The story
By 1892, there were many rubber manufacturing companies in Naugatuck, Connecticut, as well as elsewhere in Connecticut. Nine companies consolidated their operations in Naugatuck to become the United States Rubber Company. One of the nine, Goodyear's India Rubber Glove Mfg. Co. (named Litchfield Rubber Co until 1847) – which manufactured rubber gloves for telegraph linemen – was the only company in which Charles Goodyear, inventor of the rubber vulcanization process, is known to have owned stock.
From 1892 to 1913, the rubber footwear divisions of U.S. Rubber manufactured their products under 30 different brand names, including the Wales-Goodyear Shoe Co. The company consolidated these footwear brands under one name, Keds, in 1916, and were mass-marketed as the first flexible rubber-sole with canvas-top "sneakers" in 1917.
On May 26, 1896, Charles Dow created the Dow Industrial average of twelve industrial manufacturing stocks, which included U.S. Rubber Company. When the average expanded to a list of 20 stocks in 1916, U.S. Rubber remained, however the listing expanded to 30 stocks in 1928 and U.S. Rubber was dropped.
In an effort to increase its share of the automobile tire market in 1931, U.S. Rubber Company bought a substantial portion of the Gillette Safety Tire Company. The company was founded in 1916 by Raymond B. Gillette and its primary manufacturing plant was located in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The Gillette plant held large contracts with the General Motors Corporation and with the addition of U.S. Rubber products, became one of the world's largest suppliers of original equipment tires. U.S. Rubber produced tires under the Gillette, Ward, Atlas, U.S. Rubber and U.S. Royal brands.
In 1940, U.S. Rubber purchased the remainder of the Gillette Safety Tire Company, and began to expand and modernize the Eau Claire factory, greatly increasing production. During World War II, U.S. Rubber factories were devoted to production of war goods, and produced military truck and airplane tires, as well as the canvas-top, rubber-soled Jungle boot for soldiers and marines serving in tropical and jungle environments. U.S. Rubber ranked 37th among United States corporations in the value of wartime production contracts.
In 1942, the United States government restricted the sale of scarce rubber products for civilian use and production at the plant dwindled. The company sold the Eau Claire plant to the government, which then converted it for the manufacture of small caliber ammunition and renamed it the Eau Claire Ordnance plant.
By December 31, 1943, the need for tires outweighed the need for ammunition. U.S. Rubber repurchased the plant from the government for more than US$1 million, and converted it back to synthetic rubber tire production. The company began an expansion and modernization program at the plant that lasted through 1951. When it ended, the Eau Claire plant was the fifth largest tire facility in the United States. The company again expanded the plant in 1965 to produce tires for construction machinery, and for many years it was the largest private employer in Eau Claire and the second largest in neighboring Chippewa Falls before it was closed in 1991.
In late 1943, U.S. Rubber engineer Dr. Louis Marick developed a propeller de-icing system in which a rubber boot was fitted onto the leading edge of a propeller. The boot contained wires that conducted electricity to heat the edge and break-up ice.
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Englebert Company
In 1958, Uniroyal entered into a partnership with the Englebert tire company of Liège, Belgium, which became known as Uniroyal Englebert Deutschland AG. In 1963, the name was shortened to Uniroyal-Englebert, and in 1967 it became Uniroyal along with all company divisions. Uniroyal sold this division with its four factories in Belgium, Germany, France and Scotland to Continental AG in 1979. Continental continues to market tires under the Uniroyal brand outside NAFTA, Colombia and Peru.
Dominion Rubber
Uniroyal operations in Canada were carried out under the name Dominion Rubber Company for a number of decades.
Dominion started operations as Brown, Hibbard and Bourne, established in 1854. In 1866, the company registered as the Canadian Rubber Company of Montreal Limited and became prosperous manufacturing waterproof cloth, rubber footwear and machinery belts. It began to produce auto tires in 1906 in its Montreal factory and through a series of mergers with other companies in Ontario and Quebec became the Canadian Consolidated Rubber Company Limited.
After another series of mergers, the company became the Dominion Rubber Company Limited in 1926. It produced footwear under a variety of brand names, coated upholstery fabrics, mechanical parts, industrial chemicals and vehicle tires. Edna Haviland, recruited in 1918, led work for the company on recipes for rubber compounds and synthetic materials used in making tyres, which was particularly important during the World War II when there were shortages of natural rubber.
In 1966, after four decades as Dominion, the company was renamed Uniroyal Ltd., along with all other company holdings, and in 1981, it was sold to Waterville Ltd.
S.A. Rubber
In 1939, Mark Lodge and Harold Hill established S. A. Rubber Mills Pty. Ltd. in Edwardstown, South Australia. The company grew until 1963 when U.S. Rubber purchased 25% of the business. By 1980, Uniroyal owned sixty percent of what was now Uniroyal Brazil which it sold to Bridgestone. The subsidiary which operated Australian plants under the name Uniroyal Tyre Company became Bridgestone Australia Ltd. and was traded on the Australian stock exchange as a majority-owned subsidiary of Japan's tire company. On March 20, 2007, stockholders of Bridgestone Australia Ltd. voted to make the company a wholly owned subsidiary of Bridgestone Corporation of Japan.(TYO: 5108)
Isochem
A joint venture, Isochem, Inc., was established in June 1965 together with Martin Marietta Corporation and chaired by the Martin's vice president Malcolm A. MacIntyre to operate Hanford nuclear site under the auspices of AEC, thus assuming duties, previously performed by the General Electric Co.
From Wikipedia’s article on Uniroyal, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4