Rubber and the Making of Vietnam: An Ecological History, 1897–1975 (Flows, Migrations, and Exchanges)

by Michitake Aso

kinds of Rubber Goods for Mechanical purposes.”11 In addition to industrial needs, new mass consumer items such as the bicycle stimulated increases in rubber consumption. Throughout the nineteenth century, Kirkpatrick Macmillan and others steadily improved designs for a foot-peddled machine, or velocipede, promising faster travel. Its market was limited, however, by the lack of quality roads, particularly in the United States. Solid rubber tires existed but offered only slight comfort. In 1845, Robert William Thomson took out a patent on a pneumatic tire, but it was so unpromising that the idea sat virtually unnoticed until John Dunlop independently reinvented such a tire in 1888. Coinciding with the “safety bicycle,” which included rear-wheel propulsion, front-wheel steering, reduced wheel size, and diamond frame, the pneumatic tire promised freedom for the masses. The following year, the Dunlop Rubber Company and the Michelin Company began to produce pneumatic tires and bicycle sales boomed, as the product reached frontier areas such as the U.S. Midwest.