Monday 23rd July 1888

Scottish born and educated John Boyd Dunlop applied to patent the pneumatic tyre as “an improvement in the tyres or wheels for bicycles, tricycles and other road tyres.” Although Robert William Thomson, among his various other inventions, had an earlier patent for “carriage wheels” with a pneumatic tyre (1845), there was little demand for it in his lifetime, and was forgotten. To improve his son’s bicycle, Dunlop reinvented the idea, and developed it into a commercially successful product. He formed a company in 1889, which became Dunlop Rubber Co in 1900. The first tyres were glued to the wheel rim.