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Christopher Columbus discovered Mexican Indians who made balls and bags with it. Today, it keeps the world moving. Dr Peter Lewis explains the history of rubber.
Over 40 years after Thompson's invention of the pneumatic tyre, in 1888, a Belfast vet, John Dunlop, responded to a request from his young son for better tyres for his trike. When ridden over the rough cobbles of Belfast's streets, solid rubber tyres just could not give a comfortable ride. Various rubber tubes were used by vets, and Dunlop re-invented the pneumatic tyre by fitting a wheel with an inflated rubber tube protected by a heavier outer cover. After much experimentation, the world's first bike tyre emerged.
Dunlop's first patent to protect the invention was inevitably invalid because of Thompson's prior patent, but he went on to invent the valve and numerous other components which were proved valid. Those inventions were the base on which he and others built the bike tyre industry, which brought cycling into a new era for everyone. It was an era when industrial progress had created new-found wealth and leisure time for millions. As with any new and fundamental invention, the idea was taken up by others, especially by Michelin in France (1896) to develop a much heavier duty device, the car tyre.
The outbreak of the Second World War saw the loss of much of the world’s natural rubber (NR) production to the Japanese, and led directly to synthetic rubber, of which there are many types, made from gas or oil. These new materials replaced NR where different properties were needed, such as the tyre inner (butyl rubber), polybutadiene for the sidewall and SBR (tread).
Indeed, many different types of synthetic rubber are available to designers today, many for specialty tasks requiring (for example) very high or low temperatures. Yet NR is still a valuable international commodity, helping many developing countries earn useful hard currency. The technology of processing the raw rubber has improved greatly over the years, but the basics still remain the same as they were when Kew Gardens selected the best plants for cloning and transplanting.
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Content last updated: 17/08/2005
About our expert
Dr Peter Lewis (CEng FIM MAE MFSS) is a senior lecturer in the Department of Materials Engineering at the Open University, with extensive experience of failure investigation of polymer and composite products. He is course chair of T838 (Design and Manufacture of Polymer products) and T839 (Forensic Engineering).
