Who invented bf goodrich

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This was the sixth and final game of their match, which Kasparov lost two games to one, with three draws. Kasparov, a In what would prove to be the next to the last concert of his tragically short life, Bob Marley shared the bill at Madison Square Garden with the hugely popular American funk band The Commodores.

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Law enforcement officials finally Goodrich Company, grew slowly during the s, nearly going bankrupt twice, but the business gained momentum during the s and s. In , an Irish veterinarian invented the pneumatic tire out of rubber.

A pneumatic tire is one that is filled with air. It became very popular among bicyclists, providing the rider with a much smoother ride.

With the invention of the automobile, demands for tires skyrocketed. The first tires were solid rubber, but the B. Goodrich Company, which had created a research laboratory to discover new uses for rubber in , quickly developed a pneumatic tire suitable for cars.

By , four years after B. Goodrich's death, the company employed four hundred workers and sold more than 1. By , sales exceeded The company eventually moved its headquarters from Akron to Charlotte, North Carolina. The B. Goodrich Company continued to be a leader in the rubber industry during the first half of the twentieth century. Goodrich scientist invented vinyl in , and in , B. Goodrich scientists created synthetic rubber. Synthetic rubber was made by blending various chemicals together and did not require rubber trees to produce it.

In Goodrich re-incorporated as a New York company and increased its production capacity by acquiring the Diamond Rubber Company, which owned plants adjacent to Goodrich's in Akron.

The Depression, however, brought the company its first setbacks since the s. The slowed U. The depression also affected the company's labor relations with its 15, employees in Akron. His visit sparked a five-week strike at the plants of Goodrich, Goodyear, and Firestone, temporarily shutting down the nation's three largest rubber producers. At the time of the war's outbreak in Europe, the United States was importing 97 percent of its crude rubber from Southeast Asia.

Japanese expansion in the Pacific threatened this supply, while German advances in Europe and Africa interrupted supply routes through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea. In cooperation with the nation's rubber companies, the U. It also committed itself to developing synthetic rubber technology. The rubber industry had known how to make synthetic rubber since the late s. In Goodrich opened a pilot plant for producing butadiene-copolymer synthetic rubber, and within two years it was using synthetic rubber in some of its commercial products.

As long as crude rubber supplies were cheap and plentiful, however, synthetic rubber remained an expensive alternative. In John L. Collyer took over as Goodrich's president after having spent ten years working for a British rubber company.

Collyer returned to the United States convinced of its need to develop synthetic rubber production before it was drawn into the European conflict. Under his direction Goodrich introduced in June the first passenger-car tire in the United States to contain synthetic rubber. Called Ameripol--for its use of a polymer of American materials--this tire was more expensive than one made of natural rubber, but it gained rapid consumer acceptance because it outlasted conventional tires.

After Collyer's appearance before a Senate Military Affairs Committee hearing on national preparedness, the federal government announced plans to build its own synthetic rubber plants. Goodrich cooperated with this effort, building and operating three such plants for wartime production in Port Neches and Borger, Texas, and in Louisville, Kentucky.

These plants had a combined capacity of , tons per year, making Goodrich the nation's leading synthetic rubber manufacturer by the war's end. Goodrich avoided any postwar interruptions in its growth by quickly converting to meet consumer demand.

The U. Two years later it developed the tubeless puncture-sealing tire that increased motorists' protection from blow-outs. The company's LifeSaver and Safetyliner tubeless tires gained wide popularity in the early s, and by tubeless tires became standard equipment on new cars. Ten years later Goodrich brought another innovation to U. The radial dramatically changed the U. Goodrich further diversified its production in the postwar era.

Continuing a long tradition of research and development, it opened a new research center in Brecksville, Ohio, in Goodrich Chemical Company, a subsidiary founded in , took over the company's wartime plants and built new ones in Marietta and Avon Lake, Ohio, and in Calvert City, Kentucky. Production of Goodrich's Geon and Koroseal plastic products expanded into overseas markets with joint ventures in Britain and Japan.

By Goodrich was manufacturing goods in five different areas, including tires, chemicals and plastics, footwear and flooring, industrial products, and sponge rubber goods. Goodrich's fortunes declined, however, when a strike began a decade of rocky labor relations and interrupted production. In April the URW walked off of jobs at Goodrich, Firestone, and Uniroyal, and the resulting strike stalled rubber production in Akron for 86 days.

That strike, along with a six-month work stoppage at one of the company's chemical plants, cost Goodrich a Three years later Goodrich was once again facing serious losses because of strikes in the rubber and related industries. The URW walked out on Goodrich plants for five weeks, while strikes by the Teamsters Union and General Motors workers also hurt the nation's tire markets.

Continued hard times in the nation's auto and rubber industries brought Goodrich back to the bargaining table in A day URW strike stopped production in all of Goodrich's domestic tire plants and finally required the intercession of U.

Labor Secretary W. Usery, Jr. These crippling experiences with labor disputes and the stagnation of the U. Ready for a drastic change, the company handed its reins to a rubber industry outsider in Pendleton Thomas, a former oil executive with the Atlantic Richfield Company, shook up Goodrich by having chemicals and plastics replace tires as the foundation of the company's business. At the time Thomas took over, Goodrich's position among U. The success of radials had cut consumer demand for replacement tires, while the oil crisis had lessened the U.

Thomas streamlined Goodrich's tire operations by closing unprofitable plants and retail outlets and concentrating on certain product niches, such as high-performance replacement tires. By maximizing profits in its tire business, he developed the capital necessary to increase the capacity of Goodrich's chemical and plastics production.

In Thomas changed The B. Thomas's program of retrenchment and redeployment allowed his successor, John D. Ong, to develop Goodrich's chemicals business in the s. Goodrich had long been the nation's number-one producer of PVC, the versatile plastic used primarily in the construction industry, as well as a producer of specialty chemicals used in products ranging from cosmetics to floor polishes.

Like its tire division, Goodrich's chemical production had been hurt by the petroleum shortages and sluggish national economy of the s, but when Ong took over in , he maintained the course set by Thomas. The acquisition in of Tremco Inc.