The tension of the metal band served the purpose of holding or "tying" the wooden spokes of the wheel together, hence the term "tire".In addition to tying the spokes together, the tire also provided a wear-resistant surface to the perimeter of the wheel. As wheels changed over time, the term "tire" continued to be used for the outer band even when it no longer served the purpose of tying the spokes together.

The Wheelwright's craft is amongst the oldest known to man, with the origins of the wheel dating back to prehistoric times. It was probably Stone Age man who first realised that a rolling stone or a round log of wood moved more easily than an object, which needed pulling or pushing. The first wheels were simply solid discs, carved out of one lump of wood, with solid wheels made from three shaped planks following dating from about 5000 BC. Solid wheels were not only heavy, but also tended to break across the grain of the wood, and so an improved and lighter wheel became desirable. By around 2000 BC, spoked wheels had begun to appear in Asia Minor, with the rims of these early spoked wheels made from one or two pieces of wood bent to a full circle. The rim itself connected to the hub, known to wheelwrights as the nave or stock, by wooden spokes. As the Iron Age proceeded, so the wheel developed, with tyres and nave bonds being introduced, and by the Roman period, many wheels were very much as the Victorians were making them, with sectional felloes and one-piece tyres. It was also about this time that the one-piece hoop tyre seems to have disappeared, only to re-emerge in the 18th century. Wheel construction in the period before the 18th century used short strips of iron, called strakes (or sometimes shoes), nailed across the joints of the felloes, and these wheels were known as 'being shod'.

Wheelwrights, apart from the use of differing materials, have been making wheels in the same way made since the early seventeenth century. The only significant design change being the development of the 'dished wheel', which was shaped like a saucer and having the hollow side facing outwards. With the spokes driven into the nave at an angle, so that the lowest spoke stood perpendicularly to the load, the upper part of the wheel was sloping away from the body of the cart or carriage. This produced two distinct advantages. Firstly, it enabled the body of the vehicle to be wider at the top than at the floor, and secondly it helped the wheel withstand the lateral thrust of the axle caused by the action of the horse.

Tire is an older spelling than tyre, but both were used in the 15th and 16th centuries for a metal tire; tire became the settled spelling in the 17th century. In the UK, tyre was revived in the 19th century for pneumatic tyres, possibly because it was used in some patent documents, though many continued to use tire for the iron variety.

The first practical pneumatic tire was made by the Scot, John Boyd Dunlop, in 1887 for his son's bicycle, in an effort to prevent the headaches his son had while riding on rough roads (Dunlop's patent was later declared invalid because of prior art by fellow Scot Robert William Thomson).

Pneumatic tires are made of a flexible elastomer material, such as rubber, with reinforcing materials such as fabric and wire. Tire companies were first started in the early 20th century, and grew in tandem with the auto industry. Today, over 1 billion tires are produced annually, in over 400 tire factories, with the three top tire makers commanding a 60% global market share.[

The rubber wheel is one of the greatest inventions in human history due to its wide range of applications. These applications include any type of transportation; whether it is people, materials, or equipment being moved. Charles Goodyear invented the first rubber tires in 1839. Before the advent of these tires, riding in a car was very uncomfortable due to the rough ride.

In 1830, Goodyear wanted to develop a rubber product that was useable by the general public. To carry out his experiments, Goodyear bought a truckload of raw rubber from a shoe factory and attempted to turn it into a complete solid. His experiments were halted, when he was sent to prison for not paying his debt from the rubber purchase. This set back did not stop Goodyear. While in debtor’s prison, Goodyear continued his experiments with the raw rubber and when he was released from jail, the product he was making had the consistency of gum. This rubber material was called natural or India rubber. Goodyear did not stop there with his experiments. He discovered that he was able to harden the rubber by mixing the rubber with sulfur and then treating it with an acid gas. The rubber ball was tossed around and it accidentally landed on top of a hot stove. To the surprise of Goodyear, the rubber began to change phase and melt, instead of scorching. However, when Goodyear attempted to scrape the rubber off the stove, he discovered it had hardened to the consistency that he was trying to achieve . With the discovery of vulcanization, and the beginning of the industrial revolution in both Europe and North America, the tire evolved from a rubberized canvas protecting a rubber tube to a complex fabric, steel and elastomeric composition.

