2-361-749 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The first pneumatic tyre, 1845 (1956). Robert William Thomson (1822-1873) a Scottish inventor, first patented the pneumatic tyre in 1845. He was frustrated by the lack of thin rubber and returned to making solid tyres. In 1888 John Boyd Dunlop was granted a patent for his pneumatic bicycle tyre, but this was revoked in 1890 when it was ruled that Thomson's patent anticipated Dunlop's. A print from Things, a volume about the origin and early history of many things, common and less common, essential and inessential, by Readers Union The Grosvenor Press, London, 1956.