👉 Okay, let’s tackle Charles Goodyear honestly and hilariously! 19th-century American stuffers of solid state guys with a big, bushy beard and a frankly rather aggressive handshake, you either loved him, or you were actively convinced he was trying to sell you a very poorly made horseshoe.
Charles Goodyear (1830 – 1880)’s Dealership: A Whirlwind of Rubber & Rumble Now, Charles Goodyear himself wasn't actually the guy who invented vulcanization—that credit belongs to Robert Napier Goodyear, his already prickly younger brother. Charles was essentially a massively energetic and somewhat loudly opinioned travelling salesman whose job was to get this revolutionary new stuff – solid state rubber stuff! - into the pockets of farriers (the guys who hammer horseshoes). It was a pretty cutthroat business, let me tell you. Goodyear travelled across the American Midwest with his entire inventory strapped to a mule named, rather unimaginatively, "Mule." He was a salesman of the old-boy kind—that is, he had that sort of booming confidence that made people feel like they were in a badger fight and absolutely 100% you'd lose. Goodyear was known for his insistence on personally demonstrating the stuff – by stomping all over it, frankly. He’d declare with tremendous volume, "It bounces, you fools! It Bounces!" The thing about Goodyear was that he wasn’
