For our 250th episode we are delving into a story about two competing Scotsmen that takes us from Scotland to Belfast to Dublin and then across the world with an invention that would revolutionise transport – the pneumatic tyre.
Along the way in this extra-long feature length episode, we are going to challenge some widely held beliefs about the true inventor of the pneumatic tyre. And we begin by categorically stating that the pneumatic tyre wasn’t invented by John Boyd Dunlop in 1887 in the yard of his house in Belfast, County Antrim, it was in fact another Scotsman, Robert William Thomson that first invented and first patented the pneumatic tyre in 1845.
To ensure we got our facts right, on this contentious story we collaborated with Neil G Smith, Librarian of the RW Thomson Memorial Fellowship https://www.facebook.com/RWTMF The fellowship was formed in 1975 in Scotland to perpetuate his memory and legacy as a mechanical genius in general and as the inventor of the pneumatic tyre in 1845 in particular. In this age of social media, their campaign has adapted as they challenge and educate in an ever-changing and evolving online world, where facts are so often overlooked.
Our unsung hero as the true inventor of the pneumatic tyre is Robert William Thomson (1822 – 1873), born in Stonehaven, Scotland. He left school at 14 and moved to Charleston, United States and two years later he was back in Scotland teaching himself chemistry, electricity and astronomy. Thomson set up a workshop when just 17-years-of-age and developed various innovations, including a washing mangle, ribbon saw and the first working model of his elliptic rotary steam engine.
He completed an engineering apprenticeship in Aberdeen and Dundee circa 1839 and joined a civil engineering company in Glasgow. Transitioning to railway engineering, he supervised controlled blasts using electricity, near Dover for the South-Eastern Railway.
As a prolific inventor Thomson was always refining and while in his early 20s he worked on what was to become his pneumatic tyre design for wheels to give “a cushion of air to the ground, rail or track on which they run”.
On December 10th, 1845, when Thomson was 23 years of age he formally patented his pneumatic tyre design – British Patent 10990. Further tyre patents followed in France in 1846 and the US Patent 5104 on May 8th, 1847. However, unable at the time to acquire suitable materials to enter production, Thomson did not progress into manufacturing.
In his book “Wheels of Fortune: A Salute to Pioneers”, Sir Arthur du Cros, himself interestingly a former managing director of the rival Dunlop Rubber Company, wrote that, “At the age of twenty-three he (Thomson) discovered the principle of the pneumatic tyre and recorded his final specification in a masterly and fully-illustrated document….”
Du Cros went on to recount the March 1847 showcasing of the Thomson “Aerial Wheels” at Regent’s Park in London, were “animal-drawn wagons were fitted and tested in the streets and parks of London in a series of costly and well-thought-out experiments, in the course of which side-slip, skidding and other problems were studied and dealt with.”
These were not speed trials but were mainly intended to demonstrate how easily loads could be drawn, motion maintained and noise reduced, when wheels were fitted with air tyres.”
It was later reported that a single set of Thomson’s “Aerial Wheels” fitted on a carriage during the Regent’s Park tests completed an impressive 1200-miles without exhibiting any signs of wear or damage.
This brings us up to 1847 and now we turn to the story of John Boyd Dunlop, born in 1840 Dreghorn, North Ayrshire, who studied veterinary surgery in Edinburgh, before relocating to Downpatrick County Down in north-east Ireland and setting up a veterinary practice. With his brother James Dunlop, they later moved their practice to 38 – 42 May Street in Belfast.
So, the story in popular history goes, it was in October 1887 in the yard of his Belfast workshop on May Street, that Dunlop first experimented with a new type of tyre for the tricycle of his 9-year-old son Johnny, when he used strips of linen to tie an inflated tube of sheet rubber to a wooden disc 96 centimetres across.
To test his new idea he removed a metal wheel from his son’s tricycle and rolled it alongside the inflated tyre across the yard. The inflatable tyre rolled further and then rebounded off the wall of the yard. Inspired by this development, Dunlop then fitted inflatable tyres to the tricycle’s rear wheels, which greatly decreased the road friction and improved its rolling motion. Inspired by this success, Dunlop then advanced to larger tyres for bicycles.
Now we come to the filing of patents for Dunlop’s tyres design and some interesting timing….
