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
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,