THE RUBBER TIRE was obviously what the automobile was going to require and just about as soon as men began to believe the automobile was the coming thing men began to manufacture tires for it.
For some people Dunlop for example who was already making bicycle tire sit looked to be a new if small market for what they were already selling. An auto mobile (for the hyphen was still often used in those days) was obviously heavier than a bicycle but that problem and any others that came up could be easily overcome by making larger and heavier bicycle tires or so the bicycle tire manufacturers thought.
This didn’t turn out to be true. There were problems concerned with automobile tires which immediately turned up and which can be considered only partially solved even today.
The first problem which became apparent was that the smooth surface of the tire provided little traction. The rear wheels would slip in mud (or on a wet surface) when the power was applied. The front wheels when turned very often didn’t take “a bite” on the ground or road and the car went off the road in obedience to the laws of inertia: A body in motion tends to remain in motion in the absence of other forces. Some means had to be devised to make the tire stick to the road when that was necessary and to roll smoothly when it wasn’t.
Everybody but Henry Ford (who solemnly swore it was “when the bobolinks came in 1893”) seems agreed that the first Ford took to the road on June 4 1896. The first Ford used bicycle tires and wheels. It also had a tendency to skid because even bicycle tires were then just as smooth as the manufacturers could make them.
On Jefferson Avenue in Detroit in those days was one of the most prominent bicycle tire manufacturers the Morgan & Wright Tire Company. One of their employees Charles J. Bailey gave a good deal of thought to Henry Ford and his automobile.
Ford’s interest in the automobile gave it certain respectability in Detroit. Henry Ford was the Chief Engineer for the Detroit Gas Light Company (now Detroit Edison) and its highest paid employee at $120 a month. If a man with a job and income like that thought there was something to the horseless buggy well then perhaps it wasn’t the absolute nonsense it sounded like.
Bailey realized that something was going to have to be done to give the tires of the automobile a decent “foot.” He did some serious thinking and then some experimentation and came up with what he called the “won’t slip” tire.
What he had done was vulcanize a line of rubber buttons to the wearing surface of the tire. He felt that the buttons would catch on small irregularities in smooth pavement and work something like a paddle wheel in mud.
It was a major contribution to the automobile but Bailey was unable to profit from patenting the idea. The idea was not adapted for Morgan & Wright’s bicycle tires until treaded tires (those which put a “foot” down) were standard on automobiles. Morgan & Wright weren’t even convinced that the automobile was much more than a passing fancy.
This isn’t to suggest that Morgan & Wright or the Hartford Rubber Company (who after all had built the first tires for the Duryea brothers) or Dunlop or the C. & G.
Tire Company was men of narrow vision unable to glimpse the future. So far as they were concerned they were in the midst of a bonanza. The United States was already on wheels bicycle wheels.
The turn of the century and the growing popularity of the rubber tired bicycle were giving man and Americans in particular mobility never before known. Before the bicycle you either walked which was how most people got around 01* took a horse drawn trolley a boat or the rail road. A horse was a major investment to start with and expensive to keep. Only the middle class could afford a pleasure horse and then it was seldom more than one horse per family. Anybody with a tandem pair of horses was obviously well to do.
The bicycle was changing all this. They were cheaper than horses and they didn’t have to be fed and practically anybody with a job could afford one. The middle classes were perfectly willing to accept the theory that the horse which caused no end of talk.
The tire manufacturers weren’t at all embarrassed about being where they were. They were in on the ground floor of a great and growing social and economic change. They were perfectly willing to accept the theory that the horseless buggy was the coming thing. But say in fifty years sometime around 1950. Not now.
One man thought the existing tire manufacturers were right. But he thought they underestimated the market and that there was room for one more firm particularly if someone like him was in charge of it.
The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company largest in the world doesn’t especially like to talk about it but the fact is that it was bom in a hotel saloon in Chicago in the winter of 1898, then as now saloons are places where men gather to exchange ideas and information and to try to pick up a few honest dollars by the sweat of their brows rather than that of their backs.
Frank Seiberling didn’t have much more than the price of his drinks when he went into the bar that day. There he met another gentleman of similar financial circumstances. The second man owned some idle property by coincidence in Seiberling’s home town of Akron Ohio. There was a severe Frank A. Seiberling founder of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, Photo taken circa 1919. GOODYEAR PHOTO depression at the time in the United States and the factory was not only idle but there were no good prospects for things getting better in the immediate future.
