Rubber that melted in summer and cracked in winter was fixed by an accidental spill

After years of failed experiments and mounting debt, Charles Goodyear accidentally let a rubber-and-sulfur mixture touch a hot stove in 1839. Instead of melting, it charred into a stable material that stayed solid in heat and flexible in cold: vulcanized rubber. Goodyear died deep in debt from the years of trial and error; the process he found now underlies tires, hoses, and seals worldwide.

— Charles Slack, Noble Obsession: Charles Goodyear, Thomas Hancock, and the Race to Unlock the Greatest Industrial Secret of the Nineteenth Century — Hyperion, 2002
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