Charles Goodyear creates a stronger, durable, more elastic type of rubber. Soon, condoms are mass produced. Unlike modern condoms--made to be used once and thrown away--early condoms were washed, lathered with petroleum jelly, and put away in special wooden boxes for later re-use.

British playwright and essayist George Bernard Shaw called the rubber condom the "Greatest invention of the nineteenth century." We're guessing people were only too happy to get rid of those animal intestine condoms.