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
Frasch process 1894, when the first molten sulfur was brought to the surface. The Union Sulphur Company was incorporated in 1896 to utilize the process. However, the high cost of fuel needed to heat the water made the process uneconomic until the 1901 discovery of the Spindletop oil field in Texas provided cheap fuel oil to the region. The Frasch process began economic production at Sulphur Mines, Louisiana in 1903. When Frasch's patent expired, the process was widely applied to similar salt-dome sulfur deposits along the Gulf Coast of the United States. The second Frasch-process mine opened in 1912 in Brazoria County,