The story of tire beads and tires [antikvár]

Before the first automobilé made its appearance, before, even, the era of the pneumatic tire, wire and rubber had förmed a sort of alliance whose chief aim was to hold rubber tires on wheels. Today, that alliance is more important than ever, for practically every rubber tire in use depends on wire to keep it on its rim. The wire is contained in a pair of comparatively little-known but highly important parts of the tire called beads. In the story of the automobilé and its tires, beads have remained dimly in the background. Everyone has read advertisements extolling the virtues of countless tire tread designs: bragging about long mileage records, freedom from blowouts, the wonders of certain types of cords, and (in the earlier days) claiming high resistance to rim-cutting. But how many times have you seen a tire ad that described the virtues, the functions, the really vitai role of tire beads? Probably seldom, if ever. Yet the two beads in every pneumatic tire are the very foundations of that tire. Without them it would be useless. The chief function of the steel wire that forms the heart of every modern tire bead is to hold the tire on its rim-to resist the action of the inflation pressure, which constantly tries to force it off, and the actions of operational stresses, which intermittently strive to accomplish the same thing. The bead foundation of the tire is the connecting link through which the vehicle load is transferred from rim to tire. Tires can be built and run without treads or cords or breaker strips or white sidewalls, or without the various other well-publicized elements of their make-up. But you would have a difficult time getting around the block on a modern pneumatic tire that somehow had lost its beads. In fact, you wouldn't even get started, for there would be no connection between tire casing and wheel rim. It is perhaps a paradox that beads, the true foundations of pneumatic