Greetings from the Rotary Club of Sutton in Ashfield
The Club are delighted to have received greetings and best wishes from the Rotary Club of Sutton in Ashfield (District 1200). They have a tradition to send greetings from their weekly meeting coupled with the Rotary Toast. This Rotary year they are selecting Clubs that are connected or associated with a famous invention. They chose to send greetings to the Club because the Pneumatic Tyre was invented by John Boyd Dunlop in Belfast in 1887.
Junior VP John Kirkland writes: I trust you (President Ken) will accept our greetings from President John Bates and members of the Rotary Club of Sutton in Ashfield to mark this historic event and invention. Our best wishes go to you and your members and trust you have a wonderful Rotary Year.
He continues: In 1887, John Boyd Dunlop developed the first practical pneumatic or inflatable tyre for his son's tricycle, fitting it to a wooden disc 96cm across in the yard of his home in Belfast. The tyre was an inflated tube of rubber. He then took his wheel and a metal wheel from his son's tricycle and rolled both across the yard together. The metal wheel stopped rolling but the pneumatic continued until hit a gatepost and rebounded. Dunlop then put pneumatics on both rear wheels of the tricycle. That too rolled better and Dunlop moved on to larger tyres for a bicycle "with even more startling results". He tested that in Cherryvale sports ground, South Belfast and patented it on 7 December 1888. However, two years after he was granted the patent Dunlop was officially informed that it was invalid as Scottish inventor Robert William Thompson (1822-1873), had patented the idea in France in 1846 and USA in 1847, but there was no real market for them!! Hence, Dunlop came up with pneumatic tyres as described this time around, however, "the invention handily coincided with the new bicycle craze", and, Dunlop's invention "was to stop his son getting headaches from riding his bumpy tricycle". The rest is history!!! John Boyd Dunlop's invention in a recent National Poll was acclaimed in the top 50.