NATHANIEL HAYWARD'S EXPERIMENTS WITH INDIA RUBBER 1864

STATEMENT
Sometimes previous to the year 1834 there was a company formed at Boxbury, Mass., to manufacture India Rubber goods. The members of this company were John Haskins, Edwin M. Chaffee, and Luke Baldwin. They had in some way learned the art of dissolving rubber gum, which they tried to keep a profound secret. They soon, however, sold out their interest
to a larger company called the Roxbury India Rubber Company, who continued the business in the same place. This company made large preparations to manufacture India rubber goods, and the interest got up with regard to this article in and around the city of Boston was very great. India rubber cloth for carriage tops, overcoats, and other articles to protect such as were obliged to be out in stormy weather, and it was thought would soon come into general use and create a great demand for this fabric.

The Roxbury India Rubber Company was born, led by Edwin Marcus Chaffee.
In the early 1830s, a bankrupt Philadelphia inventor named Charles Goodyear passed by the Roxbury India Rubber Company's storefront in Manhattan and bought an inflatable rubber life preserver out of curiosity. Being an innovative sort, he quickly devised an improvement for the flimsy inflation tube and offered to sell his improvement to the Roxbury Rubber folks. Unfortunately, the proprietor told him a tale of woe: rubber, while a fine product in Brazil, was lousy for the Northeast US. It was rock-hard in the winter, and turned into a gummy, stinking mess by the time July heat came around. So many outraged customers had returned products that the company's directors had been forced to bury the stinking mess of rejects in a pit in the middle of the night.
THE BOSTON BELTING COMPANY, ROXBURY INDIA RUBBER CO, AND CHARLES GOODYEAR