The only people who seemed to be making any money in those days were the bicycle people. Establishing a business to make bicycles seemed out of the question but establishing a business providing accessories for bicycles (tires wheels brake pads seats etc. ) might be something else.
Before the saloon closed the factory had changed hands and the former owner had four notes totaling $10000 from Seiberling. Although apparently buoyed both by his good fortune and the hours they’d spent at the bar the owner had demanded something in cash as a down payment.
Seiberling went to his sister’s house in the middle of the night and talked his brother in law into lending him $3500. Whatever else he might have been he was obviously a salesman of the first rank.
In the morning he was $13500 in debt possessor of two factory buildings which contained not one piece of equipment to make anything at all and not much of an idea what to do with it except that inspiration of the night before to get into the bicycle business somehow.
He went to Akron where his inspiration was greeted with something less than wild enthusiasm by his family. It was pointed out to him that Akron already had a rubber company a solid one owned and established by the highly respected Dr. Goodrich who had served his country well in the Civil War. Another was probably not needed.
But there was nothing to do but try to salvage what could be salvaged from Frank Seiberling’s apparent folly. There was only one customer for the factory in the United States and the former owner had found him in a Chicago saloon. Seiberling’s idea that he go into the rubber business was the only possible solution everyone seemed to come back to, but how to give the new company some instant prestige?
Who invented rubber? Something likes Dr. Goodrich. Goodyear. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company Frank Seiberling president came into being chartered by the State of Ohio to engage in the rubber business.
Although it might be fairly said that Seiberling was a young man somewhat given to impulse it must also be said that he had an enormous capacity for work and an active imagination.
The company literally borrowing for its every move began to install equipment hire employees and then to manufacture and sell a number of things. They began with rubber bands hot water bottles horse shoe pads and then as they began to accumulate a small amount of working capital into bicycle accessories handle bar grips rubber inserts for the pedals rubber plugs to repair punctures in tires and finally into the manufacture of bicycle and carriage tires themselves.
For a while things went very well. On one memorable day they produced 4500 bicycle tires and their efficient sales force already had orders for them. There was only one problem. The tires were made under a process patented by a man named Tilling hast who received a royalty for each tire made. Tilling hast had developed a technique for a two layer tire what we would now call a two ply tire.
There were two layers of rubber impregnated cotton cloth separated by a layer of plain cotton muslin. The muslin kept the two rubberized layers from sticking together when the tire was vulcanized.
Tilling hast one day decided he was not going to renew the license under which the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company was making tires which left Goodyear in just about as bad a fix as Seiberling had been on the morning he woke up to remember he was $13500 in debt and a factory owner.
Seiberling on his own had for some time wondered if muslin was necessary in the process. If he could find some other means of keeping the plies from sticking together then there would be no patent infringement involved.
Some all night experimentation revealed that tissue paper worked just as well as muslin. Furthermore it was a good deal cheaper than muslin and therefore was an improvement on the Tilling hast idea worthy of a patent of its own and not an infringement on Tilling hast patent.
Seiberling ordered Goodyear bicycle tire manufacture resumed using tissue paper. While Tilling hast lawyers howled in rage production rose to 4000 times a day. Seiberling calmly pointed out that he wasn’t making tires with a muslin layer and therefore wasn’t violating Tilling hast patent.
It was the first of a series of lengthy and angry lawsuits involving patents and the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and it set something of a pattern: Tilling hast after getting everything ready for a courtroom battle suddenly decided he would not prosecute.
Just about as soon as the Tilling hast patent battle was over Goodyear got into another far more serious battle with Kelly Springfield then a giant in the carriage tire industry. They lost the first round of the battle. They had been making tires which were held to be patented by a man named Grant who had assigned manufacturing rights to Kelly Springfield.
Seiberling and his brother Charles who had by now joined the company tried to get out of this problem by inventing a whole new tire. The Grant patent and the new Goodyear tire both were designed to keep sand from getting between the rubber of the tire and the steel of the wheel. The new Goodyear tire had a flange on each side looking something like a wing and Goodyear called it the Wing Tire.
Kelly Springfield felt it was simply a small modification on their Grant patent and took the company to court. The court agreed with Kelly Springfield. Seiberling announced they would appeal the decision and in the meantime would make the Wing Tire. The judge ordered Goodyear to put up a million dollars which if their appeal failed would be paid to Kelly Springfield.
