“ To the solution of this problem the next ten years of his life were devoted. With ceaseless energy and unwavering faith in the successful outcome of his labours, in the face of repeated failures and hampered by poverty, which several times led him to a debtor’s prison, he persevered in his endeavours. For a time he seemed to have succeeded with a treatment (or “cure”) of the rubber with aqua fortis. In 1836 he secured a contract for the manufacture by this process of mail bags for the U.S. government, but the rubber fabric was useless at high temperatures. ”

“ The family removed to Naugatuck, Conn., when Charles was a boy; he worked in his father’s button factory and studied at home until 1816, when he apprenticed himself to a firm of hardware merchants in Philadelphia. ”

“ In 1852 he went to England, where articles made under his patents had been displayed at the International Exhibition of 1851, but he was unable to establish factories there. In France a company for the manufacture of vulcanized rubber by his process failed, and in December 1855 he was arrested and imprisoned for debt in Paris. ”