Carriage House Plans: Goodyear Tires

Thursday 10 January 2013

Goodyear Tires

A natural substance that had been used for centuries before being rediscovered by Columbus and introduced to western culture. Caoutchouc came from the Indian word “cahuchu,” which meant “weeping wood.” Natural rubber was harvested from the sap that oozed from the bark of a tree. The name "rubber" comes from the use of the natural substance as a pencil eraser that could “rub out” pencil marks and is the reason that it was then re-named “rubber.”Besides pencil erasers, rubber was used for many other products, however, the products were not standing up to extreme temperatures, becoming brittle in winter. During the 1830's, many inventors tried to develop a rubber product that could last year-round. Charles Goodyear was one of those inventors, whose experiments put Goodyear into debt and involved in several patent lawsuits.