as one of those cases where the leading of the Creator providentially aids his creatures, by what are termed ‘accidents,’ to attain those things which are not attainable by the powers of reasoning he has conferred on them.”

Now that Goodyear was sure that he had the key to the intricate puzzle that he had worked over for so many years, he began at once to tell his friends about it and to try to secure capital, but they had listened to their sorrow so many times that his efforts were futile.  For a number of years be struggled and experimented and worked along in a small way, his family suffering with himself the pangs of the extremest poverty.  At last he went to New York and showed some of his samples to William Ryder, who, with his brother Emory, at once appreciated the value of the discovery and started in to manufacturing.  Even here Goodyear’s bad luck seemed to follow him, for the Ryder Bros. failed and it was impossible to continue the business.

He had, however, started a small factory at Springfield, Mass., and his brother-in-law, Mr. De Forest, who was a wealthy woolen manufacturer, took Ryder’s place, and the work of making the invention practical was continued.  In 1844 it was so far perfected that Goodyear felt it safe to take out a patent.  The factory at Springfield was run by his brothers, Nelson and Henry.

In 1843 Henry started one in Naugatuck, and in 1844 introduced mechanical mixing in place of the mixture by the use of solvents.

In the year 1852 Goodyear went to Europe, a trip that he had long planned, and saw Hancock, then in the employ of Charles Macintosh & Co.  Hancock admitted in evidence that the first piece of vulcanized rubber he ever saw came from America, but claimed to have reinvented vulcanization and secured patents in Great Britain, but it is a remarkable fact that Charles Goodyear’s French patent was the first publication in Europe of this discovery.

In 1852 a French company were licensed by Mr. Goodyear to make shoes, and a great deal of interest was felt in the new business.  In 1855 the French emperor gave to Charles Goodyear the grand medal of honor and decorated him with the cross of the legion of honor in recognition of his services as a public benefactor, but the French courts subsequently set aside his French patents on the ground of the importation of vulcanized goods from America by licenses under the United States patents.  He died July 1, 1860, at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York City.—­India Rubber World.

* * * * *

[Continued from SUPPLEMENT, No. 786, page 12558.]

THE ELECTROMAGNET.

[Footnote:  Lectures delivered before the Society of Arts, London, 1890.  From the Journal of the Society.]

BY PROFESSOR SILVANUS P. THOMPSON, D. SC., B.A., M.I.E.E.

III.