As is widely stated Dunlop filed for his own tyre patent in 1888 and this is where the title of our story, “John Boyd Dunlop – inventor or pretender” comes into focus.
Robert William Thomson died at his Moray Place home in Edinburgh on March 8th 1873 having amassed a huge fortune from his inventions including his “Ariel Wheels” which were awarded a British patent in 1845.
Thomson was survived by his wife Clara Thomson who died on 13th July 1888 and just a short ten days later on the 23rd July 1888, Dunlop filed his own patent for an “air-filled tube attached to the wheel by rubber cement”.
Only a cynic would claim that Dunlop waited until the former Mrs Thomson was dead before he “invented” the pneumatic tyre and Neil G Smith, Librarian of the RW Thomson Memorial Fellowship proudly claims to be that cynic.
Neil has told us that from his research of Clara she was her husband’s biggest supporter and that there was no way that she would have let someone take the credit for Thomson’s invention.
After Dunlop registered his own tyre design in July 1888 he was granted the full patent in July 1889. Tyre tests conducted at the Cherryvale sports ground in South Belfast drew attention and he was able to make commercial deals with a number of Belfast-based businessmen to promote and retail his tyres and he began cycle tyre production in Belfast in late 1890.
In 1889, Willie Hume, the captain of the Belfast Cruisers Cycling Club, made history by being the first member of the public to purchase a bicycle equipped with pneumatic tyres. Seeing the potential, Dunlop proposed that Hume use these tyres in a race and the challenge was accepted and he participated in the Queens College sports event in Belfast on 18 May 1889, where he emerged victorious in all four cycling events. Shortly thereafter, in Liverpool, Hume secured victories in all but one of the cycling events. Dunlop’s pneumatic tyre was a big hit.
Among the competitors who lost the Belfast bicycle races in Ireland in May 1889 was Arthur du Cros the son of the president of the Irish Cyclists’ Association, Harvey du Cros. Sensing an opportunity, Harvey du Cros forged a connection with J.B. Dunlop and together they established a tyre factory on Dublin’s Stephen Street Upper to commercialise Dunlop’s tyre patent. However, while it was John Dunlop’s’ name above the door he only retained a 20% share of the business with du Cros holding the remainder.
Stephen Street Upper was also the location of the Booth Bros tool-making factory and one of the Booths was on the Dunlop board of directors.
In 1889 Booth Bros were in some financial difficulties, and seeing another commercial opportunity Harvey du Cros, re-floated this business as the ‘Pneumatic Tyre and Booth’s Cycle Agency’ and branches in Belfast, Cork and Limerick in addition to Dublin were soon established.
We understand that Edlin & Co of Belfast also made diamond framed ‘safety bicycles’ for J.B. Dunlop.
It appears that Booths and Dunlop were closely intertwined in the following years as both companies were drawn into the auto industry in the 1900s as the Dunlop factory supplied the Booth auto assembly plant with tyres.
We have previously covered the story of the remarkable Booth Brothers company in Season 2 – Episode 75 “Booth Brothers – 190 years of bike selling, coach building & car assembling in Dublin” check it out on www.irelandmade.ie
However, two years after being granted the patent Dunlop received official notification that his patent was deemed invalid as Robert William Thomson had already patented the same idea back in 1845.
As they say “the plot thickens” and what developed next may shed some light as to why Dunlop and not Thomson is widely regarded as the inventor of the pneumatic tyre.
According to research provided to us by Neil G Smith of the RW Thomson Memorial Fellowship, the second husband of Thomson’s widow Clara was John Fletcher Moulton, who would become a famous patents lawyer.
In what was surely a clear-cut case of conflict of interest, considering Moulton’s marriage to Clara Thomson, he was hired by the original [Dunlop] company and he steered them through the litigious period of the early 1890s when their 1889 patent had been declared invalid.
Collaborating in the Pneumatic Tyre and Booth’s Cycle Agency, Dunlop and du Cros worked to overcome significant challenges that followed the loss of the tyre patent. To promote Dunlop products they enlisted the expertise of inventors Charles Kingston Welch and William Erskine Bartlett and obtained additional rights and patents, which offered some level of safeguarding for their business’s position.
