Supporting Publications

Some say it started with the wheel - believed invented around 3500 B.C., possible as an extension of mankind’s earlier practice of rolling a log under a heavy object in order to move it.

Over time, the log was shortened into two thinly cut circular sections held together by an axle. This was done to eliminate unnecessary weight, thereby reducing the effort required to get the assembly rolling.

Early wheels were often two or three segments of wood held together by wooden or metal cross members. A hole in the wheel’s exact center carried a hub which revolved on a fixed axle. Most vehicles of that time had only two wheels.

The first “tire” was made from curved pieces of word, called felloes, attached to the bare wheel as a running surface.

Large-headed nails were sometimes driven into the surface of the wood to resist abrasion and thereby prolong the tire’s life.

Later, as the wheel-maker’s art continued to develop, tires themselves often were fashioned from metal. This extended the tire’s life, but did little to improve the rider’s comfort or reduce vehicle wear caused by vibration and road shock.

Technically advanced societies, including those of the Egyptians and Romans, began placing softer materials, such as leather, over the tire’s running surface in an effort to soften the ride.

Thus began the evolutionary process which ultimately led first to the solid rubber tire and later the air-inflated or “pneumatic” tire.

Speed was the primary motivating factor. As vehicle speed increased so also did perception of the need to reduce vibration and road shock.

Earlier, when people were plodding on foot behind a slow-moving oxcart, virtually no one had seen the need for a softer riding tire, even though this undoubtedly would have made the vehicle easier to pull along the rock-strewn roads of that time period.

But in time - when the cart was replaced by a lighter and faster chariot drawn by three or more horses - the need for softer riding tires became obvious.

This situation changed little even after mechanical power began to replace muscle in transportation.

Early self-propelled vehicles, beginning in 1769 with the steam-powered military tractor invented by French engineer Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot, rolled almost exclusively on iron wheels.

Heavy and slow, these road steamers continued to run on nonflexible wheels until the introduction of solid rubber tires for such applications nearly a century later.

One reason for rubber’s late arrival was that it wasn’t a suitable material for such demanding use until “tamed” through the process of vulcanization, discovered by Charles Goodyear and licensed in the 1840s in the United States and in the U.K.

Until vulcanization became widespread, rubber tended to become sticky during hot weather only to turn brittle and inflexible in colder months - neither characteristic being desirable in a tire.

The first pneumatic carriage tire was patented in 1845 by Robert W. Thomson of Middlesex, England. It’s thought to be the earliest attempt to use air and vulcanized rubber in a vehicle tire.

Members of England’s nobility were among the first to purchase Thomson’s “aerial wheels” for their broughams. The first set of these tires sold for £42.2 with an additional charge of 12 shillings for a “brass condenser” (tire pump).

From all accounts, these pneumatic tires performed well and received positive reviews in the press. Thomson’s tires were said to be both “noiseless” and “comfortable” and to “greatly reduce the tractive effort required.”

“Mechanics’ Magazine” in 1847 described a set of such tires which had traveled more than 1,200 miles with “no signs of deterioration.”

Nevertheless, pneumatic tires still didn’t come into popular use at that time because their high cost and inconvenience didn’t make them worth adopting.

Meanwhile, solid rubber tires gradually increased in popularity.

It was the advent of the diamond-framed safety bicycle which opened the first actual market for the pneumatic tire, following its “re-invention” in 1888 by John Boyd Dunlop. This, in turn, launched the worldwide tire industry as we know it today.

Again, speed was a prime factor in motivating its acceptance.

Lightweight and fast by the standards of that day, the safety bicycle was the perfect vehicle on which to introduce the air-inflated tire.

It was a marriage made in heaven - the pneumatic tire offering lower rolling resistance on most surfaces and the safety bicycle having the gearing system to exploit this performance advantage to its fullest.

These combinations proved unbeatable on the race track, and soon cyclists the world over were clamoring for pneumatic-tired safeties.

Virtually all that remained to assure the future of the pneumatic was to fit such tires on the “horseless carriage,” and that was accomplished in 1895 by Edouard and Andre Michelin of France.

The Michelin brothers, determined to prove the air-inflated tire acceptable for automobiles, drove a pneumatic-equipped car that year in a race from Paris to Bordeaux and back.

They came in last of nine finishers - experienced almost one flat tire for every 90 miles traveled en route - which prompted the race winner to predict that air-inflated tires would “never be acceptable for use in motor cars.”

Undaunted, the Michelins introduced a line of pneumatic auto tires. Other manufacturers, including B.F. Goodrich and Dunlop, quickly followed suit.

The pneumatic soon proved as big a boon to the automobile as it had previously been to the bicycle.

The “motor age” was dawning, and with it the birth of a whole new industry based on the automobile. Soon the rubber industry was growing as fast as the world was shrinking under this new mode of transportation.

Neither the industry nor the world would ever be the same again!