DETACHABLE TIRES

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 26

DETACHABLE TIRES

DEATH OF INVENTOR

Another page in history has been turned by the death of Mr. Charles Kingston Welch, at Coventry.in December. He was the inventor of the detachable pneumatic tire. The pneumatic tire itself, of course, as such, had been invented by Mr. J. B. Dunlop, but

it had its drawbacks, particularly in regard to tho fact that it was cemented on to the rim of the wheel, and it was a difficult matter to get it off again when a puncture had .to be repaired. This was before the ■ days of motoring and the tire was at that time applied to the wheels of bicycles. The late Mr. C. K. Welch, who was an engineer living in London, conceived the idea of protecting the tube of a tire by a cover finished with an inextensible edge mounted on a rim of such a section aa would allow it, when deflated, to be removed from the rim, and his patents were acquired by the Dunlop Company. In making his tire he used inextensible wire edges, and the tire became extreniely popular with 'cyclists, so that when tho motor-car was introduced—most of the early motorists being enthusiastic cyclists—it wag not 1 long before the idea of applying the principle ,to motor tires was mooted. Numerous experiments were carried out, and Welch's principle of construction was applied to a few motor tires by the Dunlop Company, although at first without much success, as they were too lightly constructed. But so far as detachable tires went, tho use of a beaded edge instead of the wire—which was already being used on some bicycle wheels—was eventually adopted, with 'success by tho Michelin firm in France, and these tires were used on some of the cars in French racing in tho early part of tho century. The principle adopted by the French was followed by the Dunlop and other companies in England, and gradually developed into the pneumatic tiro of to-day, which is now one of the most reliablo parts of the machine. Without it motoring, as it is carried out to-day, would bo impossible, and to Mr. Welch and his fellow inventors and experimenters may be attributed;much of tho success which to-day attends the motor industry. Mr. Welch was a.quiet little man of studious hatjit, and after tho expiration of his patent in 1904, he retired from business, and lived quietly at Coventry on tho competence which his inventive genius, had secured him.