The idea of a "sneaker" did not come along until an American inventor, Charles Goodyear, patented the process for the vulcanization of rubber.While many believe that the first athletic shoes was the famous Converse All Stars (developed in 1917), this is mistaken. This belief is easily attained simply because it was one of the highest selling athletic shoes of the early sneaker generation. The Spalding company produced athletic shoes specifically for the game of basketball as early as 1907,citation needed and an estate sale led athletic shoes experts to believe that some of the earliest shoes were produced by Colchester Rubber Company of Colchester,Connecticut, which went out of athletic shoes in 1893. Although there is no hard evidence suggesting this, the athletic shoes were found only a few miles away from the birthplace of basketball,and two years after the game was invented.