Old cycling maps

A brilliant commercial idea, invention or novelty is of no value until somebody who believes in it puts his money where his mouth is and places it before the public. Lots has been written about the pneumatic tyre, an 1888 brainchild usually credited to John Boyd Dunlop, a Scottish vet who lived on Dublin's Morehampton Road, or, if you are pedantic, patented by R.W. Thomson, another Scot, back in 1846. Thomson, of course, never made or sold his novelty. And while Dunlop manufactured it and turned it into a practicality, he needed backing to succeed. And the man who backed the invention and who put it firmly in the public eye was a forgotten Irishman, R.J. Mecredy, who was the son of a Scot. One of Dunlop's most important factories of course, was in Cork. Finally, the man who put paid to the whole Dunlop saga and presided over its collapse and sale was yet another Scot, Campbell Fraser, whose death last month brought all this to mind, as well as being the final chapter in the story.
Mecredy's interest in tyres was extraordinarily prescient, as it predated the arrival of the motor car. His passion for cycling led him to recognise immediately the potential benefits of the tyre, and as well as enthusiastically joining the first consortium to make and sell the Dunlop product, he also published The Irish Cyclist, the first journal of its kind in the world, which was an enormous success, and which led the runaway sales of the new-fangled tyres.
Richard James Mecredy was born in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, in May 1861, son of the Church of Ireland rector oflnveran, near Spiddal in Co Galway.
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