Sir, – I refer to the book review by Bernice Harrison, of Robert Penn's It's All About the Bike,(Weekend Review, August 14th, 2010).
In the review, it is stated that John Boyd Dunlop invented the pneumatic tyre after: “A doctor had recommended cycling for his sickly nine-year-old son but suggested it would be better if some way could be found to minimise the jarring of the cobbled streets of Belfast”.
However, Dunlop himself writes that he had been interested for some time in producing a tyre “which would overcome vibration and also be fast on all surfaces” (JB Dunlop’s autobiography) and this interest was based on his own observations. It is not clear how either a doctor or the boy’s health was involved in any way in the tyre’s development, and the author Robert Penn does not provide a source for this.
In fact, all evidence is to the contrary. In Dunlop’s autobiography, he describes his son as “rather a robust lad”. More impartial research also supports this. Jim Cooke, in a biography on Dunlop, writes that the son “asked his father to make tyres to allow him to beat his bigger companions whom he raced against after school in the People’s Park” (with no implication that he was in any way debilitated).
As this concerns my father (Johnnie Dunlop), I would be grateful if you were to publish this letter. – Yours, etc,