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Making History
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 Tuesday 3.00-3.30 p.m |
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Sue Cook presents the series that examines listeners' historical queries, exploring avenues of research and uncovering mysteries. |
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The pneumatic bicycle tyre
Follow-up to last week's item
Was the pneumatic tyre invented by John Boyd Dunlop or by Robert Thomson, the Scottish engineer?
Brief summary
The writer and broadcaster Adam Hart-Davis, consulted by Making History, says that they both deserve credit.
Dunlop was a Scottish vet living in Belfast. His son Johnny complained that when he rode his bicycle to school the cobbled streets made his bottom sore. Dunlop solved his son's problem by inventing a pneumatic tyre, but then it became clear that this tyre was faster - the lad kept winning cycle races. There was a famous cycle race on the Queen's College playing fields on 18 May 1889 and Dunlop persuaded the cycle champion Willie Hume to use the new tyres. Willie won the race and everybody wanted the tyres, and so the Dunlop Rubber Company was formed.
What Dunlop did not realise was that 43 years earlier another Scot had patented almost the same thing. Robert Thomson, who had been to America, returned to Britain and was given a workshop by his father where he invented all sorts of things. In 1845 Thomson patented what he called aerial wheels. There were no bicycles then, so it would not have been a bicycle tyre that he invented. There were no internal combustion engines either, just a few steam carriages, and otherwise horse-drawn carriages and carts. However, Thomson did some elegant experiments. He fitted his tyres to a carriage and, in Regent's Park in London, had it pulled side by side with an ordinary carriage. He showed it was much easier to pull the one with pneumatic tyres. All the watching journalists thought it would be slower because the tyres were soft. It was easier to pull and also silent - it did not make the noise of a carriage. The pneumatic tyres were a huge success but there was no market at the time - rubber was very expensive in the 1840s.
Robert Thomson is much under-rated. He invented a whole range of things including a fountain pen - possibly the first fountain pen, though there are other claimants. He never became rich and famous, perhaps because he was so far ahead of his time.
Further reading
Elspeth Wills, Scottish Firsts: A Celebration of Innovation and Achievement (Mainstream Publishing, 2002)
Alistair Fyfe, Scottish Inventors (Scottish Collection Series, Collins, 1999)
Websites
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See AlsoThe ±«Óãtv is not responsible for the content of external sites |
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Vanessa has presentedÌýscience and current affairs programmes for ±«Óãtv, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Discovery and has presented for ±«Óãtv Radio 4 & Five Live and a regular contributor to the Daily Telegraph and the Mail on Sunday, Scotsman and Sunday Herald.Ìý