Sulfur vulcanization in the processing and compounding of rubber by Hancock and his colleagues led to a more reliable process. Around 1900, disulfiram was introduced as a vulcanizing agent, and became widely used. In 1905 George Oenslager discovered that a derivative of aniline called thiocarbanilide accelerated the reaction of sulfur with rubber, leading to shorter cure times and reducing energy consumption. This breakthrough was almost as fundamental to the rubber industry as Goodyear's sulfur cure. Accelerators made the cure process faster, improved the reliability of the process and enabled vulcanization to be applied to synthetic polymers. One year after his discovery, Oenslager
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