Rubber originally came from the Indians of South and Central America. They called it caoutchouc from the word, cahuchu which meant weeping wood. This natural gum came from tree sap.

Columbus introduced the gum to the western world. Once people found they could use it to rub out pencil marks, it became known as rubber.

In the early 1830's rubber products were very popular. Factories sprung up to meet demand; but the craze was short-lived. The problem was that rubber melted in hot weather, and became brittle in cold weather. Weatherproof, or vulcanized rubber, had yet to be discovered.

During the course of the 1830's many inventors searched for a way to weatherproof rubber. Charles Goodyear was one of these inventors. Bankrupt and jailed for unpaid debts, he continued his experiments, even behind bars. At one point he took up residence in a squalid tenement where his brother-in-law lectured him about his obsession, reminding him his children needed to eat, reasserting that rubber was dead. Charles reportedly told him, "I'm the man to bring it back."

Then, after years of toil an accident occurred that would change everything.

The story goes that on a cold February morning in Massachusetts, 1839, Goodyear was showing off his latest concoction of gum-and-sulphur at Woburn's general store. Ridiculed, he waved his fist in the air and a bit of the substance flew off to land on a hot pot-bellied stove. When Goodyear scraped it off he noticed an elastic rim had formed at the edge of the hardened material.

Vulcanized rubber had peeked at Goodyear.

He reasoned sulphur and heat were key, but in what proportions? Renewed in his research, his poverty continued to weigh on his family. Of the 12 Goodyear children, 6 died in infancy, one during this period. Unable to afford a funeral, Goodyear borrowed a cart to take his dead infant son to the graveyard.

Finally Goodyear came upon the key: the application of steam to sulphurized rubber for several hours under pressure, at a temperature of about 270F (132C), resulted in weatherproofing. Now rubber could be made into almost anything!

Goodyear wrote his well-to-do brother-in-law who worked in the textile industry. The first application of what came to be known as vulcanized rubber, made its debut in the form of puckered ruffles on fancy shirts.

Unfortunately Goodyear sent samples of his weatherproof rubber to British rubber plants before obtaining a foreign patent, and a man who had been trying to make weatherproof rubber for 20 years saw one of the samples. The Englishman's name was Thomas Hancock, and he noticed a telltale yellowish powdery residue on the surface of the sample. In short order he reinvented the weatherproofing process in 1843, four years after Goodyear. When Goodyear applied for a British patent, he found Hancock had beaten him to it. Goodyear sued, but lost the case.

The term "vulcanized rubber" did not come from Goodyear, but was coined by a friend of Hancock's, who named the process after the Roman god of fire, Vulcan.

Today in the United States the rubber industry employs some 300,000 people and produces $6 billion in products annually. None of which would be possible without vulcanized rubber.

In 1860 Charles Goodyear died $200,000 in debt. The multi-billion dollar Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., which is the largest rubber company in the world, is named in his honor, though there are no family connections.