Robert William Thomson

Civil engineer and serial inventor across many fields of engineering. First patentee for the air-filled tyre

Engineering Achievements

R W Thomson was the inventor of the pneumatic tyre. The pneumatic tyre (or “aerial wheel” as he referred to it) would eventually transform road travel from a succession of bumps and jolts, to a quiet smooth ride by providing a cushion of air between the road and the vehicle itself. 

He was born in Stonehaven in 1822, leaving school at 14 to work for his uncle in Charleston, South Carolina. 

He returned to Scotland a few years later and was set up in a workshop and taught himself electricity and chemistry, and then was apprenticed to an Edinburgh civil engineer and devised a way of detonating explosives remotely using electricity, approved by Michael Faraday, and employed by William Cubitt on the Dover and South Eastern Railway. He was only 19, and was already saving many lives through his inventions.

At the age of 23, he patented his invention for an “Aerial Wheel” - the pneumatic tyre: A hollow tube of India rubber enclosed by a leather outer casing bolted to the wheels, demonstrated in Regent’s Park London, transforming the comfort of carriage users.

He was a serial inventor with a restless mind with 14 patents registered in his name, including in 1849, the self-filling pen, hydraulic dry docks, the first mobile steam crane, and in 1867 the first successful steam powered road traction vehicle, the “Thomson Steamer” exported across the world. 

John Boyd Dunlop may be popularly regarded as the inventor of the pneumatic tyre but there is a case that he only re-invented it 15 years after Thomson’s death, and benefitting from the huge reduction in the cost of rubber since Thomson's time. 

His Life

1. 1822 Born on 29 June in Stonehaven, Kincradineshire, Scotland, the son of John Thomson, merchant and Elspeth Lyon
2. 1836 Age: 14 Moved to Charleston, United States, apprenticed to his merchant uncle
3. 1838 Age: 16 Returned to Edinburgh and taught himself chemistry, electricity, astronomy and mathematics
4. 1839 Age: 17 At home designed and built a ribbon saw, designed and built a working model of an elliptic rotary steam engine
5. 1839 Age: 17 Started an apprenticeship with Edinburgh civil engineering firm
6. 1841 Age: 19 Worked as railway engineer for William Cubitt, supervised blasting of chalk cliffs near Dover
7. 1844 Age: 22 Set up on own acount as a railway engineer in England
8. 1845 Age: 23 On 10 December, patented the use of rubber for tyres
9. 1847 Age: 24 on 8 May, patented "Carriage Wheel, etc" in US, patent 5104.
10. 1847 Age: 25 Demonstrated pneumatic tyres in Regent's Park
11. 1849 Age: 27 On 4 July, patented the fountain pen
12. 1852 Age: 30 Relocated to Java as agent for an engineering firm
13. 1859 Age: 36 On 15 May married Clara Hertz, daughter of a diamond merchant in Batavia (Jakarta)
14. 1860 Age: 38 Visited Europe to oversee construction of his hydraulic dock with standardised, interchangeable components. One used in Saigon and another in Callao, Peru
15. 1862 Age: 40 Retired from business and returned with wife and four children to 3 Moray Place, Edinburgh
16. 1867 Age: 45 Patented his continuous "caterpillar-tracked" steam-powered vehicle
17. 1873 Age: 50 Died on 8 March at 3 Moray Place, Edinburgh
18. 1873 buried in Dean Cemetery, Edinburgh
19. Estate in UK and overseas valued at £67,605 (c £6.4m in 2025)

More Information

Robert William Thomson in ODNB, GC Boase, revised by Ralph Harrington. (free to subscribers and UK library card owners)

US Patent 5104 "Improvements to Carriage Wheel, etc" 8 May 1847. 

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