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 with the turpentine and lamp-black. Having procured some barrels of the gum in its native liquid state, he spread it on cloth without smoking it or mixing it with any thing else. He succeeded in producing a very handsome white rubber cloth, but it was one that became soft and sticky as quickly as the other had done.
It now occurred to him that there must be some mineral substance which, …
Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made
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 agent of the Roxbury Company, and explaining his invention to him, offered to sell it to the company. The agent was struck with the skill displayed in the improvement of Mr. Goodyear, but, instead of offering to buy it, astounded the inventor by informing him of the real state of the India-rubber trade of the country. He urged Mr. Goodyear to exert his inventive skill to discover some means of …
Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made
Their prosperity was only fictitious, however, and a day of fearful disaster was pending over them. The bulk of the goods produced in 1833 and 1834 had been manufactured in the cold weather, and the greater part of them had succumbed to the heat of the ensuing summer. The shoes had melted to a soft mass, and the caps, wagon-covers, and coats had become sticky and useless in summer, and rigid in the cold of winter. In some cases the articles had borne the test of one year’s use, but the second summer had ruined them. To make the matter worse, they emitted an odor so offensive that it was necessary to bury them in the ground to get rid of the smell. Twenty thousand …
Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made
This substance, variously known as cachuchu, caoutchouc, gum elastic, and India-rubber, was first introduced into Europe in 1730, where it was regarded merely as a curiosity, useful for erasing pencil marks, but valueless for any practical use. Ships from South America brought it over as ballast, but it was not until ninety years after its first appearance in Europe that any effort was made to utilize it. About the year 1820 it began to be used in France in the manufacture of suspenders and garters, India-rubber threads being mixed with the materials used in weaving those articles. It was also used in blacking and varnish, and some years later, Mackintosh brought it into prominent notice by using it in his famous water-proof coats, which were …
Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made
In the year 1735, a party of astronomers, sent by the French Government to Peru for purposes of scientific investigation, discovered a curious tree growing in that country, the like of which no European had ever seen before. It grew to a considerable size, and yielded a peculiar sap or gum. It was the custom of the natives to make several incisions in each tree with an ax, in the morning, and to place under each incision a cup or jar made of soft clay. Late in the afternoon, the fluid thus obtained was collected in a large clay vessel, each incision yielding about a gill of sap per day. This process was repeated for several days in succession, until the tree had been thoroughly …
Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made
