The gentleness and tenderness of his deportment in the home made his family cling to him with deep affection and bear willingly any sacrifice for his sake; though his successive failures generally meant a return of the inventor to the debtor's prison and the casting of his family upon charity.
The nitric acid process had not solved the problem but it had been a real step forward.

It was in the year 1839, by an accident, that he discovered the true process of vulcanization which cured not the surface alone but the whole mass.

He was trying to harden the gum by boiling it with sulphur on his wife's cookstove when he let fall a lump of it on the red hot iron top.

It vulcanized instantly.

This was an accident which only Goodyear could have interpreted.