Polymer science be considered polymer science in the modern sense. In the 1840s, Friedrich Ludersdorf and Nathaniel Hayward independently discovered that adding sulfur to raw natural rubber (polyisoprene) helped prevent the material from becoming sticky. In 1844 Charles Goodyear received a U.S. patent for vulcanizing natural rubber with sulfur and heat. Thomas Hancock had received a patent for the same process in the UK the year before. This process strengthened natural rubber and prevented it from melting with heat without losing flexibility. This made practical products such as waterproofed articles possible. It also facilitated practical manufacture of such rubberized materials. Vulcanized rubber
Sulfur 14th century the Latin ' was restored, for '; and by the 15th century the full Latin spelling was restored, for "sulfur, sulphur". The parallel "f~ph" spellings continued in Britain until the 19th century, when the word was standardized as "sulphur". "Sulfur" was the form chosen in the United States, whereas Canada uses both. The IUPAC adopted the spelling "sulfur" in 1990, as did the Nomenclature Committee of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 1992, restoring the spelling "sulfur" to Britain. Oxford Dictionaries note that "in chemistry and other technical uses ... the "-f-" spelling is now the standard form