Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company is an American multinational tire manufacturing company founded in 1898 by Frank Seiberling and based in Akron, Ohio. Goodyear manufactures tires for automobiles, commercial trucks, light trucks, motorcycles, SUVs, race cars, airplanes, farm equipment and heavy earth-mover machinery. It also produced bicycle tires from its founding until 1976. As of 2017, Goodyear is one of the top four tire manufacturers along with Bridgestone (Japan), Michelin (France) and Continental (Germany). The company was named after American Charles Goodyear, inventor of vulcanized rubber. The first Goodyear tires became popular because they
Siping (rubber) Sipe's invention was unsuccessful. It was applied to solid rubber tires, rather than pneumatic tires, and so the tires had poor wet grip anyway, owing to their limited contact patch. It was his son, Harry E. Sipe, who popularised the use of sipes in the USA for the new low-pressure balloon tires around 1939. The process was not applied to vehicle tires on a large scale until the 1950s, when superior tread compounds were developed that could stand up to the siping process. On roads covered with snow, ice, mud, and water, sipes usually increase traction. A US patent to