%413. India Rubber.%--The same year (1844) which witnessed the introduction of the telegraph saw the perfection of Goodyear's secret for the vulcanization of India rubber. In 1820 the first pair of rubber shoes ever seen in the United States were exhibited in Boston. Two years later a ship from South America brought 500 pairs of rubber shoes. They were thick, heavy, and ill-shaped; but they sold so rapidly that more were imported, and in 1830 a cargo of raw gum was brought from South America for the purpose of making rubber goods. With this C. M. Chaffee went to work and succeeded in producing some pieces of cloth spread with rubber. Supposing the invention to be of great value, a number of factories[1] began to make rubber coats, caps, wagon curtains, of pure rubber without cloth. But to the horror of the companies the goods melted when hot weather came, and were sent back, emitting so dreadful an odor that they had to be buried. It was to overcome this and find some means of hardening the gum that Goodyear began his experiments and labored year after year against every sort of discouragement. Even when the secret of vulcanizing, as it is called, was discovered, five years passed before he was able to conduct the process with absolute certainty. In 1844, after ten years of labor, he succeeded and gave to the world one of the most useful inventions of the nineteenth century. [Footnote 1: At Roxbury, Boston, Framingham, Salem, Lynn, Chelsea, Troy, and Staten Island.] %414. The Photograph; the Discovery of Anaesthesia.%--But there were other inventions and discoveries of almost as great or even greater value to mankind. In 1840 Dr. John W. Draper so perfected the daguerreotype that it could be used to take pictures of persons and landscapes. Till then it could be used only to make pictures of buildings and statuary. The year 1846 is made yet more memorable by the discovery that whoever inhaled sulphuric ether would become insensible to pain. The glory of this discovery has been claimed for two men: Dr. Morton and Dr. Jackson. Which one is entitled to it cannot be positively decided, though Dr. Morton seems to have the better right to be considered the discoverer. Before this, however, anaesthesia by nitrous oxide (laughing gas) had been discovered by Dr. Wells of Hartford, Conn., and by Dr. Long of Georgia.