Pneumatic Tire

A pneumatic tire is a ring-shaped, air-filled component fitted around a wheel's rim to carry a vehicle's load from the axle to the ground and to provide traction, replacing the metal bands fitted to wooden wheels that came before it; modern tires are built from natural and synthetic rubber, fabric, wire, and carbon black around a tread that grips the road. John Boyd Dunlop, working in Belfast, built the first practical pneumatic tire in 1888 to smooth his young son's ride on a tricycle over rough pavement, though Robert William Thomson had patented the underlying pneumatic-tire concept in 1847 without developing it commercially; Dunlop's contribution was recognizing that rubber could withstand a tire's wear while keeping its resilience, and the cyclist Willie Hume demonstrated the design's advantage by winning races on it in Ireland and England in 1889.