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With over 50 years collective experience in founding, building, running and exiting tire e-commerce business around the globe, the Moray Place team are uniquley positioned to advise on all aspects of e-commerce, data, unit economics and innovation in this space.
Mike Welch OBE
Diam Tempor
Duis Quisque
MORAY PLACE
Our home in Edinburgh shares us a unique history with the inventor of the tire, a man way ahead of his time and a true innovator.
The pneumatic tyre was invented and patented by one of Scotland’s most prolific, but now largely forgotten, inventors, Robert William Thomson on 10 December 1845, 43 years before John Dunlop’s re-invention.
Thomson was only 23 when in 1845 he applied for the patent that would leave his mark on the world – Patent No 10990. The pneumatic rubber tyre or “aerial wheel” as Thomson referred to it – would eventually transform road travel from an uncomfortable succession of bumps and jolts, to a quiet smooth ride by providing a cushion of air between the road and vehicle itself.
Despite the demonstrable advantages of the pneumatic tyre, Robert’s invention was some fifty years ahead of its time, as back in 1845, not only were there no motor cars, but bicycles were only just starting to appear on town and city streets. This lack of demand together with the high production costs reduced pneumatic tyres to a mere curiosity.
Robert died on 8 March 1873 at his home in Moray Place, Edinburgh, at the early age of 50 and was buried in Dean Cemetery.