Seiberling didn’t have ten thousand dollars that he could afford to put up but again he was a salesman. He talked to his brother in law again and came up with $250000 and then he talked the judge into lowering the bond to that figure.
Then following the old military axiom that the best defense is a good offense Seiberling called in his foremen and told them they were going to put a better carriage tire on the market than Kelly Springfield manufactured and more over they were going to put it on the market at a lower price than Kelly Springfield.
If there were no profits well then there would be no profits. Just, as long as there was enough money to make the payroll and pay their suppliers. Kelly Springfield of course was just as convinced of the righteousness of their, own position and both sides were apparently familiar with that part of the Bible which advocates an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Kelly Springfield held an absolute monopoly on tire mounting. The Grant patent covered this as well and if you wanted to have a tire mounted on a wheel you had to send the wheel and tire to Kelly Springfield.
Kelly Springfield announced that they no longer desired the tire mounting business of the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. Gloom descended on Goodyear’s office. They were about to get whipped. The best and cheapest carriage tire on the market was useless unless it could be mounted on a wheel.
In May 1901 William State a mechanical engineer from Springfield Ohio paid a social call on a friend at Goodyear. He asked the cause of the gloom and the situation was explained to him. State said the problem was obviously one that could be solved and what they should do was hire a good automotive engineer.
“Would you mind repeating that to Mr. Seiberling?” he was asked and when he nodded he was led into Seiberling’s presence. Seiberling heard him out and said four words: “O.K. you are hired.” ‘Tm not talking about me” State said. “I have a job. I don’t want yours.”
“Show him where he can work” Seiberling ordered. State was ushered into a room at the rear of the factory. There was obviously no point in arguing with Seiberling.
Within a matter of Hours State had invented a new tire mounting technique. It not only was a wholly new technique one which didn’t come close to the Grant patent but one which would permit Goodyear to ship its dealers the machine (a mounting device and a blow torch) together with carriage tires in a roll like garden hose so that tires could be installed at any country hardware store. It instantly put Goodyear back in business.
That joy was short lived however. In 1902 the courts refused a patent on the Goodyear version of the Wing Tire.
Goodyear was forbidden therefore to build any more tires. But there was a countersuit one challenging the legality of the Grant patent itself. There seemed to be little hope for this suit for the first court decision had held the Wing to be a copy of the Grant which seemed to say that it felt the Grant patent to be valid.
Courts move in mysterious ways however. When the suit came to trial the court held that there had never been a Grant patent in the first place that the Grant patent was invalid, which meant that Goodyear could make either its own tire the Wing or the Grant tire it had been making before it had been accused of violating the Grant patent.
Goodyear went back into manufacture with its own tire which suggests that they had believed all along in the honesty of their own position.
About this same time another tire man came along: Harvey S. Firestone began his business career as a buggy salesman and in 1893 was the Michigan state representative for the Columbus (Ohio) Buggy Company. He was regarded as a “live wire” in the business live wire having the same meaning before the turn of the century as “jet propelled” had a half century later. He really had an ability to make the Columbus Buggies seem different and better than the competition although there was really very little difference between buggies in a given price range. They consisted of four wooden wheels held together by an iron or steel tire a body some seats a dashboard to keep the mud off the passengers and a means to hitch the whole thing to a horse or horses.
Once a certain quality of manufacture had been achieved it was hard to make one buggy very much better than another buggy. Once the best quality wood was used with the best quality leather for the seats and the best quality canvas for the roof and sides there wasn’t much a salesman could sell except his personality and Firestone was apparently very good at that. When he was twenty three years old he was given the entire state of Michigan for his territory an honor (and a source of income) normally reserved for men in the middle years.
The next year in 1893 buggy salesman Firestone showed up on the streets of Detroit with absolutely the latest word in buggy accessories rubber tired wheels. It was the first time that anyone in Detroit had ever seen such a thing.
It was the coming thing Firestone said a brilliant idea destined to revolutionize the buggy industry. Not only did rubber tires provide a better ride than steel and iron tires but they were quieter lasted thousands of miles and were easier to get out of trolley tracks than the old fashioned kind.
There were also certain problems with them which sales man Firestone didn’t think it necessary to volunteer. The major problem with them was they wouldn’t stay on the wheel.
As he sold his buggies with the new rubber wheels Fire stone spent a good deal of time looking into the matter of improving them. Once people used rubber tires they were reluctant to go back to the old fashioned steel wheel and whoever could come up with a superior rubber tired wheel or even the best rubber tire period was obviously going to make a good deal of money.
