The safety bicycle and the pneumatic tyre.

In about twenty years the bicycle went from a tall machine with a huge front wheel to the chain-driven shape still ridden today, and it gained air-filled tyres. This page follows that change through the museums and records that describe it, and sets out the long argument over who invented the pneumatic tyre.

The high wheeler

The pedal velocipede of the 1860s drove its front wheel directly: one turn of the pedals made one turn of the wheel. The Coventry Transport Museum explains what followed. Makers enlarged the front wheel so that each turn of the pedals covered more ground. The result went by three names, the museum says: penny-farthing, high-wheeler and ordinary bicycle.

The museum's own example is an Ariel, which it lists as a Starley and Hillman make of 1871. It had a steel frame and steel wheels, tangent spokes adjusted at the hub, and solid rubber tyres.

The safety bicycle (1885)

The high wheeler put its rider a long way off the ground. The Science Museum says designers in the late 1870s had been trying layouts that brought the rider closer to it, to make cycling safer.

The Science Museum Group credits John Kemp Starley with designing the first successful safety bicycle, the Rover, made in Coventry in 1885. Its catalogue entry for the Rover in its collection (object 1901-6) says the machine had the basic features of a modern bicycle. Among them was a chain driving the rear wheel, which meant the front wheel no longer had to be large, so both wheels could be the same size. The museum's example has a diamond frame and solid rubber tyres. The museum says the safety bicycle made cycling hugely popular with both men and women.

Starley's background

Search summaries of Grace's Guide and the National Cycle Collection give some background that we could not confirm on the pages themselves. They say John Kemp Starley moved to Coventry in 1872 to work with his uncle, James Starley, the Ariel's co-maker; founded Starley and Sutton with William Sutton in 1877; was using the Rover name by 1883; and showed the first Rover at the Stanley Show in early 1885.

The pneumatic tyre

The Rover in the Science Museum still runs on solid rubber. The air-filled tyre arrived within a few years, but who invented it is disputed, and the dispute goes back to the 1840s.

Claim	Date	Who says so
Robert William Thomson invented the pneumatic tyre	Patented 1845 (France 1846, United States 1847)	Grace's Guide
John Boyd Dunlop made the first practical pneumatic tyre for cycles	Patented 1888	Grace's Guide records the 1888 patent; the "widely credited" view is from a vintage-bicycle seller's history page (an operator statement)

Thomson, 1845

Grace's Guide calls Robert William Thomson, who was born in Stonehaven and lived from 1822 to 1873, the Scottish inventor of the pneumatic tyre. It records his patent of 1845, a French patent in 1846 and a US patent in 1847, and a demonstration of his "Aerial Wheels" in Regent's Park, London, in March 1847.

Dunlop, 1888

John Boyd Dunlop's tyre came more than forty years later and was made for cycles. The sources differ on when he first fitted one:

October 1887, on his son's tricycle, according to Wikipedia, which we saw only as a search summary (unconfirmed).
1888, the year a vintage-bicycle seller's history page (an operator statement) gives for both the tricycle tyre and the patent.

Dunlop's patent ruled invalid

Grace's Guide says Dunlop was officially told, about two years after his 1888 patent was granted, that it was invalid because Thomson's patent came first. That puts the ruling at about 1890. An EBSCO research summary, which we saw only as a search summary, gives 1892 instead. Neither date is confirmed by a primary record in our research.

The tyre proves itself

Racing showed what the new tyre could do. On 18 May 1889, according to Wikipedia, which we saw only as a search summary and could not confirm, Willie Hume, captain of the Belfast Cruisers Cycling Club, won all four cycling events at the Queen's College Sports in Belfast on pneumatic tyres, then won all but one event at a meeting in Liverpool.

Two years later the makers used the first Paris-Brest-Paris, in 1891, to promote pneumatic tyres, which rolled better than solid rubber. That comes from Bill Bryant's short history of the race for Randonneurs USA; the race itself is on the first races.

What changed, and what did not

By about 1890, then, the sources describe a bicycle with two wheels of equal size, a chain to the rear wheel and air in its tyres. Gears and the derailleur came later, and their slow acceptance in racing is on the derailleur. How the bicycle started is on the draisine and the velocipede, and the dates on this page are gathered in the timeline.

Sources