Benjamin Goodrich

[4] After the war, he reached a licensing agreement with Charles Goodyear and bought the Hudson River Rubber Company in partnership with J.P. Morris in 1869.

[citation needed] According to a story, Goodrich had seen a friend's home burn to the ground, with firefighters rendered helpless because their leather hoses had frozen and cracked.

Once settled in Akron, Goodrich ordered his company to begin producing cotton-wrapped rubber hose that would resist freezing.

Over subsequent decades, Goodrich Company chemists invented plasticized polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in 1926, synthesized rubber in 1937 and built spacesuits for NASA astronauts in the 1960s.

Now renamed Goodrich Corporation, the company abandoned the tire business in 1988 and subsequently described itself as a global supplier of systems and services to the aerospace, defense, and homeland security markets.

[8] Together, Mary and Benjamin were the parents of: Goodrich died on August 3, 1888, in Manitou Springs, Colorado, where he had been in hopes of improving his health.