Born into a farming family in Dreghorn in Ayshire, John Boyd Dunlop was a veterinary surgeon by profession, having qualified at Edinburgh University when he was only 19. He worked as a vet in Edinburgh for nearly ten years before moving to Belfast. John Boyd Dunlop's veterinary work involved a considerable amount of travelling over roads that were often very rough, something made still more uncomfortable by the fact that wheels on carriages had rims of iron or wood. But it was the cobbled streets of Belfast, and his son's difficulty learning to ride a tricycle with solid rubber tyres, that caused inspiration to strike in 1887. Dunlop's brainwave was to produce a rubber tyre that could be inflated with air - a pneumatic tyre - which absorbed shocks transmitted from the road much more effectively than solid tyres. This innovation provided John Boyd Dunlop with the inspiration to start the company that would eventually be known as `Dunlop Tyres`. Since that time, Dunlop has continued to write some of the greatest pages in the history of the tyre in`more then 120 years of innovation.