Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/111

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GOODWIN SANDS GOOKIN 103 JUlg s ould seem to be equitable, and ought to be irovided for in any sale or transfer of the good will. We doubt, however, whether our courts ould now infer such an agreement from a transfer of the good will, in the absence any express stipulation on the subject. GOODWIN SANDS, dangerous sand banks off E. coast of Kent, England, separated from mainland by the. roadstead called the Downs, which has an average width of about 5 m. The banks, which are loose and shift- ing, are divided by a narrow channel called the Swash, navigable for small boats. The northern portion is about 3 m. long, and the southern about 10 m., the average width of each being 2^ m. At low water many parts are dry and firm, but with the coming of the tide the sand becomes saturated and dangerous. Lightships are stationed at their N. and S. ex- mities and N. of the Swash, on which bells kept ringing in hazy weather. Many fatal ipwrecks have taken place on these sands, which are full of danger to vessels passing into the Thames or the North sea. They are said to have once formed a part of the mainland of Kent, and to have belonged to the Saxon earl .win shortly before the Norman conquest. ey were submerged about A. D. 1200. GOODYEAR, Charles, an American inventor, born in New Haven, Conn., Dec. 29, 1800, died in New York, July 1, 1860. He received only a public school education. After coming of age, he joined his father Amasa Goodyear, the pioneer in the American manufacture of hardware, in the hardware business in Phila- delphia. The firm being overwhelmed by the commercial disasters of 1830, he selected as a new occupation the improvement of the manu- facture of India rubber. His early experiments were carried on at New Haven, Conn., Box- bury, Lynn, Boston, and Woburn, Mass., and the city of New York. The first important im- provement made by him was in New York in 1836, being a method of depriving India rubber f its adhesiveness by dipping it into a prepa- ion of nitric acid. The nitric acid gas pro- as it was called, was introduced into pub- c use, and met with great favor, especially in the manufacture of shoes, which continued to be made by that process in great numbers at Providence, R. I., until it was superseded by the superior method of vulcanization. The beneficial effect of the nitric acid process was confined to the surface, the interior body of the gum remaining subject to all the defects of native India rubber. It did not satisfy the hopes of Goodyear, and in 1838-'9 he made at Woburn, Mass., many experiments with com- pounds of India rubber and sulphur. In Jan- uary, 1839, he observed that a piece of India rubber, mixed with ingredients among which was sulphur, when accidentally brought in con- tact with a red-hot stove, was not melted, but that in certain portions it was charred, and in other portions it remained elastic though de- prived of adhesiveness. The material was vul- canized; i. e., it had undergone the change produced by a high degree of artificial heat. Thus were presented the germs of the two forms of vulcanized India rubber, now com- monly known as the soft and the hard com- pounds. From this time until his death the process of vulcanization occupied his whole at- tention, but he reaped no adequate pecuniary reward for his labors. The Goodyear patents, now more than 60 in number, have been very expensive in themselves, and still more so from the necessity of defending and protecting them against infringers. The first publication of the process of vulcanization was Goodyear's patent for France, dated April 16, 1844. The French laws require that the patentee shall put and keep his invention in public use in France within two years from its date. Goodyear endeavored to comply with this and with all other requirements of the French laws, and thought he had effectually done so ; but the courts of France decided that he had not com- plied in every particular, and that therefore his patent had become void. In England he was still more unfortunate. Having sent specimens of vulcanized fabrics to Charles Mackintosh and co. in 1842, and having opened with them a negotiation for the sale of the secret of the invention or discovery, one of the partners of that firm named Thomas Hancock, availing himself of the hints and opportunities thus pre- sented to him, rediscovered, as he affirms, the process of vulcanization, and described it in a patent for England, which was enrolled on May 21, 1844, about five weeks after the speci- fication and publication of the discovery to the world by Goodyear's patent for vulcanization in France. The patent of Hancock, held good according to English law, thus superseded Goodyear's English patent for vulcanization, which bore date a few days later. Goodyear, however, obtained the great council medal of the exhibition of all nations at London in 1851, the grand medal of honor of the world's ex- hibition at Paris in 1855, and the cross of the legion of honor, presented by Napoleon III. (See CAOUTCHOUC.) GOOKIN, Daniel, an American author and sol- dier, born in Kent, England, about 1612, died in Cambridge, Mass., March 19, 1687. He came with his father to Virginia in 1621, held with 35 men his plantation, now Newport News, against the savages during the Indian massacres of March, 1622, and removed in 1644 to Massa- chusetts, in consequence of his sympathy with the doctrines of the Puritans. He settled in Cambridge, and in 1656 became superintendent of all the Indians who had submitted to the government of Massachusetts, an office which he held till his death. He protected the fugi- tive regicides in 1661, was appointed one of the two licensers of the Cambridge printing press in the following year, became unpopular during King Philip's war by the protection which he extended to the Indians, and in 1681 was made major general of the colony. He died so poor