AVAILABLE Tire ADS BY DATE AND CATEGORY

Atlas Tires

Throughout the 50's, Atlas Tires used a variety of multi-panel layouts for all its ads, whether they were for tires, batteries, anti-freeze or whatever other accessories the customer might need. Thanks to that design consistency, I'd say the company maintained a highly recognizable identity. Very laudable from a branding point of view.

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Bethlehem Steel Company

The company’s history traces to 1857, when a group of railroaders and investors of the city of Bethlehem, Pa., founded the Saucona Iron Company, which four years later was renamed Bethlehem Iron Company; the works was designed principally to turn out wrought-iron railroad rails. In 1899 the facilities were acquired by a newly formed enterprise, the Bethlehem Steel Company.

The major founder of the corporation in 1904–05 was Charles M. Schwab, who had earlier been one of the major figures in the creation of United States Steel Corporation (1901). In August 1901 he had bought control of Bethlehem Steel Company, only to see it fail in a financial scandal. Schwab borrowed and invested heavily to save the company’s assets, absorb other companies, and launch the Bethlehem Steel Corporation. The corporation thrived, partly as a result of the expanding orders for guns, munitions, and naval vessels from European powers both before and during World War I.

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B. F. Goodrich Tire Company

Goodrich Corporation (formerly the B.F. Goodrich Company) is an American aerospace manufacturing company based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Founded in Akron, Ohio in 1870 as Goodrich, Tew & Co. by Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich. The company name was changed to the "B.F. Goodrich Company" in 1880, to BFGoodrich in the 1980s, and to "Goodrich Corporation" in 2001.

The company has a history of innovation. As B.F. Goodrich, the company became one of the largest tire and rubber manufacturers in the world, helped in part by the 1986 merger with Uniroyal (formerly the United States Rubber Company). This product line was sold to Michelin in 1988, and the company merged with Rohr (1997), Coltec Industries, and TRW Aeronautical Systems (formerly Lucas Aerospace) in 2002. The sale of the specialty chemicals division and subsequent change to the current name completed the transformation. In 2006, company sales were $5.8 billion dollars, of which 18%, 16% and 12% of total revenues were accounted for by the U.S. government, Airbus and Boeing, respectively.

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Firestone Tire Company

Harvey Firestone moved to Akron, Ohio, in 1900 and started a rubber tire company to support what he believed would be the next big industry. At first, he simply produced rubber tires for horse-drawn carriages but, within a few years, the work of his friend Henry Ford would help make them both millionaires.

Before Henry Ford started his revolutionary car company in 1905, automobiles were much too expensive for the average person. By streamlining production, Ford was able to make cars a possibility for the masses. When it came time to fit his cars with tires, Ford turned to his friend Henry Firestone. After Ford began to order Firestone tires in 1905, Firestone had to increase its workforce more than tenfold to help meet demand. In 1906, the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company topped sales of $1 million, and, by 1910, the company had produced more than 1 million tires.

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Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company

Looking back, the founding of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in 1898 seems especially remarkable, for the beginning was anything but auspicious. The 38-year-old founder, Frank A. Seiberling, purchased the company’s first plant with a $3,500 down payment -- using money he borrowed from a brother-in-law Lucius C. Miles. The rubber and cotton that were the lifeblood of the industry had to be transported from halfway around the world, to a landlocked town that had only limited rail transportation. Even the man the company’s name memorialized, Charles Goodyear, had died penniless 30 years earlier despite his discovery of vulcanization after a long and courageous search.

