Soon after the vulcanization of rubber became fully established, attempts began to be made to "devulcanize" the scrap and cuttings of rubber which accumulated in the factories. So extensive were these accumulations that one company are reported to have built a road with rubber scrap through a swamp adjacent to their factory, while most other manufacturers were unable to find even so profitable a use for their wastes. As time advanced there came to be large stocks, also, of worn-out rubber goods, such as car springs and the like, all of which appealed to a practical mind here and there as being of possible value, since the price of new rubber kept climbing up all the while. No fewer than nineteen patents were granted in the United States for "improvements in devulcanizing India rubber," or "restoring waste vulcanized rubber," beginning in 1855, or eleven years after the date of Goodyear's patent for the vulcanization process. In that year Francis Baschnagel obtained a patent for restoring vulcanized rubber to a soft, plastic, workable state, by treating it with alcohol absolutus and carbon bisulphuratum, in a closed vessel, without the application of heat. Later he obtained a patent for accomplishing the same result by "boiling waste rubber in water, after it has been reduced to a finely divided state;" and still later, one for treating the waste to the direct action of steam. Patents were granted in 1858 to Hiram L. Hall, for the treatment of waste rubber by boiling in water; also, by subjecting it to steam; and again, by combining various resinous and other substances with it. The two inventors named assigned their patents to the Beverly Rubber Company, of Beverly, Mass., controlled then by the proprietors of the New York Belting and Packing Company, and their processes became the basis of an important business in rubber clothing. The low cost of the devulcanized rubber, as compared with new rubber, alone gave them a great advantage over other manufacturers, in addition to which they escaped the payment of a license to work under the Goodyear patents. Many army blankets, made for the government during the civil war, were waterproofed with Hall's devulcanized rubber, and from that period little new rubber has been used in the manufacture of heavy rubber coats. The other patents in this class do not deserve special mention.