In the year 1834 Gen. Jackson, then President of the United States, visited New England, and while at Boston was presented with a suit of clothes of this new manufacture, in which dress, on a day somewhat wet, he appeared in public on horseback, for the purpose of reviewing the troops on the Boston Common. This occurrence helped to inflate the bubble, and in a short time the stock of this company i-ose from one hundred to five or six hundred dollars a share, and every one owning stock in this concern, it was thought, was about to make his fortune.
My curiosity, with that of many others, was highly excited, and I went to the factory and bought rubber cloth for a carriage top. When using the carriage thus covered, I noticed that when two surfaces of this cloth came together, in a warm day, they adhered, in consequence of the softening of the gum. This struck me as quite an objection to the use of the article, and led me to try experiments to obviate it. For this purpose, in the month of August, 1834, among other experiments, I mixed and melted together rubber gum, sulphur, and lampblack; but this mixture, at that time, did not result in anything valuable. I continued, however, as I had leisure, experimenting with this article from August, 1834 till April 1835, showing from time to time small samples of my results to sundry persons engaged in the rubber business, for the purpose of carrying on which many companies were being formed in and around the city of Boston, where I theu lived. I was assured, by persons to whom I showed my samples, if I could hit upon any method of preventing rubber cloth from becoming soft and sticky when it was exposed to the sun or otherwise warmed, I might depend on being well rewarded. These assurances from men in whom I had confidence, encouraged me to continue my efforts. I therefore sold out my livery establishment in Boston, that I might be able to devote all my time and attention to the business of experimenting with India rubber.
After closing up my affairs, and paying my debts, I had remaining about five hundred dollars, and a horse and buggy. With this property 1 went out to Easton, my native town, and hired a mill building of Cyrus Lathrop, called the Quaker Leonard Place, at a rent of one hundred and fifty dollars a year. This mill was situated in a retired spot about half a mile from the main road, and not far from Oliver Ames' shovel factory. Here, remote from observation, I shut myself up and entered upon a course of experiments with rubber, and continued it for two months without any satisfactory result.
At the end of this time I was on the point of giving up the whole concern, in utter despair; but finally concluded, before doing this, to make one more trial. For this purpose I put all my chemicals, with which I had been working, into a still of the capacity of fourteen or fifteen gallons, with spirits of turpentine, and drew off about four gallons, into which I put four pounds of rubber giim to be dissolved, and with this solution, I made twelve yards (three-fourths wide) rubber cloth, which looked finely, and which stood the weather perfectly, without melting when exposed to the sun for months. The chemicals I put into the still were white vitriol, blue vitriol, sugar of lead, sulphur and several others, indeed, all I had. This result gave me much encouragement, and I took my rubber cloth and went to Boston, thinking that now I had found out how to make rubber goods that would stand the test. I showed my cloth to a company recently formed called the Eagle India Rubber Company, and they at once offered to give me employment. But I declined entering into their service till I had ascertained, by further trial, that I could make more cloth like the piece I had been exhibiting. I therefore bought a new supply of chemicals and returned to Easton to repeat the experiment which had proved so successful. To my great disappointment, after numerous trials, variously repeated, and continued for nearly four months, I utterly failed to make anything like the sample I showed to the company in Boston. I then went to work to examine my chemicals separately, with the view of ascertaining their purity. I found impurities in many of them, especially spirits of turpentine a?id lampblack. The turpentine I found I could purify by thoroughly agitating it with water, and the lampblack by exposure to heat, and thus clearing it of all oily matters with which it is usually connected. The spirits of turpentine thus purified, I found would dissolve the rubber, and purified lampblack being added, and the solution applied to cloth, produced an article which would stand the weather. Upon the strength of this discovery, I engaged to work for this company, on a salary of $1,000 a year. They carried on their business at
Easton, and employed six or seven men and some twenty girls, manufacturing ladies' aprons, carriage covers, and other articles, for about seven months. They then procured a new and more convenient building at \Yoburn, and began work there in April, 1836, and carried it on about eighteen months. All this time I was employed by this Eagle Company. Soon after they began work at Woburn, they expressed the wish that I would make some white aprons, thinking they would sell well. This I attempted to do by using a compound of white lead, magnesia and whiting, with equal parts of virgin or white rubber, dissolved in spirits of turpentine. The aprons looked pretty well, but when warmed would soften and stick, and not being white enough to suit irie, I exposed them to the fumes of sulphur to make them whiter, taking the hint from having seen straw bonnets bleached in this manner. By this treatment the rubber cloth became very white, and made elegant aprons. But in addition to superior whiteness, I noticed that these aprons did not soften and adhere after being exposed to the fumes of sulphur as they had done before such exposure. This gaye me the first intimation of the power of sulphur to prevent rubber from becoming soft and adherent when warmed. After this I tried exposing pieces of cloth to the sun that had been fumigated with sulphur, and others of the same kind which had not been thus treated, and found the former' would stand firm while the latter would melt and become sticky. From this time I tried a great variety of experiments with these articles, in numerous and various combinations, and I found that only when sulphur was one of the ingredients of the mixture, there was no melting or sticking of the rubber cloth. All the time I was working for the Eagle Company, and afterwards while working for myself, I, as I had leisure, was experimenting with sulphur and rubber—and the results, and the way and manner they were brought about I kept entirely to myself. One of these discoveries was that rubber cloth which had been prepared without the use of sulphur, if sprinkled over with sulphur in powder and exposed to the sun, and afterwards washed clean, that this process would fix the gum and prevent it from melting.
