The pneumatic tyre’s story began with horse-drawn carriages. In 1845, Robert William Thomson developed an air-filled tyre with a rubberised fabric tube protected by a leather casing. It promised a smoother ride, but manufacturing costs held back its wider adoption at the time.
In Belfast in 1888, John Boyd Dunlop sought to make his son’s tricycle more comfortable on cobbles. He glued thin rubber sheets around the wheels and inflated them with a football pump. A practical response to a rough surface opened a new chapter in tyre development.
Other inventors had tackled jolts through the frame: the Whippet bicycle of 1885 used a sprung structure. Pneumatic tyres reduced vibration, gradually making such complicated frames less attractive than simpler rigid ones. The pursuit of comfort thus changed more than the wheels; it also helped reshape the bicycle itself.