December 1888: Dunlop patents inflatable tire [Opinion]

FAMOUS INVENTIONS ARE FEW, and they generally carry the name of a person or institution. Edison's lightbulb and Bell Labs' transistor are perhaps the most notable examples in this very small category, although Edison did not invent the lightbulb (just its more durable version), and Bell Labs merely reinvented the transistor (the solid-state device was patented in 1925 by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld). • At the other end of the recognition spectrum is the much larger category of epoch-making inventions whose origins are obscure. There is no better example of this than the inflatable tire, invented by one John Boyd Dunlop, a Scotsman living in Ireland. His British patent dates back 130 years, to 7 December 1888. • Before Dunlop, the best bet was the solid rubber tire, which had been available ever since Charles Goodyear's vulcanization process (patented in 1844) made it possible to produce durable rubber. Although such tires were a major improvement on solid wooden wheels or spoked wheels with iron rims, they still gave a jarring ride. Dunlop devised his prototype, in 1887, to smooth the bumpy ride of his son's tricycle. It was a primitive product, simply an inflated tube that was tied off, wrapped in linen, and fastened to a solid wooden tricycle wheel by nails. • An improved version found immediate use among the growing numbers of enthusiastic bicycle riders (see my column for June 2017). Soon riders using the new pneumatic tires won most of the cycling races, and a company was set up to manufacture the tires. However, as with so many other inventions, Dunlop's patent was eventually invalidated because it turned out that another Scotsman, Robert William Thomson, had patented the idea in 1847, even though he never made a practical product. • Still, Dunlop's invention stimulated work on larger tires for the newly invented automobile. In 1885 Karl Benz's first three-wheeled Patent Motorwagen had solid rubber tires. Six years later the Michelin brothers, André and Édouard, introduced their version of detachable rubber tires for bicycles, and in 1895 their two-seater, L'Éclair, became the first automobile with inflatable rubber tires to enter the nearly 1,200-kilometer (730-mile) Paris-Bordeaux-Paris race. Because its tires needed changing every 150 km, L'Éclair ended up in ninth place.