Look down at your feet. Chances are you’re wearing a pair of sneakers. Maybe they’re basketball high-tops or low-profile runners, leather court shoes or canvas slip-ons. Interestingly, sneakers come in untold variations, with different silhouettes made with various upper materials, straps, laces and colorings. But the quintessential ingredient in sneakers is the rubber bottom.
After all, legend says that’s where the name comes from: Rubber soles are quieter than, say, leather or wood, so wearers can “sneak” around more easily.
But how exactly did sneakers come to be? Here, FN turns back the clock nearly two centuries to explore the technological innovations that contributed to their creation in the U.S.
No single company or person invented the rubber-soled shoes we wear today. But there is one person who deserves a great deal of credit for their origins: Charles Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanized rubber.
In 1839, Goodyear — an American inventor working out of a factory in Woburn, Mass. — accidentally discovered that treating natural rubber with sulfer over heat made the rubber more rigid and less sticky. He received a patent for the technique in 1844 and the invention supercharged growth of the rubber industry in New England.
Within 50 years, the manufacturing business in the area was so robust that in 1892, nine rubber companies agreed to consolidate their operations in order to better compete. They formed the U.S. Rubber Company, based in Naugatuck, Conn.
U.S. Rubber quickly became a giant in manufacturing — so large, in fact, that it was one of the original 12 companies listed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average that started in 1896.
Two of the companies that were part of that merger included the Colchester Rubber Company and Boston Rubber Company, both of which specialized in producing rubber footwear. At that time, the rubber shoe market mainly consisted of making work boots for cold and rain, such as galoshes, though in the warmer months, some companies also offered oxford-like “tennis shoes” with rubber bottoms (an early precursor to our current athletic shoes). And Colchester may have created prototypes for basketball sneakers as early as 1892.
During its first decade in business, U.S. Rubber was producing footwear under roughly 30 different brand names. Then in 1916, it made the decision to consolidate those brands to create one label, which it called Keds.
The brand’s first product was the Champion, a four-eyelet, lace-up oxford with a canvas upper and a vulcanized rubber sole. It is considered the first mass-market canvas-top sneaker and is among the “Greatest Shoes of All Time,” according to FN.
Over the decades, the Keds Champion has been beloved for its feminine profile and light, flexible feel. It’s been worn by stars such as Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Yoko Ono and Taylor Swift, and had multiple big-screen moments, including a star turn in the hit film “Dirty Dancing” in 1987.
The Keds brand, which is now owned by Columbus, Ohio-based Designer Brands Inc., continues to sell the Original Champion silhouette.
At the turn of the century, though, U.S. Rubber wasn’t the only company innovating around footwear. Others were looking to take share of the market as well, and they smartly seized on a new sport growing in popularity around the country.
Hood Rubber Company was founded in 1896 by Frederic C. Hood and Arthur N. Hood. Their father, George Henry Hood, started the Boston Rubber Company and the sons worked at the company until it was consolidated into U.S. Rubber. Frustrated that Boston Rubber’s factories were closed as part of the merger, the Hood brothers set out on their own and built a plant in Watertown, Mass., where they began making rubber boots and eventually canvas-top shoes.
Around the same time, on the other side of the state, the new sport of basketball — invented 1981 by gym teacher Dr. James Naismith in Springfield, Mass. — was quickly being adopted in schools and colleges. And shoe companies saw an opportunity.
According to the brand, Hood Rubber began advertising its first basketball sneakers in its 1914 catalog. The shoe was a laced-to-toe high-top made with heavy duck canvas and a vulcanized rubber sole.
Over the next five decades, Hood — which merged with B.F. Goodrich in 1929 — produced some of the most popular athletic shoes for basketball, tennis, badminton and other sports until its factories eventually closed in 1969. In 2021, retailer Mitchell & Ness attempted unsuccessfully to revive the Hood Rubber footwear brand, though the company’s offshoot label, P.F. Flyers, is still in operation. It’s now owned by Kassia Davis, the daughter of New Balance majority owner Jim Davis, who bought the brand from New Balance in 2021.
But what about Converse, you ask? No, we certainly can’t forget one of the country’s oldest athletic brands.
Massachusetts businessman Marquis Mills Converse (reportedly an alum of U.S. Rubber) opened his Converse Rubber Shoe Company in Malden, Mass., in February 1908, where he initially made rubber galoshes. It wasn’t until the mid-1910s that Converse entered the athletic market. To cater to the new but growing sport of basketball, it debuted its Non-Skid shoe in 1917. Two years later, the sneaker was renamed the All-Star and eventually evolved into the Chuck Taylor All-Star (in honor of one of its most devoted salesmen and ambassadors).
By 1955, Chucks were the No. 1 basketball shoe in America and the brand owned 80 percent of the entire sneaker industry, according to the company. During the next few decades, its sneakers were worn by the majority of pro and college teams, including legendary players like Dr. J, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan (before signing his famed deal with Nike).
