File:Leading American inventors (1912) (14760966351).jpg

Identifier: leadingamericani00iles (find matches)
Title: Leading American inventors
Year: 1912 (1910s)
Authors: Iles, George, 1852-1942
Subjects: Inventors
Publisher: New York : Henry Holt and company
Contributing Library: University of Connecticut Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Connecticut Libraries

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m steel. Meantime arts of equal dignityarose without aid from fire: hides were tanned into leather,paper was unrolled from birchbark, from the papyrus, fromthe fibers of many other plants. Thus were gifts of Natureexalted in value by art: the tanner added new strength anddurability to a sheepskin; the steelmaker bestowed uponiron a heightened elasticity. Tanning, steelmaking, andtheir sister arts date back so far that their birth has fadedeven from myth and legend. From those remote times tothe present day there has been but one worthy addition toglass and pottery, leather and paper, namely, the vulcanizedrubber due to Charles Goodyear. Were it as cheap as glassor steel, it would be just as commonly and usefully em-ployed. Charles Goodyear was born in New Haven, Connecticut,on December 29, 1800, of that sound New England stockwhich has given many leaders to America. His father,Amasa Goodyear, was descended from Stephen Goodyear,successor to Governor Eaton as head of the company of 176
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LFrom the painting by G. P. A. Healy, Museum of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences.) CHARLES GOODYEAR 177 London merchants who, in 1683, founded the colony ofNew Haven. Charles Goodyear, as a boy, was studiousand resolute, giving clear promise of the man. In youthhe had some thought of entering the Christian ministry:throughout life his religious faith was an unfailing staff inevery onset and repulse. At seventeen he went to Phila-delphia, where he mastered the hardware trade in an ap-prenticeship of four years. The experience thus gained heturned to good account at a later period, as we shall note.At twenty-one he returned to New Haven, and became apartner with his father in the firm of Amasa Goodyear &Son. They manufactured metal buttons and spoons,scythes and clocks. Several of their other products werefarm tools of steel, devised by the elder Goodyear. Ofthese the best were the forks, which slowly supplantedclumsy tools forged from wrought-iron at local smithies.As cu

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