Benjamin Goodrich Benjamin Franklin Goodrich ( November 4 , 1841 – August 3 , 1888 ) was an American industrialist in the rubber industry and founder of B . F . Goodrich Company . Biography . Dr . Goodrich was born to Anson and Susan Goodrich in the farming town of Ripley , New York . He was orphaned at the age of eight , and raised thereafter by his uncle . He received his M . D . from Cleveland Medical College ( now Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine ) , studied surgery at the University of Pennsylvania in 1863 and served as a battlefront surgeon for the Union Army in the Civil War . After a few years of a struggling medical practice , he went to work in Pennsylvania ' s oilfields and became a real estate speculator . After the war he reached a licensing agreement with Charles Goodyear and bought the Hudson River Rubber Company in partnership with J . P . Morris in 1869 . The company , located in Melrose , New York , failed . The following year he accepted an offer of $ 13 , 600 from the citizens of Akron , Ohio to relocate his business there and founded B . F . Goodrich Corporation . Benjamin Goodrich was the first man in Akron , Ohio , to own a telephone . He acquired one as a gift from Alexander Graham Bell in 1877 . The telephone was connected from Goodrich ' s house on Quaker Street to his factory on Rubber Street . According to legend , Goodrich had seen a friend ' s home burn to the ground , with firefighters rendered helpless because their leather hoses had frozen and cracked . Once settled in Akron , Goodrich ordered his company to begin producing cotton - wrapped rubber hose that would resist freezing . A few years later Goodrich started selling garden hoses ( allowing bucketless garden watering ) and bicycle tires . Still , the company teetered near bankruptcy and went through numerous name changes , its success still uncertain when Goodrich died at the age of 46 in 1888 . Business began booming at B . F . Goodrich Company a few years after Goodrich ' s death with the company ' s introduction of a pneumatic tire that could bear the speeds and loads of the evolving automobile . The radial tire was designed by an advertising employee in his company . Over subsequent decades , Goodrich Company chemists invented plasticized polyvinyl chloride ( PVC ) in 1926 , synthesized rubber in 1937 and built early space suits for NASA astronauts in the 1960s . Now renamed Goodrich Corporation , the company abandoned the tire business in 1988 and now describes itself as a global supplier of systems and services to the aerospace , defense and homeland security markets . The brand name Goodrich now appears on tires made by Michelin , which bought the Uniroyal - B . F . Goodrich tire business in 1994 . Family . Father : Anson Goodrich ( born 15 - April – 1792 , died 17 - June – 1847 ) Mother : Susannah Dinsmoor Goodrich ( born 12 - January – 1799 , m . April – 1816 ) Wife : Mary Elizabeth Marvin Goodrich ( born 3 - July – 1841 , m . 4 - November – 1869 ) Son : Charles Cross Goodrich ( Goodrich chemist , born 3 - August – 1871 , died 10 - July - 1932 ) Son : Marvin Goodrich ( born 1872 , d . infancy ) Daughter : Isabella Goodrich Breckinridge ( born 8 - February – 1874 , married John Cabell Breckinridge II , died 3 - February - 1961 ) One of her children was Marvin Breckinridge Patterson Son : David Marvin Goodrich ( Goodrich executive , born 22 - June – 1876 , died 17 - May - 1950 )