ABSTRACT
The wheel has long been used to facilitate the movement of carts, wagons, bicycles, and other items, and eventually, covered with a tire, the movement of automobiles. But tires mounted on wheels, as we know them today, did not always exist. Early wheels consisted of wood covered with leather or steel, as depicted in Figure 1.1. Not until after 1844 and Charles Goodyear’s discovery of a process of curing rubber known as vulcanization could rubber be used to cover wheels. These wheels were covered with a thin layer of solid rubber, as depicted in Figure 1.2. Later, the size and shape of solid rubber tires changed. They were absent of any design, but were still stronger, resisted cutting and abrasion, and provided more shock absorption than wood alone or wood covered with steel. In 1845, Robert William Thomson of England patented the first
pneumatic tire.2 The word “pneumatic” means “filled with air under pressure.” Thomson’s pneumatic tire used materials other than rubber and was not very successful. Not until years later in 1888 did John Boyd Dunlop of Belfast, Ireland create a commercially practical version of the pneumatic tire for a bicycle.3 Although Dunlop’s pneumatic bicycle tire was not used on automobiles, he is still generally credited as the inventor of the pneumatic tire that we know today. Dunlop’s pneumatic tire was inflatable and used rubber to encapsulate the air. But it was still many years later before the first successful pneumatic tire for cars, using an air-filled inner tube, saw more common usage.
