GOODYEAR, CHARLES American inventor, was born at New Haven (Conn.) , Dec. 29, 180o, the son of Amasa Goodyear, an inventor (especially of farming implements) and a pioneer in the manufacture of hardware in America. In 1821 he entered into a partnership with his father at Naugatuck, which continued till 1830. Already he was interested in an attempt to discover a method of treatment by which india-rubber could be made into articles that would stand extremes of heat and cold. To the solution of this problem the next ten years of his life were devoted. For a time he seemed to have succeeded with a treat ment of the rubber with aqua fortis. In 1836 he secured a con tract for the manufacture by this process of mail bags for the U.S. Government, but the rubber fabric was useless at high temper atures. In 1837 he worked with Nathaniel Hayward (18o8-65), who had been an employee of a rubber factory in Roxbury and had made experiments with sulphur mixed with rubber. Good year bought from Hayward the right to use this imperfect process. In 1839, by dropping on a hot stove some india-rubber mixed with sulphur, he discovered accidentally the process for the vulcani zation of rubber. In 1844 his first patent was granted. Numerous infringements had to be fought in the courts, the decisive victory coming in 1852. In the same year he went to England, where articles made under his patents had been displayed at the Interna tional Exhibition of 1851, but he was unable to establish factories there. In France a company for the manufacture of vulcanized rubber by his process failed, and in Dec. 1855 he was arrested and imprisoned for debt in Paris. He died in New York city July I, 1860. He wrote an account of his discovery entitled Gum Elastic and Its Varieties (2 vols., New Haven, See also B. K. Peirce, Trials of an Inventor, Life and Discoveries of Charles Goodyear (New York, 1866) ; James Parton, Famous Ameri cans of Recent Times (Boston, 1867) ; and Herbert L. Terry, India Rubber and Its Manufacture (New York, 19o7).