However, in the end John Boyd Dunlop didn’t profit greatly from his invention and in 1892 he retired from his Belfast veterinary practice and moved to Ballsbridge on the south side of Dublin. From 1892 Dunlop was director of drapery firm Todd Burns and by 1895 he had sold out his interests in the tyre and rubber business and took no further part in the Dunlop company.
John Boyd Dunlop died at home in Ballsbridge in 1921. He is buried at Dublin’s Deans Grange Cemetery. Since the 1980s John Boyd Dunlop has been honoured in Northern Ireland by having his image featured on the £10 banknote of the Inventor Series issued by the Northern Bank.
Having amassed a huge fortune from his inventions, Robert William Thomson died at his Moray Place home in Edinburgh on 8 March 1873 aged 50 and was buried in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh.
Along with the pneumatic tyre, British patent 10990 – (1845) Thomson held many patents relating to transport including a model for guiding road steamers on street tramways, road steamers, steam boilers & omnibuses. Thomson was also the originator of many transport related inventions including the elliptical rotary disk steam engine, hydraulic dry dock and portable steam crane.
Can we now put it to rest that in 1845 Robert William Thomson invented the pneumatic tyre?
With the assistance of the RW Thomson Memorial Fellowship we have gathered some interesting quotes from the tyre industry:
“Dunlop’s French and British tyre patents (the only two he had taken out) were both invalid and never conferred the slightest protection upon their owners. In fact, the world’s first pneumatic tyre had actually been invented and patented by a Scotsman, Robert William Thomson, as early as 1845.”
Michelin Centenary 1905-2005: A Celebration of Michelin’s First Hundred Years in the British Isles.
“The great part played by Thomson in the development of modern road locomotion is, I am afraid, known to very few. He was the first and the true inventor of elastic or resilient tyres of all kinds – first of the air-filled or pneumatic tyres and afterwards of solid rubber tyres – of all forms. He devoted many years of his life to the development and adoption of such tyres to road locomotion.” “I am not overstating the case when I say that Thomson, whose centenary will be celebrated on the 29th, [June 1922] is the real father of modern road haulage.”
The Commercial Motor Magazine (June 27 1922) – R. E. Crompton (founder member of the RAC)
“…the late R W Thomson, to whom they owed everything connected with resilient wheels.”
Improvements in Resilient Wheels for Vehicles – R.C. Parsons
“Thomson’s patent is a highly intelligent document. It sets out in exact detail how the invention is to be constructed and what materials are recommended for use in making it. The inventor is remarkably up to date in his technology. Vulcanisation, the process of stabilising rubber by compounding it with sulphur and heating the mixture, was discovered only in 1839, while Thomson was still in America, yet it is mentioned here in the patent specification as a process suitable for use in the manufacture of the aerial wheel, and capable of affecting it’s design”
The History of the Pneumatic Tyre (Dunlop Archive Project) – Eric Tompkins
“So the Michelins had a legal battle on their hands and they’d win it. At some point in the litigation the lawyers stumbled upon a choice piece of evidence. Yes, Dunlop discovered and patented his pneumatic tyres in 1888. But no, his were not the first. Unknown even to Dunlop, Robert William Thomson had obtained a patent for ‘aerial wheels’ all the way back in 1845, describing his invention at the time as air-filled rubber belts permitting ‘the wheels… at every part of their revolution [to] present a cushion of air to the ground, or rail, or track on which they run.’”
The Michelin Men: Driving an Empire – Lottman & Herbert
Information sources:
Bicycling.com
Getty Images
Guy Jones
History Ireland
History of the Pneumatic Tyre – Eric Tompkins
Michelin Centenary 1905-2005: A Celebration of Michelin’s First Hundred Years in the British Isles – Niblett & Reynolds
Motor makers in Ireland
National Motor Museum – Heritage Images
National Museums Scotland
Old Photos of Cork
Online Bicycle Museum
RW Thomson Memorial Fellowship
Scotland’s Forgotten Inventor – Robert William Thomson – Historic-uk.com
The Dunlop story: the life, death and re-birth of a multi-national – Cooke & Dunlop
The Michelin Men: Driving an Empire – Lottman & Herbert
The Vintage News
Threadinburgh.scot
Ulster History
