An important precursor to the invention of the diaphragm was the rubber vulcanization process, patented by Charles Goodyear in 1844. In the 1880s, a German gynecologist, Wilhelm P. J. Mensinga, published the first description of a rubber contraceptive device with a spring molded into the rim. Mensinga wrote first under the pseudonym C. Hasse, and the Mensinga diaphragm was the only brand available for many decades. In the United States, the physician Edward Bliss Foote designed and sold an early form of occlusive pessary under the name "womb veil" starting in the 1860s.