HAYWARD, Nathaniel, inventor, born in Easton, Massachusetts, 19 January, 1808; died in Colchester, Connecticut, 18 July, 1865. While keeping a livery-stable in Boston in 1834 he bought some India-rubber cloth for carriage-top, and, noticing that it was sticky, began to make experiments with a view to remedying the difficulty. He sold his stable in 1835, and a few months later engaged to work for the Eagle India-rubber company of Boston, having, as he thought, succeeded in making firm rubber cloth from a mixture of rubber, turpentine, lamp-black, and other materials. In 1836 he tried to bleach some of the cloth by exposing it to the fumes of sulphur, and thus discovered the use of that substance in hardening rubber. He then adopted the plan of sprinkling his cloth with powdered sulphur and afterward exposing it to the sun, and in 1838 patented his process and assigned the patent to Charles Goodyear, thus leading to the latter's discovery of the present vulcanizing process. (See GOODYEAR, CHARLES.) Hayward continued to experiment, and, having learned from Mr. Goodyear of his discovery in 1839, endeavored to perfect the vulcanizing process, and succeeded in 1843 in making several hundred pounds of the hardened rub-bet. The right to use Goodyear's patent for the manufacture of shoes was assigned to him in 1844, and shortly afterward he discovered a method for giving them a high polish. He organized the Hayward rubber company, with Governor William A. Buckingham and others, at Colchester, Connecticut, in 1847, was its active manager till 1854, and its president from 1855 till his death: Mr. Hayward was active in works of benevolence and utility.