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
Union Sulphur Company the Supreme Court, which declined to review the Third Circuit opinion. The competitors were free to use the Frasch Process. The Union Sulphur Company continued to extract sulfur, averaging over 200,000 tons per year from 1905 to 1911 and eventually producing a total of almost 9.5 million tons. Sulfur has many industrial uses, including as sulfuric acid and in the manufacture of explosives, among others. The Union Sulphur Company, as the primary source of sulfur in the U.S. before and during World War I, was critical to the U.S. war effort. As the legal battle over the expiration of its