It took close to 50 years, and he never lived to see it, but Charles Goodyear's life of rage and heartbreak was finally recognized through business success.

Goodyear, the man, was born in 1800, a descendant of New Haven, Connecticut's, founding colonist. His life was a constant lurching between commercial failure and his obsession with experimentation on gum elastics, trying to make them commercially useful. Goodyear was thrown in debtor's prison, had a later fortune wiped out, discovered vulcanization by accident, but was again ruined by legal fights over patents. Inhaling chemicals for years wrecked his health, and he died in 1860, penniless.

There's no indication that Charles Goodyear ever visited Ohio in his lifetime, but his legacy would be secured there. The perfection of vulcanized rubber and widespread use of bicycles caused a tire industry to leap upward around Akron, Ohio. One such entrepreneur was Franklin A. Seiberling, who had barely emerged from the Panic of 1893 and later decided to switch his paper mill to rubber production.

Recognizing Goodyear's work, Seiberling incorporated his firm as the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in 1898. One of its first products, perhaps inspired by its namesake's troubles, was a tire with a paper ply that allowed it to sidestep patent issues. Later, a wire-embedded bead essentially created the spoked truck tire with a detachable rim, fortuitously allowing higher speeds for trucks - until then, widely shod by solid rubber tires - just as roads started to improve.

Seiberling's rise was flawless until he overestimated the post-World War I car market and contracted for vast supplies of rubber. The cost got him bounced from Goodyear by his own board. Undeterred, he made truck tires under his own name until he died in 1955.