The creature
imagines he is executing some plan of his own, while he is simply
an instrument in the hands of his Maker for executing the divine
purposes of beneficence to the race." It was in the spirit of a
crusader, consecrated to a particular service, that this man took
up the problem of rubber. The words quoted are a fitting preface
for the story of the years that followed, which is a tale of
endurance and persistent activity under sufferings and
disappointments such as are scarcely paralleled even in the pages
of invention, darkened as they often are by poverty and defeat.
Charles Goodyear was born at New Haven, December 29, 1800, the
son of Amasa Goodyear and descendant of Stephen Goodyear who was
associated with Theophilus Eaton, the first governor of the
Puritan colony of New Haven. It was natural that Charles should
turn his mind to invention, as he did even when a boy; for his
father, a pioneer in the manufacture of American hardware, was
the inventor of a steel hayfork which replaced the heavy iron
fork of prior days and lightened and expedited the labor of the
fields. When Charles was seven his father moved to Naugatuck and
manufactured the first pearl buttons made in America; during the
War of 1812 the Goodyear factory supplied metal buttons to the
Government.
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