Goodyear salutes its aviation centennial with calendar, 2 new tire launches

A hundred years ago, Goodyear sold the world’s first aeroplane tire. The buyers were two young men who owned a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio – Wilbur and Orville Wright.

Tire dealers located near landing fields who serve aviators can obtain a special large-size wall calendar commemorating the 1909-2009 centennial of the flight-specific aircraft tire. The company is also launching new tire technology directed at the segment.

Other automotive companies this year have honored historic flights.

When the Wright brothers first took off in 1903 from Kitty Hawk, N.C. – the windswept seashore dunes provided a lot of lift – for the first successful flight in a self-powered aeroplane (it lasted all of 12 seconds), landing was a particular challenge. Merely getting airborne was tough enough, yet getting safely back on the ground demanded a high degree of skill and precision.

The Wrights and other early flight pioneers risked wrecking their fragile kite-like crafts on the rough airfields of the day because the landing gears consisted of bone-busting skids or flimsy bicycle tires. Goodyear, which had been established in 1898, thus found a receptive market in 1909 with the Goodyear Wing Aeroplane Tire. It was designed by the company’s engineers to be lightweight, puncture resistant and easy to remove.

And with a nod to April Fools Day, it turns out that Orville Wright was “an incorrigible practical joker,” according to biographer Tom Crouch. A relative of the brothers recounted an incident that took place during a lunch Orville’s home: “A big cockroach ran from my plate and ducked under his; it was a tin cockroach, and he had it on a thread. He enjoyed it thoroughly.”

First in flight, producing a steady line of failsafe aircraft tires has long been a dead-serious endeavor for Goodyear based on the tragedies that can occur when a wheel goes awry.

“Nobody could have envisioned that Goodyear’s aviation business would last at least 100 years,” notes Pierre Jambon, the company’s general manager of global aviation. “But we’ve prospered by doing the same things that we did at the beginning: Develop innovative new products to fulfill the changing needs of the aviation industry.”

The company introduced the first retreadable aircraft tire in 1927, opening an era of lower cost operation that is still a vital part of today’s industry. The Goodyear Airwheel in 1928 was the first low pressure aviation tire, virtually eliminating the need for a wheel by mounting directly to the hub.

In 1939, Goodyear extended its tire expertise into other areas of aeronautics, producing wheels, brakes, fuselages and other critical components for military aircraft. The Goodyear Aircraft Co. was incorporated that year; it went on to become the world’s largest supplier of flight-based tires.

The company developed the first successful autopilot for helicopters, implemented during the Korean War, and built the Corsair plane. In 1971, astronauts Alan Shepard and Ed Mitchell of the Apollo 14 moon mission were equipped with a rickshaw-like collecting cart on the lunar surface. The two-wheeled device came equipped with Goodyear tires. On the next mission, the first lunar rover vehicle featured revolutionary metal-and-wire “tires” from Goodyear.

Later that decade, the company’s experience in manufacturing tires for military aviation was applied to a growing passenger carrying segment. Business jets, such as those made by Lear, Gulfstream, Bombardier and Cessna, were becoming increasingly popular. By moving from propeller engines to jet engines, these airplanes needed relatively small tires that could handle high speeds. The Flight Eagle tire — based on a tire built for high-speed military aircraft — became the product of choice, says Jambon.