February 17, 1910J 



NA TURE 



469 



IMPROVEMENTS IN RESILIENT WHEELS 



FOR VEHICLES. 

 A T a meeting of the Royal Society of Arts held last 

 ■^ December, the Hon. R. Clere Parsons gave a brief 

 history of the improvements which had been made from 



apparatus he described, and in which the effects of the jolts 

 imparted to the wheel were automatically recorded. The 

 result of these investigations indicated that it was possible 

 to substitute spiral steel springs for the air spring of the 

 pneumatic tyre, and at the same time retain practically all 

 its resilient properties. 



special 



wheel, 

 known 

 " Pan- 



time to time in the wheels of vehicles, which had resulted 

 in the extensive adoption of the pneumatic tyre, and then 

 passed on to de- 

 scribe a spring wheel 

 which possesses prac- 

 tically all the advant- 

 ages of a pneumalic- 

 tyred wheel without 

 its heavy cost of 

 maintenance and 



liability to puncture. 

 The author e.\- 



plained that, before 



he attempted to de- 

 sign a spring wheel, 



he had made a care- 

 ful search through 



the records of the 



British Patent Office 



Library with the 



view of ascertaining, 



if possible, why the 



aumerous inventions 



relating to this 



question had not 



been successful. 



This search led him 



to believe that if 



certain principles 



were adopted, and 



careful investigations 



made, there was a 



prospect of obtaining 



a trustworthy spring 



wheel, which as vet 



had not been pro- <>ectioa aa. 



duced. '• ^• 



The preliminary investigations were made with model 

 wheels 12 inches in diameter, which were tested in the 



This 

 type of 

 which is 

 as the 



flex," from its 

 being flexible in 

 all directions, was 

 then carefully de- 

 signed, and a set 

 fitted to a 2S-56 

 horse - power 

 Daimler touring 

 car, illustrated in 

 Fig. I, wha-h in 

 running order 

 weighed 2 tons 

 5 cwt. 



The \;heel, 

 illustrated in 

 section and eleva- 

 tion in Figs. 2 

 and 3, consists of 

 a steel channel 

 rim similar to 

 those used for 

 solid rubber tyres, 

 and into which a 

 rubber tyre is in- 

 serted. On each 

 side of this 

 channel rim are 

 rivetted annular 

 plates, so as to 

 form an internal 

 channel, in the 

 bottom of which 

 are corrugated 

 transverse projections. To the wheel centre are rigidly 

 fixed spiral springs at regular intervals, which project 



NO. 2103, VOL. 82] 



radially outwards, and to their extremities are attached 

 rubber pads formed with transverse undulations. The 



