At this step
he did not hesitate. The occasion, and the certainty of success,
warranted the measure which, in other circumstances, would have
been sacrilege."
His itinerary during those years is eloquent. Wherever there was
a man, who had either a grain of faith in rubber or a little
charity for a frail and penniless monomaniac, thither Goodyear
made his way. The goal might be an attic room or shed to live in
rent free, or a few dollars for a barrel of flour for the family
and a barrel of rubber for himself, or permission to use a
factory's ovens after hours and to hang his rubber over the steam
valves while work went on. From Woburn in 1839, the year of his
great discovery, he went to Lynn, from Lynn back to the deserted
factory at Roxbury. Again to Woburn, to Boston, to Northampton,
to Springfield, to Naugatuck; in five years as many removes. When
he lacked boat or railway fare, and he generally did, he walked
through winds and rains and drifting snow, begging shelter at
some cottage or farm where a window lamp gleamed kindly.
Goodyear took out his patent in 1844. The process he invented has
been changed little, if at all, from that day to this. He also
invented the perfect India rubber cloth by mixing fiber with the
gum a discovery he considered rightly as secondary in importance
only to vulcanization.
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