In 1839, Charles Goodyear had one major problem preying on his mind: natural rubber worked well in theory but was impractical in practice. It would melt into an unusable goo at high temperatures, become extremely rigid in cold weather, and be too prone to deformation to be relied upon for machinery, transportation, and everyday goods.
Goodyear was involved in endless experiments, financial failures, bankruptcies, and ridicule for many years before making a breakthrough. However, in one of his experiments involving rubber and sulfur, he supposedly observed some of the mixture drop onto a hot stove. To his surprise, rather than becoming gooey and useless when exposed to heat, the substance hardened, becoming tougher and more flexible than unprocessed rubber.
According to the MIT Lemelson Center, this discovery marked the start of vulcanization, a technology that revolutionized the science of rubber. Why is this significant? The problem was enormous at the time.
Natural rubber had proven its utility in applications requiring water resistance, mechanical sealing, driving belts, and other flexible items, but its supply could not be guaranteed. Materials were too susceptible to deformation at higher temperatures, while they would crack at lower temperatures.
As indicated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency archival record, unvulcanized natural rubber was not very useful in industry because it was neither durable nor dimensionally stable; hence, the accidental discovery did not create an artificial need, since industry was already sorely in need of a solution. Goodyear was important in that he realized that a chemical transformation of the rubber was taking place.
