Once more, however, he was imprisoned for
debt. This event conquered his scruples against availing himself of
the benefit of the bankrupt act, which finally delivered him from the
danger of arrest. We should add, however, that, as soon as he began to
derive income from his invention, he reassumed his obligations to his
old creditors, and discharged them gradually.
It was not till the year 1844, more than ten years after he began to
experiment, and more than five years after discovering the secret of
vulcanization, that he was able to conduct his process with absolute
certainty, and to produce vulcanized India-rubber with the requisite
expedition and economy. We can form some conception of the
difficulties overcome by the fact, that the advances of Mr. De Forrest
in aid of the experiment reached the sum of forty-six thousand
dollars,--an amount the inventor did not live long enough to repay.
His triumph had been long deferred, and we have seen in part how much
it had cost him. But his success proved to be richly worth its cost.
He had added to the arts, not a new material merely, but a new class
of materials, applicable to a thousand diverse uses.
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