Webster:

"And now is Charles Goodyear the discoverer of this invention of
vulcanized rubber? Is he the first man upon whose mind the idea ever
flashed, or to whose intelligence the fact ever was disclosed, that by
carrying heat to a certain height it would cease to render plastic the
India Rubber and begin to harden and metallize it? Is there a man in the
world who found out that fact before Charles Goodyear? Who is he? Where
is he? On what continent does he live? Who has heard of him? What books
treat of him? What man among all the men on earth has seen him, known
him, or named him? Yet it is certain that this discovery has been made.
It is certain that it exists. It is certain that it is now a matter of
common knowledge all over the civilized world. It is certain that ten or
twelve years ago it was not knowledge. It is certain that this curious
result has grown into knowledge by somebody's discovery and invention.
And who is that somebody? The question was put to my learned opponent by
my learned associate. If Charles Goodyear did not make this discovery,
who did make it? Who did make it? Why, if our learned opponent had said
he should endeavor to prove that some one other than Mr. Goodyear had
made this discovery, that would have been very fair. I think the learned
gentleman was very wise in not doing so. For I have thought often, in
the course of my practice in law, that it was not very advisable to
raise a spirit that one could not conveniently lay again. Now who made
this discovery? And would it not be proper? I am sure it would. And
would it not be manly? I am sure it would. Would not my learned friend
and his coadjutor have acted a more noble part, if they had stood up and
said that this invention was not Goodyear's, but it was an invention of
such and such a man, in this or that country? On the contrary they do
not meet Goodyear's claim by setting up a distinct claim of anybody
else. They attempt to prove that he was not the inventor by little
shreds and patches of testimony. Here a little bit of sulphur, and there
a little parcel of lead; here a little degree of heat, a little hotter
than would warm a man's hands, and in which a man could live for ten
minutes or a quarter of an hour; and yet they never seem to come to the
point. I think it is because their materials did not allow them to
come to the manly assertion that somebody else did make this invention,
giving to that somebody a local habitation and a na