The depression of 1896 literally forced him into the tire business when his employers went broke. They had had to pay their crack Michigan state representative almost until the hour the sheriff appeared to padlock the premises so while Firestone was suddenly unemployed he wasn’t broke.
He went to Chicago picked up two financial partners (financial partners meant they would put their money into the business trusting Firestone’s honesty and willingness to work but they wouldn’t work in the business themselves) and bought out a tire store.
Firestone had a service business to start. He bought his tires from a manufacturer probably Goodrich in Akron Ohio or U. S. Rubber in Hartford. They came in coils like garden hose. An appropriate length of tire would be cut from the roll joined together and then put in the grooved outer portion of the wheel.
When it was on straight and tight the two wires which were imbedded in the tire held the tire in place.
Primarily as a tribute to Harvey Firestone’s ability as a salesman rather than to the superiority of his product Fire stone Rubber Tire Company prospered. By 1898 it had bought out the Imperial Rubber Tire Company and the two shared the bulk of the buggy tire business in Chicago.
Compared to the Rubber Tire Wheel Company of spring field Ohio however the Firestone and Imperial Rubber Tire companies were midgets. Rubber Tire saw what share of the Chicago market the two had and offered to buy them out. The first and several subsequent offers were refused but finally an offer was made which Firestone (and his partners) felt couldn’t be refused. Firestone and Imperial were absorbed by Rubber Tire (which itself was soon absorbed by an even larger operation the Consolidated Rubber Tire Company of New York) and Harvey Firestone became an employee rather than a partner/owner in charge of the Chicago wholesale and retail operations.
But he wasn’t destined to be a company man except in his own company and within a year mild differences of opinion between him and his superiors had become major and he quit returning to Akron with $42000 in cash a patent on a tire mounting process and the determination to be his own boss in the future.
Firestone believed that his patent would be the basis for entering the tire business again on his own. Other tires either came from the factory as circles of rubber or came in rolls and were formed into circles at the dealership. Then they were mounted on the rim by stretching and prying them into place.
Firestone s patent involved the use of wires imbedded in the rubber at the base. The “tire” was laid in the U shaped channel of the rim and then the wires were tightened welded and the excess rubber cut off. It was a good idea but it wasn’t quite as good as one owned by a man named Louis E. Sisler who had improbably abandoned the practice of medicine to become a politician and was at the time the County Auditor for Akron and its environs.
Sisler was aware of Firestone’s background in the tire business and more importantly of his reputation as a sales man. He asked Firestone to have a look at his tire and set up a meeting at his home. Also present were the man who had invented the tire James A. Swine hart; James Christy Jr. a leather manufacturer who was willing to put money into a business involving the tire providing certain other conditions could be met; and W D. Buckley who worked for Dr. Sisler.
The Swine hart/Sisler/Christy tire was shown and explained to Harvey Firestone. Rubber of a certain consistency was heated (not to the point of vulcanization) and forced through a die like a noodle giving it its general shape. While still warm and soft holes were punched through the base of it from side to side and rubber cross bars of a much stiffer consistency were inserted in the holes a quarter inch crossbar about every three quarters of an inch.
Then the tire and crossbars were vulcanized welding the two together into one body. The tire could be easily held to a wheel rim by running an endless wire over the crossbars.
The metal of the wire would be stretched just a fraction of an inch and the greater tension of the wire really held the tire in place.
Firestone recognized a good idea when he saw one. That night the Swine hart/Sisler/Christy tire died and the Fire stone Tire & Rubber Company manufacturers of the Fire stone Cross Bar tire was bom.
It took them only eight days from the time Harvey Fire stone saw the crossbar tire to complete all the complicated legal preparations for incorporation and to have the charter issued by the state of Ohio.
Firestone put up $10000 and the other men another $10000. He contributed his patent to the company and they contributed the crossbar patent. Firestone received half of the 400 shares of stock (par value $100) and the other men shared the other 200 shares. Firestone went on the payroll not as president (leather man Christy took that title) but as general manager at a salary of $3000 a year.
Swine hart was named vice president and Dr. Sisler became the secretary. Harvey Firestone being Harvey Fire tone however insisted that the man in charge of the money the treasurer be someone in whom he had full faith and trust. Harvey S. Firestone became the treasurer. The Incorporation Charter was dated August 3 1900.