The B.F. Goodrich Company introduces the tubeless tire - May 11th, 1947

On this day in 1947, the B.F. Goodrich Company announced its development of a tubeless car tire. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that cruises the backstreets of history one day at
a time. I'm Gabeluesier, and today we're looking at the

(00:22):
automotive innovation that made getting a flat tire far less
likely and less dangerous than it used to be. The
day was May eleventh, nineteen forty seven. The BF Goodrich

(00:44):
Company announced its development of a tube Bliss car tire.
Several patents for tube Bliss tires had been granted before
outside the United States, but they were always held back
by technical limitations. BF Goodrich to break that pattern, and
although its own patent was still under review, the company

(01:05):
felt confident enough to announce production of the first tire
without an inner tube of air. The design was the
result of more than three years of engineering and was
said to possess several advantages over traditional tires, including greater
safety and durability. Good Rich was still road testing the
tires at the time of the announcement, and the company

(01:27):
wouldn't receive a patent for them until nineteen fifty two,
but once Tubeliss tires were finally widely available, it was
clear they'd been worth the weight. Within three years of
the national rollout, Tubeliss tires became the industry's standard for automobiles,
just as they are today. If you think of a

(01:48):
tire as a cushioned wheel, then the concept dates back
to at least the fourteenth century. That's when some Europeans
began using leather to wrap the wooden wheels of their
wagons so that their ride would be smoother. Over time,
rubber gradually replaced leather as the wheel dressing of choice,
and eventually inner wheels were scrapped completely in favor of

(02:10):
tires made from solid rubber. The next innovation came in
the eighteen forties, when Scottish engineer Robert Thompson patented the
first pneumatic tire or tube tire. His design consisted of
a rubberized fabric tube filled with air and enclosed within
a hollow leather tire. Thompson's aerial wheels, as he called them,

(02:33):
were faster and more comfortable to ride on than wheels
of wood or solid rubber, but the inner tubes they
relied on were incredibly expensive to produce. As a result,
the idea for air filled tires fell by the wayside
for another forty years. In eighteen eighty eight, Scottish veterinarian
John Boyd Dunlop revived the concept for use on bicycles

(02:57):
and other non motorized vehicles. Then in the eighteen nineties,
French tire manufacturer Michelin proved that pneumatic tires could also
be used successfully on automobiles. Tubed tires became the norm
for the next fifty years. The standard design consisted of
two parts, just like Robert Thompson's. There was the inner

(03:19):
tube filled with compressed air and a rubber outer casing
wrapped around it. It seemed like an ideal arrangement, with
the air tube ensuring a softer ride and the rubber
shell protecting the tube and giving the tire traction. However,
there was a major downside to pneumatic tires on long drives.
Road friction tended to heat up both the tire and

(03:41):
the tube of air inside it, and if that heated
tube suffered even the slightest puncture, it could cause a
serious blowout or even shred the tire completely. As you
might expect, tire blowouts were more frequent and more injurious
during the heyday of tubed tires, and that in inherent
safety risk is one of the main reasons why BF

(04:03):
Goodrich decided to ditch the tube for good. Returning to
solid rubber wheels wasn't an option, though, as drivers had
grown accustomed to riding on a cushion of air. The
challenge then was to find a way to trap pressurized
air within the tire walls themselves rather than in a tube.
That way, there would be less internal friction, and any

(04:25):
heat that did build up would dissipate more efficiently without
a rubber tube in the middle to absorb it. That
alone would have resulted in fewer blowouts. But Goodrich also
planned to reinforce the walls of its tires so that
they would hold up better to punctures, either by leaking
air more slowly or by being plugged by whatever had
pierced the tire in the first place. As mentioned earlier,

(04:49):
the BF Goodrich Company wasn't the first to think of
these improvements. Many patents for tubeless tires had been filed
in the past, at least one as far back as
nineteen twenty eight. The problem was most of those designs
employed natural rubber, which was too soft and prone to
air leakage. Goodrich succeeded where others had failed, largely due

(05:11):
to timing. Thanks to wartime advances in manufacturing, synthetic buttle
rubber had become much easier and cheaper to make. It
was the perfect choice for tires because it was much
harder and far less porous than natural rubber. So once
World War II was over, Goodrich set to work on
trying to produce the world's first functional tube bliss tire.

(05:35):
The final design was the work of research and development
engineer Frank Herzig, working for Goodrich. He applied for a
patent in nineteen forty six, never suspecting that the approval
process would drag on for nearly six years. Herzig didn't
sit around waiting, though. Instead he used the time to
personally test the tires in a Texas desert. He also

(05:58):
arranged other road tests, including installing the tires on a
fleet of taxis and on cars used by the Ohio
State Police. B F. Goodrich was founded and headquartered in Akron, Ohio.
The road testing proved successful, so by the time the
U S. Patent Office finally gave the ok in nineteen
fifty two, the company's Tubeliss tires were ready to roll.

(06:21):
The first US car to come standard with Tubeliss tires
was the nineteen fifty four Packered Clipper. The tire's puncture
resistant features were their main selling point, but not their
only one. Another benefit to Tubeliss tires was that they
helped reduce a vehicle's weight, which in turn improved its mileage.
That was an especially big deal at the time, as

(06:43):
post war construction in the industrial boom had caused oil
prices to skyrocket. For the average American, a set of
tires that prevented blowouts and saved you money at the
pump was pretty much a dream come true. Those two
factors spurred the rapid adoption of Tubeliss tires, so much
so that by nineteen fifty five they came standard on

(07:05):
the vast majority of new American cars. Not to be outdone,
Michelin introduced its own take on the Tubeliss tire a
few years later. It was called the radial Ply tire
after its key design feature, tire walls that were reinforced
by a series of alternating layers or piles of tough

(07:25):
rubber cord. That Tubeliss model quickly supplanted earlier versions, and
to this day it remains the standard for automobiles worldwide.
That said, the evolution of tires is still ongoing, and
in recent years several large companies have started developing so
called airless tires. Instead of relying on high pressure air

(07:48):
to support a car's weight and absorb shock from the road,
these non pneumatic tires would achieve the same thing using
a structure of polyurethane spokes stretched ala along the inner
sides of the tire. They kind of look like the
protective guard of a household fan, except you know, as
wide as a car tire and presumably much stronger. To

(08:11):
be clear, though the spokes of an airless tire would
never come in contact with the surface of a road,
there would still be a ring of rubber tread surrounding
the structure, and in that way, the design kind of
harkens back to the original tires of the thirteen hundreds,
the wagon wheels covered in leather. It's a little strange
to see a technical innovation go full circle, but since

(08:33):
we are talking about tires, I guess it's fitt I'm
Gabe Lucy, and hopefully you now know a little more
about history today than you did yesterday. If you enjoyed
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(08:55):
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