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Charles Goodyear was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Charles and Clarissa (Beecher) Goodyear. William Henry Goodyear was his youngest brother.
His father, originally a hardware merchant, became so engrossed in a determination to find a way to vulcanize rubber that he gave up every opportunity to earn money and instead trusted to the charity of his friends and relatives to keep his wife and children from starving.
Charles was living in poverty first in the country outside ot Philadelphia, then in New Haven, where he obtained an elementary education, on Staten Island, New York, in Europe for a number of years, and finally in New York City.
As he grew up, Goodyear helped his father, as did his mother, brothers, and sisters, with his many experiments and in the making of rubber goods of one sort or another. After his father had secured his famous patent and had sold licenses to manufacturers, Charles assisted him in this business and carried it on alone after the elder Goodyear’s death in 1860.
Meanwhile, however, Howe had invented the practical sewing-machine and Charles was amongst those who saw the possibility of its application to the manufacture of shoes.
Even before his father’s death he had become interested in the shoe-making business in Philadelphia, and at the opening of the Civil War was president of the American Shoe-tip Company.
Thus launched in the shoe industry and possessing a clear-cut picture of the course of its future development, a complete machine-made shoe, Goodyear kept a sharp lookout for possible ideas which might be of value.
In 1864, he made his first accession by purchase - a machine to stitch light “turned” soles, invented by Auguste Destouy. He then organized the Goodyear Shoe Machinery Company to make and sell this device.
In 1867, he purchased another patented shoe-sewing-machine, invented by Christian Dancel, and employed Dancel as his factory superintendent.
Ever alert for men or ideas, he employed a second mechanical expert named Mills in the same year. Although leading shoe manufacturers looked upon his idea as a mere chimera, he went ahead and organized a company in England in 1870 and then reorganized his New York firm in 1871 as the Goodyear Boot & Shoe Machinery Company.
During the succeeding years his experts made progress in creating machines, which were marketed, but they were never sold in sufficient quantity to offset the enormous costs of experiment.
Dancel, too, by 1874 had developed the rudiments of the perfect machine, but it was not until 1885 that Goodyear’s dream was even partially realized.
Being a genius for organization, Goodyear obtained the help of Jonathan Munyon, who brought about a consolidation with Goodyear’s competitor Gordon McKay, by which, after 1880, McKay took care of the turned-shoe business and Goodyear the welt-shoe business.
Munyon likewise had a genius for putting the products of the two on the market, and from that time on, both businesses flourished. Goodyear finally retired in 1888 and spent the remaining eight years of his life between his Florida, North Carolina, and New York homes.
Goodyear invented by Auguste Destouy. He then organized the Goodyear Shoe Machinery Company to make and sell the machine to stitch light “turned” soles. In 1867 he purchased another patented shoe-sewing-machine, invented by Christian Dancel. He also organized a company in England in 1870 and then reorganized his New York firm in 1871 as the Goodyear Boot & Shoe Machinery Company.
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Goodyear was married to Mary Henrietta Colt of New Haven, Connecticut, July 14, 1858, who with three sons and four daughters survived him.
