Late great engineers: Charles Goodyear - Keeping the world’s wheels turning

Serendipity has played a part in many of the greatest engineering breakthroughs: Velcro, Teflon, Kevlar, even dynamite. But there has been perhaps no more serendipitous event in the development of industrial materials than when, in 1839, Charles Goodyear accidentally dropped a piece of sulphur-coated rubber onto a hot stove, causing it to char and metamorphose into a leather-like substance. In one moment, the American inventor had uncovered the secret to stabilising the sticky, unreliable and unmanageable latex from the rubber tree Hevea brasiliensis that had struggled to fulfil its long-observed potential.

Even though it could be argued that the Mesoamericans had discovered vulcanization more than three millennia ahead of Goodyear, it was the self-taught manufacturing engineer from New Haven, Connecticut whose name would appear at the top of the United Stated Patent Office document (No. 3633) outlining a process for the ‘Improvement in India-Rubber Fabrics’ that would be named after the Roman god of fire. ‘I hereby declare’ wrote Goodyear that ‘my principal improvement consists in the combining of sulphur and white lead with the India-rubber, and with the submitting of the compound thus formed to the action of heat at a regulated temperature’ As noted in Who Made America? over the following decades vulcanized rubber ‘was to be used to manufacture shoes, waterproof clothing, life jackets, balls, hats, umbrellas, rafts... and one day, it would be an important component in tires, roofs, floors, transmission belts, assembly lines, shock absorbers, seals and gaskets.’ By the close of the 20th century, Goodyear’s name was most associated with a typographical logo emblazoned on tyres supplied to the Formula One motor racing franchise.