After I discovered that it was sulphur, and nothing else, among the articles with which I had been experimenting in combination with rubber, which prevented it from melting and becoming adhesive when warmed, it occurred to me, that this was what made the piece of cloth shown to. the Eagle Company free from the usual objections to this article as then made. But during the four months I was laboring in vain to make a perfect piece of rubber cloth, it never entered my mind that sulphur was of any account in this business, and I did not use it. By the autumn of 1837 the rubber business was completely prostrated, as the goods made at the several factories did not satisfy the public, and most of the companies who had embarked in it, wound up with the loss of their capital. About this time, that is to say, in the fall of 1837, Hayward and Humphrey bought out the Eagle India Rubber Company, their stock and machinery, and carried on the rubber, business together for about ten months. In the spring of 1838 1 began to carry on the business by myself, and continued to do so until September of the same, year. In the month of July of this year, Charles Goodyear, whom I had previously seen in Boston, at his store, No. 12 Water street, sent me an order to make him thirty yards of sheet rubber cloth a yard wide. I attempted to make this, piece of cloth without using sulphur, and it was a failure, 1% this case I left out the sulphur lest he should detect its presence by the smell. I then made another piece, in the manufacture of which I used sulphur, which he pronounced very nice, and just what he wanted. From this piece of cloth; Goodyear got the scent of the brimstone.
After I sold him, on the 11th of August, 1838, the piece of printing cloth with which he was so well pleased, Goodyear often called at my factory, but was not admitted, as I did not wish him to see my works, but I sold him several pieces of rubber cloth, after the first, which were made expressly for his use. At one of his visits to my factory, after snuffing at my cloth, he asked me if I used sulphur in the manufacture of my goods. I did not give him a direct answer, but waived the subject by remarking that its smell would be offensive. At a subsequent visit he said if I did not use sulphur he in. tended to get a patent for using it, as he had found out it worked well with rubber. I then told him the whole story of my using the article—and that I had kept the matter secret, as I intended to get a patent for it as soon as I got able.
On the 17th of September, 1838, I sold out my establishment to Charles Goodyear, agreed to work for him one year, on a salary of §800, and immediately began my year's work. It was agreed between us early in the month of October, that I should have the necessary papers made out, send them to Washington, and obtain a patent in my own name, and then assign it to him. In consideration of such assignment he agreed to be at the expense of getting the patent in my name, pay me $100 down, give me his note for $900, due in six months, and give me the privilege of making three hundred yards of rubber cloth a day, until he should pay me the further sum of $2,000. When all this had been done, the whole benefit and interest of the sulphur patent was to belong to Goodyear—and all the papers pertaining to this contract were duly executed and delivered. Accordingly, the application for tho patent was drawn up and sent to Washington, but
owing to some informality, the papers were returned to be corrected. The correction was made and they were forwarded to the Patent Office a second time, but before the patent was obtained, Goodyear came to me and said Doctor Jones, at Washington, advised him to take out the patent in his own
name, to which, after some hesitation, I consented, provided such a course would not invalidate any part of our previous agreement, and he said certainly it would not. I then assigned to him my claim to a patent, on the 23d day of November 1838.
Within the year while I was working for Goodyear, I made goods of various colors, such as printing cloths for maps and globes. In the month of January, February, or March, 1839, his brother, Amasa Goodyear, told me Charles had made a discovery, by means of which the rubber could be made to stand a high degree of heat, saying, "you go and get a bit of cloth you made for him, and I will show you how it is done." I got him a piece, which he placed on the top of a hot cylinder stove, and it soon began to change color, grow darker, and finally turned to a slate color, when it underwent no further change, and was no longer affected by heat or cold and all this without injuring the fibre of the cloth. This was at that time called heated or fire-proof gum, but afterwards vulcanized rubber. Charles Goodyear himself soon after told mo he had made this discovery by putting a piece of rubber cloth on a hot cylinder stove. The cloth turned from a light to a dark color, and would then stand the heat or cold without any further change. He had done this with only small pieces of cloth, and found out no way of applying heat to a large surface to produce this change, while I was in his employ. From Sept. 17, 1839, when my time with Goodyear was up, to April, 1841,1 carried on business for myself. During this time I manufactured various articles from rubber, some $1,000 worth, and put them into market, supposing I had a right under the contract with Goodyear to make three hundred yards of cloth per day. But on my offering my goods, I was notified by Luke Baldwin, of Boston, who had bought of Goodyear the right of using the sulphur patent for certain purposes, that if I sold my goods, I should expose myself to a law-suit, saying I had no right to make rubber goods, as I had conveyed all my rights to Charles Goodyear, and that he had offered Goodyear $20,000 for the entire sulphur patent. This interview with Baldwin took place in Boston. On my return to Woburn, I called on Mr. Goodyear, and told him of the conversation with Baldwin. He said he had not sold his patent to Baldwin, and that I could go on and make my threo hundred yards per day of what goods I pleased and no one would molest me. Not feeling perfectly satisfied, I took my papers, went to Boston, and laid them before Willard Philips,, an attorney somewhat versed in patent law. He told me my final assignment of the patent to Goodyear would annul the validity of the previous contract, and that it would be necessary to make a new contract with him to get the berio fit of the three hundred yards a day. A few months afterwards I made an arrangement with Goodyear which was satisfactory. On the 3d day of April, 1841, I again sold out to Charles Goodyear, and agreed to work for him one year from date. From September, 1839, to April, 1841, Goodyear was in no regular business, but was moving about from place to place. In the course of the year 1841, while I was in his employ, Goodyear tried many experiments to perfect the heated gum process, so as to make it practically useful, but he did uot succeed. In that year he made arrangements with Eider & Brothers, of New York, to furnish him with money to carry on his business. I staid with him till April, 1842, when I took the factory into my own hands again, and carried on business on my own account.

