Frank Seiberling

Frank Augustus Seiberling (October 6, 1859 – August 11, 1955) was an American inventor and founder. He is most famous for co-founding the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in 1898 and the Seiberling Rubber Company in 1921. He also built Stan Hywet Hall, a Tudor Revival mansion, now a National Historic Landmark and historic house museum in Akron, Ohio.

Son of a German American entrepreneur from Ohio, Seiberling spent two years attending Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio, before joining the J.F. Seiberling Company, his father’s farm machinery manufacturing business, working there as secretary and treasurer. His father, John Seiberling, founder of that Akron, Ohio company, invented one of the first reaping machines. While working for the company, Seiberling invented a twine binder that tied grain bundles with a bow knot.

Many businesses failed in the panics of the 1890s, including the street railway company owned by Seiberling's father. In 1898, Seiberling was jobless, nearing forty years old, with a wife and three children. He learned of the availability of an old strawboard factory in East Akron, which he purchased, together with the 7 acres (28,000 m²) it stood on, for $13,500. He borrowed $3,500 for a down payment from a brother-in-law, Lucius C. Miles. In a few days he had decided what business he would go into, picked a name, and was selling stock. The business would be rubber; the company would be named for Charles Goodyear, the discoverer of vulcanization, who had died penniless almost forty years before.

While Seiberling and his brother Charles were the co-founders of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company, its first president was David E. Hill, a business associate who purchased $30,000 of the company's initial stock. In 1899, Raymond C. Penfield, another brother-in-law, became the second president of the company; Lucius C. Miles followed in the position in 1900. In 1906, Frank Seiberling, until then the secretary and general manager, became the fourth president of the company, a position he held until 1921. He was known as the "little Napoleon" of the rubber industry because of his small stature and his unremitting determination to succeed. He played a leading role in developing Akron from a small town into the "rubber capital of the world."

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