Tires are an important part of four-wheeled and two-wheeled vehicles that are commonly used by residents to make a trip. Can be used to the office, market, mall or used for touring with colleagues. Can you imagine if you ride a motorbike or car but don’t have tires?

Tires are devices that cover the wheels (rims) of a wheel. This device is an important part of land vehicles, because it is in direct contact with the road surface.

modern motorized vehicles using wheels and tires.

1. Human knowledge of wheels

The beginning of the use of tires cannot be separated from the history of the invention and use of wheels by humans. The wheel as a vital part of a vehicle or machine, was first invented by the Sumerians in 3500 BC.

Meanwhile in Mesopotamia, also found a round object with an axis in the middle which is thought to be a placemat for making pottery from that time. This proves that at that time people began to know the working principle of circular motion.

Meanwhile, the means of transportation or conveyance in the form of a wheelbarrow began to be known in Assyria in 3,000 BC, then continued in the Indus Valley. While the people of Mainland and Central Europe were new to the stroller around 1000 BC, even in England they only knew about it in 500 BC.

The Assyrian relic made of bronze.

At first the wheeled vehicle could not be turned. Every time you turn, all the wheels and the carriage must be lifted. This problem was then solved with the discovery of the axle for the front wheel that could turn the wheel. Wheels gradually become part of culture and technology. Then the need for wheels developed using rubber tires.

2. The long journey of a tire

a. Before 1845. In the beginning, tires for transportation were not filled with air like those used on motorbikes or cars today, aka only made of solid rubber. The disadvantage of using tires with solid rubber is that it makes the vehicle uncomfortable when driving, because solid rubber cannot absorb shocks when the vehicle is moving on the road.

b. 1845. R. W. Thomson invented and patented his idea of ​​an inflatable tire. He designed this tire to contain small rubber pipes that are inflated, then wrapped in a layer of leather as the outer tire. So it’s like a car tire filled with a lot of bicycle tires.

The advantage is that the tire is not easy to completely deflate if it gets hit by a nail. But it’s definitely a hassle when filling the air and if it’s really a flat tire, patching it will also be difficult. In addition, Thompson’s tires are expensive in terms of production costs, so they are not widely liked.

c. 1887. John Boyd Dunlop, a Scottish veterinarian designed the first inflatable inner tube for his son’s tricycle. In 1888 he installed this tire of his invention on a bicycle that would take part in the Irish Cyclist race. As a result, the bike came out victorious.

Dunlop’s name began to be known as a top-notch tire maker. It turned out that this moment became the starting point for the growth of the modern tire industry. Dunlop pneumatic tires have become standard equipment for bicycles because they are excellent for use on rough roads. In the same year, Dunlop tires were used for the first time in cars produced by Karl Benz.

d. In 1890. Dunlop’s tires were still having problems. The reason is that Dunlop’s pneumatic (pneumatic) tires are designed to stick to the rim, so it’s really difficult if the tire goes flat or wants to change the inner tube.

Then Charles Kingston Welch (C. K. Welch) perfected it by designing the rim lips and flexible tire edges so that the tires did not have to stick to the rims. The results of the design of outer tires and inner tubes like this are used up to now in motor vehicles.

f. Year 1895. French man, Andrea Michelin tried to install tires filled with air on a car. Unfortunately, the experiment failed.

g. In 1903 P. W. Litchfield of the Goodyear tire company successfully designed the world’s first tubeless pneumatic tire. Unfortunately, the invention was not sold commercially until 1954. The advantage of this Goodyear tire is that it is not easy to deflate so it is safer and easier to patch without having to be disassembled.

h. 1908. Frank A. Seiberling made tires with grooves or treads for better road traction. The tread motif serves to reduce traction (the maximum frictional force that can be generated between two surfaces without slipping) between the tire and the asphalt. So that the vehicle runs stably.

Not only that, Frank A. Seiberling also built a tire factory in the city of Bogor, West Java in 1935, which became the first tire factory in Indonesia (at that time it was still the Dutch East Indies).

This factory is a branch of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, headquartered in Ohio, United States of America. Go nameOdyear is named after the man who invented the rubber vulcanization technique in 1839, Charles Goodyear.

i. 1910. Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich (B. F. Goodrich) succeeded in making tires last longer by adding carbon to rubber as a raw material for tires. Until the tires are black and of better quality like motor vehicle tires that are now sold in the market.

Maybe not many people know that in the past the tires that were marketed were not black but were the natural color of rubber, which was white. Then Binney and Smith invented a formula for the chemical carbon black and sold it to the Goodrich Tire Company in the 1900s. Since then, carbon black has been shown to significantly improve tire quality.

j. 1911. Philip Strauss successfully installed pneumatic tires on cars. Then he produced the first tires for cars through his company, Hardman Tire & Rubber Company.

k. The year 1937. This year the development of tires is getting better, where the use of synthetic rubber (artificial) to replace natural rubber as tire raw material by B. F. Goodrich.

l. 1948. Michelin makes the first radial tire with better traction. Radial tires are formed from layers of fibers that cross the tire circle. Radial tire belts are made of steel with a stiffer tread and more shock resistance. In fact, the first radial tire design was patented in 1915 by Arthur W. Savage, an inventor and successful tire manufacturer in San Diego, California.

3. Thomson and Dunlop Father of World Tires

R.W. Thomson and Dunlop created tires together but in different years called live tires aka air hollow tires. So Thomson and Dunlop called the Father of the World Tire.

Meanwhile, Charles Goodyear was the forerunner to the presence of retreaded rubber tires. Then with the development of technology Charles Kingston Welch invented the inner tube, while William Erskine Bartlett invented the outer tire.

Well, this is where the various types and types of tires used in modern-day motorized vehicles are created, which now number up to 4,000 types of tires.