The prize for which he had labored so long and so heroically was secured at last, and in 1844, ten years after the commencement of his experiments, he was able to produce perfectly vulcanized India-rubber with expedition and economy, and, above all, with certainty.  He had won a success which added a new material to art and commerce, and one which could be applied in a thousand different ways, and all of them useful to man.  But great as his success was, he was not satisfied with it.  To the end of his life his constant effort was to improve his invention, and apply it to new uses.  He had an unlimited faith in its adaptability, believing that there was scarcely any article of general use that could not be made of it.  Upon one occasion he read in a newspaper that twenty persons perished every hour by drowning.  The statement impressed him deeply, and his wife noticed that for several nights he scarcely slept at all.  “Try to compose yourself, and sleep,” she said to him.  “Sleep!” he exclaimed, “how can I sleep when twenty human beings are drowning every hour, and I am the man that can save them?” And at this time it was his constant endeavor to invent some article of India-rubber which could be easily carried by travelers, and which would render it impossible for them to sink in water.

Having brought his process to a successful completion in this country, and obtained patents for it, he went to Europe to secure similar protections in the principal countries of the Old World.  “The French laws require that the patentee shall put and keep his invention in public use in France within two years from its date.  Goodyear had, at great inconvenience and expense, endeavored to comply with this and with all other requirements of the French laws, and thought he had effectually done so; but the courts of France decided that he had not in every particular complied with the strict requisitions of the law, and that, therefore, his patent in France had become void.  In England he was still more unfortunate.  Having sent specimens of vulcanized fabrics to Charles Mackintosh & Co., in 1842, and having opened with them a negotiation for the sale of the secret of the invention or discovery, one of the partners of that firm, named Thomas Hancock, availing himself, as he admits, of the hints and opportunities thus presented to him, rediscovered, as he affirms, the process of vulcanization, and described it in a patent for England, which was enrolled on May 21, 1844, about five weeks after the specification and publication of the discovery to the world by Goodyear’s patent for vulcanization in France.  And the patent of Hancock, held good according to a peculiarity of English law, thus superseded Goodyear’s English patent for vulcanization, which bore date a few days later.  Goodyear, however, obtained the great council medal of the exhibition of all nations at London, the grand medal of the world’s exhibition at Paris, and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, presented by Napoleon III.”