The new process was called vulcanizing. Vulcan was the old Roman god of fire and metal working, and was patron of handicrafts generally. The word _volcano_ is derived from _vulcan_, and melted sulphur is associated with volcanoes. The term _vulcanize_, therefore, is traceable either directly or indirectly, through the fire or the sulphur employed in the process, to the name of the Roman god. According to the relative amount of sulphur used and the temperature to which the compound is raised, either soft or hard rubber may be produced. Hard rubber contains a greater quantity of sulphur and is heated to a higher temperature. The heat used in vulcanization reaches as much as three hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Goodyear's first patent was taken out in 1844, the year in which Samuel F. B. Morse invented the telegraph. About this time he was imprisoned for debt for the last time in the United States, though he suffered a jail sentence for debt in France later. His patents were repeatedly infringed in this country, and he could not secure any patents in Great Britain or France. The United States Commissioner of Patents said of Goodyear, "No inventor, probably, has ever been so harassed, so trampled upon, so plundered by pirates as he, their spoliations upon him having unquestionably amounted to millions of dollars." Daniel Webster was the lawyer employed in the trial in which Goodyear's legal right to the honor and profits of his invention was established. For his services in this case Webster received a fee of twenty-five thousand dollars. Goodyear himself made no very large sum of money from his invention, though he added to life not merely a new material but a new class of materials, applicable to many cases. Before his death he had seen rubber put to more than five hundred different uses, and thousands of persons engaged in manufacturing the various articles fashioned from it. Goodyear died in New York City, July 1, 1860. CHAPTER XII STENOGRAPHY AND THE TYPEWRITER It is difficult to see how man could now dispense with any of the great inventions and discoveries that give him power over time and space. Not one of them could be sacrificed without corresponding loss of power. Among the great devices that economize time are stenography and the typewriter. Stenography is the world's business alphabet; the typewriter, its commercial printing press. The word _stenography_ is derived from the Greek adjective _stenos_ meaning "narrow" or "close," and the Greek verb _graphein_ signifying "to write." Stenography, therefore, is the art of close or narrow writing, so named, perhaps, from the great amount of meaning that by its use is packed into a narrow compass. It is a phonetic system in which brief signs are used to represent single sounds, groups of sounds, whole words, or groups of words.