Yet the timing couldn't have been better. The bicycle craze of the 1890s was booming. The horseless carriage, some ventured to call it the automobile, was a wide-open challenge. Even the depression of 1893 was beginning to fade. So on August 29, 1898, Goodyear was incorporated with a capital stock of $100,000.

David E. Hill, who purchased $30,000 of stock, became the first president. But it was the dynamic and visionary founder, hard-driving Seiberling, who chose the name and determined the distinctive trademark. The winged-foot trademark, inspired by a newel-post statuette of Mercury in the Seiberling home, has been altered over the years. Yet, it remains an integral part of the Goodyear signature, a symbolic link with the company’s historic past.

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General Tire

General Tire, Inc., is a world leader in the manufacture and marketing of tires of all kinds and is a major exporter of tires around the world. A subsidiary of Continental Aktiengesellschaft (A.G.), Europe's second-largest tire and rubber manufacturer--and the fourth-largest in the world&mdash of 1987, General Tire constitutes the biggest and most important component of this German tire holding company.

On the eve of the twenty-first century, the worldwide tire and rubber industry was in the hands of five major producers. In the nineteenth century, long before the invention of synthetic rubber and only a few decades after the discovery of vulcanization, hundreds of rubber and tire companies vied with one another. A very unlikely city, Akron, Ohio, was dubbed the "rubber capital of the world" in the late nineteenth century, and it was in Akron that the General Tire and Rubber Company was established in 1915. It is one of the few original American tire companies to have survived to the present day.

The founder of the company, William F. O'Neil, was a native of the city, although he and his partner, Winfred E. Fouse, had first entered the rubber tire business in Kansas City, Missouri. In early 1909 O'Neil and Fouse pooled their capital and established the Western Rubber & Supply Company (renamed the Western Tire & Rubber Company in 1911), which only sold already made tires. Both partners, however, had bigger dreams; they were natives of Akron, where O'Neil's father, a wealthy merchant, agreed to give the two young entrepreneurs a loan in order to open a tire manufacturing business. In 1915 The General Tire & Rubber Company was launched. While O'Neil's father was president of the new company, William O'Neil, in the role of general manager, wielded most of the authority, and delegated little of it until his death in 1960.

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Kelly-Springfield Tire Company

The Kelly-Springfield Tire Company was founded in Springfield, Ohio by Edwin Kelly and Arthur Grant in 1894.

Edwin Kelly originally called the company The Rubber Tire Wheel Company because it made rubber carriage wheels. Arthur Grant was issued US patent 554675 for his solid rubber tire in a rim channel. The tire was held on the wheel by two longitudinal wires embedded in the rubber and forming a circle of smaller circumference than the tire. The tire was an instant success because the rubber stayed on the wheel and the compound was of good quality.

The company was sold to the McMillin group in 1899 for $1,200,000. Arthur Grant received $166,000 in stock and $33,000 in cash for his share of the company. The McMillion group renamed the new company Consolidated Rubber Tire Company and it continued under that name until 1914. The name Kelly-Springfield Tire Company was given to the New York sales subsidiary in 1911. Consolidated's name was changed in 1914. "The" was added to the front of the name in 1932 and it became The Kelly-Springfield Tire Company.

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Uniroyal Tire Company Inc. & United States Rubber Tires

The United States Rubber Company was founded in Naugatuck, Connecticut in 1892. It was one of the original 12 stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and became Uniroyal Inc. in 1961. Uniroyal was acquired by France-based tire maker Michelin.

One of Uniroyal's best known products is the Tiger Paw tire introduced in the 1960s and included as original equipment for that decade's musclecars such as the Pontiac GTO, which itself was promoted as The Tiger during its early years. Today, Uniroyal still uses the Tiger Paw brand name in its tire line.

Uniroyal Inc. is not to be confused with Uniroyal, a Belgian tire manufacturer, now subsidiary of Continental AG.

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