Cooper S.
I live for the CABE
So I’ve been doing a little digging into the origin of the 26” balloon tire we all know and love, and I think I’m close to the original source of it.
As we all know, schwinn introduced the balloon tire to the American market after having taken a trip to Germany in the early 1930s. (Here’s a link to a primer if you haven’t heard that story before https://vintageamericanbicycles.com/index.php/the-first-american-balloon-tire-bicycles/ )
But, I was writing a paper about the German bicycle company Diamant for one of my classes while I’m studying for the semester in Berlin, and noticed that they hadn’t introduced a balloon tire equipped model until 4 years after the Schwinns had discovered the 26” tire. Then I started to look and I couldn’t find any standard model of German bike with those tires from before schwinn introduced them, which seemed rather odd to me. While the bikes in Germany had been using separate inner tubes and tires, they hadn’t really been using the tires that revolutionized bikes in the US, but had kept the 28 x1 1/2” size that was and still is the standard.
Until I found a Katalog from continental tires from 1930, which seems to imply that the ancestors of the 26x2.125 balloon tire was created by them in 1929.
( https://www.strewi-fahrradwerke.de/Fahrraddokumente/1930-continental-reifen-und-zubehoer.pdf )
what do you all think? If anyone has any primary sources from schwinn about where they got the idea from I’d love to see them as I might use this as a part of a larger paper for my German minor’s capstone paper next semester.
As we all know, schwinn introduced the balloon tire to the American market after having taken a trip to Germany in the early 1930s. (Here’s a link to a primer if you haven’t heard that story before https://vintageamericanbicycles.com/index.php/the-first-american-balloon-tire-bicycles/ )
But, I was writing a paper about the German bicycle company Diamant for one of my classes while I’m studying for the semester in Berlin, and noticed that they hadn’t introduced a balloon tire equipped model until 4 years after the Schwinns had discovered the 26” tire. Then I started to look and I couldn’t find any standard model of German bike with those tires from before schwinn introduced them, which seemed rather odd to me. While the bikes in Germany had been using separate inner tubes and tires, they hadn’t really been using the tires that revolutionized bikes in the US, but had kept the 28 x1 1/2” size that was and still is the standard.
Until I found a Katalog from continental tires from 1930, which seems to imply that the ancestors of the 26x2.125 balloon tire was created by them in 1929.
( https://www.strewi-fahrradwerke.de/Fahrraddokumente/1930-continental-reifen-und-zubehoer.pdf )
what do you all think? If anyone has any primary sources from schwinn about where they got the idea from I’d love to see them as I might use this as a part of a larger paper for my German minor’s capstone paper next semester.