At Bayside Limousines, we’re justifiably proud of our fleet.
There are some very different vehicles in it but whether you’re considering limousine hire Sydney, Melbourne or anywhere else, you’ll see all our vehicles have one thing in common – tyres!
So, where did the tyre (or tire) come from?
A logical progression
For centuries, people had put things onto the outside of wooden cartwheel rims to try and make them quieter, more comfortable or most commonly, able to last longer on the poor roads. Originally those coverings were leather but later became iron.
The process of fixing those bands in English was called creating “attire”, as in dressing the wheel.
The Scottish dimension
Solid rubber began to be used for some rims in the 19th century.
Incredibly, it was as early as the 1840s that a Scot, Robert William Thomson, patented the world’s first design for a pneumatic tyre but this never went into production.
It was another Scot, John Boyd Dunlop, who produced the first practical pneumatic tyre in 1888 in Belfast, Ireland (leading to good-natured squabbles as to whether it’s an Irish or Scottish invention!). He was trying to solve the problem of his son’s headaches caused by riding an uncomfortable bicycle over cobbled roads.
Of course, much subsequently changed over time but the rest was history.
Tyre or Tire?
As is often the case when looking at spellings differences between the US and other parts of the English-speaking world, it’s ironically actually the US spelling of “Tire” which is the oldest and original.
Coming from “attire”, the spelling of “tire” was the accepted abbreviation in the UK until the 1880s/90s and even into the earlier 20th century.
The variant of “tyre” seems to have sprung up in Britain around the mid-19th century, perhaps to differentiate between wooden and iron rimmed wheels and those using rubber though it was little used. It’s only in the 20th century that “tyre” becomes widespread.
Hope you found this interesting!
