GOODYEAR'S METALLIC RUBBER SHOE Stock 1878. Naugatuck, CT. Chas. Goodyear Patent

Description

The Goodyear’s
Metallic Rubber Shoe Company. Stock issued October 1, 1878 at
Naugatuck, Connecticut.
Certificate
No. 351
was issued to James S.
Elton trustee for Mary C. Rosencrantz for 12 shares of capital stock
($25 per share). Company capital was
$300,000
. Hand signed by company
president James E. English
and
secretary George A. Davies
.
Certificate is about 6” x 9.5”. Black print on
pale-blue paper
.
Vignettes of an eagle perched on a branch with railroad and town
behind (top right), Indian woman (bottom left), and dog next to chest
(bottom center).
The Goodyear’s
Metallic Rubber Shoe Company produced rubber boots using a
vulcanization process developed and patented by Charles Goodyear. The
company was founded in 1843 by Charles’ brother Henry Goodyear and
partner Samuel L. Lewis in Naugatuck, Connecticut, and was the first
licensee granted by Charles Goodyear.
The vulcanization process was
perfected and patented in the 1830s-1840s by Charles Goodyear
, who
labored for many years in his attempt to find the
correct process to
perfect the treatment of natural rubber to withstand the elements
.
Vulcanization
uses heat to meld rubber to cloth or other rubber
components for a sturdier, more permanent bond.
Before vulcanization,
glue or cement was used
in a cold sealing process to bind rubber.
From the beginning, rubber soled shoes with canvas uppers filled a
strong consumer need and were highly popular.
By 1892, nine small
rubber manufacturing companies consolidated to form the U. S. Rubber
Company
.
Among them was The Goodyear’s Metallic Rubber Shoe
Company.
Four years later, the massive company was
one of the
original 12 company stocks making up the Dow Jones Industrial
Average
. Another one of the nine merged companies,
Goodyear’s India
Rubber Glove Manufacturing Company
(named Litchfield Rubber Company
until 1847), manufactured rubber gloves for telegraph linemen (this
was the only company in which
Charles Goodyear, inventor of the
rubber vulcanization process, is known to have owned stock
).
Charles Goodyear (1800
– 1860) discovered the vulcanization of rubber—a process that
allows rubber to withstand heat and cold—revolutionized the rubber
industry in the mid-1800s.
Automotive tires, pencil erasers, life
jackets, balls, gloves, and more are all in commercial use because of
Goodyear’s relentless experimentation to unlock the molecular
structure of rubber—and to solve what has been called the greatest
industrial puzzle of the 19th century
. Part scientist, part dreamer,
part entrepreneur, Goodyear devoted his life, and sacrificed his
family’s wealth and his own health, to the commercial improvement
of rubber. Born in 1800 in New Haven and raised in Naugatuck,
Goodyear was 33 years old when he decided to venture into rubber
products in the 1830s after his father’s New Haven hardware
business went bankrupt
. At that time, rubber appeared to be a
“miracle material.” The gooey, milky sap, bled from trees in
Brazil, was waterproof and easy to stretch. Called latex in its fluid
form and rubber when it hardened, the substance could be formed to
fit a variety of uses.
But India rubber, as it was called at the
time, had a flaw, and it was a fatal one: it melted in the summer and
cracked in the winter
. By the mid-19th century, the rubber industry
was on the verge of collapse due to rubber products that sagged and
melted in extreme temperatures.
Charles Goodyear spent his life and
all of his money to finance experiments to make the material suitable
for industrial use.
He moved several times—to New York,
Massachusetts, Philadelphia, and Connecticut. In short, he went
anywhere he could find investors and places to conduct his
experiments. Goodyear mixed chemicals into raw rubber in pots and
pans in makeshift laboratories that he set up in his wife’s
kitchen. He inhaled the fumes of toxic concoctions, including nitric
acid, lime, and turpentine, that he mixed together and kneaded into
the rubber to make it stable. While working at the Eagle India Rubber
Company, Goodyear accidentally combined rubber and sulfur upon a hot
stove. Much to Goodyear’s surprise, the rubber didn’t melt. And,
when he raised the heat, it actually hardened.
It would take Goodyear
several more years to recreate the chemical formula and perfect the
process of mixing sulfur and rubber at a high temperature; he
patented the process in 1844, the year after establishing the
Naugatuck India-Rubber Company in Naugatuck.
Goodyear named his
discovery vulcanization
, after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire. He
licensed his patent on June 15, 1844 and sold to manufacturers and
showcased his invention at exhibitions.
After competing with British
inventors for a patent in Britain, Charles Goodyear struggled to have
his patent approved for many years, and finally died at the age of 59
in 1860.
Naugatuck
was settled in 1701 as a farming community in rural Western
Connecticut.
As the Industrial Revolution commenced, Naugatuck was
transformed into a mill-town like other cities in the Naugatuck
Valley. Rubber was the major product made there.
The
United States
Rubber Company
, renamed Uniroyal Inc. in 1961, was
founded in
Naugatuck in 1892
and maintained its corporate headquarters there
until the 1980s. The Footwear Division manufactured Keds “sneakers”
in Naugatuck from 1917 until the 1980s. U. S. Rubber also produced
Naugahyde fabric in a Naugatuck factory, but it is no longer produced
there. The company founders recognized that chemistry was the key to
make rubber more serviceable.
A group of Eastern footwear makers
united in 1892 to share research and lower costs. One of the
companies was the Goodyear’s Metallic Rubber Shoe Company of
Naugatuck, founded in 1843 by Samuel L. Lewis under the first license
granted by Charles Goodyear, who discovered the rubber vulcanization
process in 1839.
Due to an increase in the price of sulfuric acid,
which was needed to reclaim used rubber at the time, the United
States Rubber Company formed the Naugatuck Chemical Company
subsidiary on June 1, 1904.
Condition:  Very Fine
, light folds, minor-moderate creasing, no tears, moderate signs of wear/handling/toning (see photos),
uncancelled.
Printer:
Arthur & Burnst, New York City.
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