In 1842, Goodyear carried on his rubber business in Springfield, and also in Northampton, Koxbury, and Lynn ; in all these places trying to perfect the heating gum process, and make it useful—manufacturing quite a variety of articles. I carried on business on my own account from April 1,1842, to the 22d of August, 1843. In that time I made for Mr. Goodyear several hundred pounds of fire-proof sheet rubber, which was sent to Springfield and cut up into suspender threads to make shirred suspenders, so-called. I had then so far perfected the process as to heat- a sheet of rubber cloth thirty yards long at one operation. My furnace and apparatus to do this were invented by myself, and kept secret.
At that time Mr. Goodyear was owing me considerable sums of money on back arrearages, which he was either unable or unwilling to pay. My finances were quite low, so low that my property was levied upon and sold to pay taxes. W hile thus embarrassed, Goodyear told me if I would inform him how I compounded my articles, and the exact proportions, he could then get all the money he wanted, and would pay up all he owed me—a promise which he never fully performed. In this manner I was prevailed on to give him all the information he desired. With the knowledge thus obtained, his operations at Springfield were greatly improved.

As early as 1843, Goodyear sold the right of making rubber shoes to a company in New Haven, of which Leverett Candee and Steele were members. About this time Benjamin Coburn, who had been in my employment, was in New Haven, and, I think working for Goodyear, who was exhibiting various small samples of rubber cloth to sundry persons, and among others, he showed them to Candeeand Steele as his own manufacture. Coburn told these men that the samples with which he was making so much parade, were not made by Goodyear himself, but by one Hayward, in Woburn, who knew more about rubber in half an hour, than Goodyear in all his life. This information from Coburn quite surprised them, as they did not suppose anybody knew anything about rubber except Charles Goodyear.
Inconsequence of this information from Coburn, I think in the month of April, 1843, he came to my place in Woburn, to see me, and there found that what Coburn had stated was true. He asked me if I could make a shoe out of this fire-proof or heated gum. I told him I thought 1 could. He told me if I could make a perfect shoe of this material, he would buy out my establishment at Woburn, and give me employment at good wages. Thus encouraged, I told him I would go to work, and when I had succeeded, would let him know it. I accordingly spent something like three months in perfecting my apparatus, and experimenting with rubber, in the course of which time I accomplished my object. I put into my heater thirty pairs of shoes,Jand they came out perfect. I sent Mr. Candee five pairs as a sample, and informed him I was now ready to engage in the manufacture of rubber shoes. He came at once to Woburn, bought me out, and engaged my services for one year. I went on to Hamden, where his factory was, and began to make rubber shoes. They were all right except in one particular; they in a little time turned light colored. This is found I could obviate by using a smaller proportion of sulphur than is specified in Goodyear's patent. This prevented the shoes from blooming or turning white. I worked for this company through the year, and made perfect shoes.
After this I went to Lisbon, Conn., and set up the business of making rubber shoes on my own account, in connection with Henry Burr. Our business was very prosperous, and while there I discovered the method of giving our shoes a high polish. This was kept secret for some two years, and gave us great advantage over other companies in the sale of our goods. We carried on our operations in Lisbon from the autumn of 1844, very profitably till the spring of 1847, when we sold out to a joint stock company formed in the town of Colchester, Conn., called the Hayward Rubber Company, in which I still hold an interest, and in which place I now reside.
NATHANIEL HAYWARD.

Colchester, Conn., December 27, 1864. State of Connecticut, V Colchester, Dec. 28, A.D. 1864. New London County, ''
Personally appeared, Nathaniel Hayward, whose name is annexed to the foregoing statement of facts and observations, and made solemn oath that the same are true, according to his best knowledge and belief.
Before me, JOSEPH N. ADAMS,
Justice, of the Peace.

Some account of Nathaniel Hayward's experiments with India ... Hayward, Nathaniel, 1808-1865.