxbury works, and who was still in charge of them when Goodyear came to Roxbury, making a few rubber articles on his own account. [...]