Over a century ago, people were accustomed to riding bicycles with wooden wheels, often with steel rims, fashioned similarly to wagon wheels. Scottish veterinarian John Boyd Dunlop introduced a product that would change this forever. In 1888, he invented the world's first pneumatic, or inflatable, rubber tire for bicycles. His invention would later be used for car tires.
Born on February 5, 1840, in Ayrshire, Scotland, Dunlop earned a degree in veterinary medicine at Edinburgh Veterinary College at the age of 19. He practiced in Edinburgh until 1867 when he moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, an area with particularly rough roads. Dunlop married Margaret Stevenson in 1871 and they had two children together. Dunlop noted that his son's tricycle riding was extremely uncomfortable for the boy. He began working on ways to improve the experience by fashioning cushioned coverings for the wheels. He used inflated canvas tubes made of pieces of an old garden hose and bonded them together with liquid rubber, fitting them to the circumference of each wheel. He patented the idea in 1888.