with
rubber. Supposing the invention to be of great value, a number of
factories[1] began to make rubber coats, caps, wagon curtains, of pure
rubber without cloth. But to the horror of the companies the goods
melted when hot weather came, and were sent back, emitting so dreadful
an odor that they had to be buried. It was to overcome this and find
some means of hardening the gum that Goodyear began his experiments and
labored year after year against every sort of discouragement. Even when
the secret of vulcanizing, as it is called, was discovered, five years
passed before he was able to conduct the process with absolute
certainty. In 1844, after ten years of labor, he succeeded and gave to
the world one of the most useful inventions of the nineteenth century.

[Footnote 1: At Roxbury, Boston, Framingham, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, Troy,
and Staten Island.]

%414. The Photograph; the Discovery of Anaesthesia.%--But there were
other inventions and discoveries of almost as great or even greater
value to mankind. In 1840 Dr. John W. Draper so perfected the
daguerreotype that it could be used to take pictures of persons and
landscapes. Till then it could be used only to make pictures of
buildings and statuary.

The year 1846 is made yet more memorable by the discovery that whoever
inhaled sulphuric ether would become insensible to pain. The glory of
this discovery has been claimed for two men: Dr. Morton and Dr. Jackson.
Which one is entitled to it cannot be positively decided, though Dr.
Morton seems to have the better right to be considered the discoverer.
Before this, however, anaesthesia by nitrous oxide (laughing gas) had
been discovered by Dr. Wells of Hartford, Conn., and by Dr. Long
of Georgia.

%415. Communication with Europe; Steamships%.--Progress was not
confined to affairs within our boundary. Communications with Europe were
greatly advanced. The passage of the steamship _Savannah_ across the
Atlantic, partly by steam and partly by sail, in 1819, resulted in
nothing practical. The wood used for fuel left little space for freight.
But when better machinery reduced the time, and coal afforded a less
bulky fuel, the passage across the Atlantic by steam became possible,
and in 1838 two vessels, the _Sirius_ and the _Great Western_, made the
trip from Liverpool to New York by steam alone. No sails were used. This
showed what could be done, and in 1839 Samuel Cunard began the great
fleet of Atlantic greyhounds by foun