"Balloons"

One Alden L. Putnam, employe of the Motor Wheel Corporation of Lansing, Mich., traveled home, last week, from California. Looking out of the car window, he watched the automobiles going by, gaunt roadsters with battered mudguards, smug sedans with shiny spokes, nobby runabouts, sumptuous limousines, frail flivvers. Putnam looked at their tires. So many of them were rolling along on squashy, bulbous "balloons," the latest fashion and economy in motor tirings.

Putnam was sad at heart because he had flown the theory of the balloon tire-low pressure, broad carrying surface, resilient fabric-before the automotive industry as early as 1920, had been laughed at, called "a character." He had persisted in his theory, applied for U.S. patents covering the idea. Now motordom was using balloon tires but he had not got his patents.

Before he reached his home in Detroit, Putnam heard that Washington had awarded him his patents, three basic ones covering the balloon principle and its application to an automobile wheel. He rejoiced and so did his employers. The latter hold the manufacturing rights. Legal machinery was swiftly put in action to recover millions of dollars in royalties due from tire manufacturers on their sales of the past two years. Newspapers headlined: "Fortune Awaits Flouted Creator of Balloon Tires."

But the press also headlined: "Akron to Declare Balloon Tire War." Officials of the Firestone, Miller, Goodrich and other rubber companies maintained that Putnam's patents could, should, would be successfully protested. They declared that the U S. Patent Office must be behind the times in its knowledge of the development of the cord tire, first imported from England by Goodrich some years ago and said to embody the basic virtues of the balloon.