Life, 1920-07-01 · page 43 of 56
Life — July 1, 1920 — page 43: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily **advertising content**, not satire or political commentary. The page features a historical narrative advertisement for U.S. Pneumatic Truck Tires by United States Rubber Company. **The "cartoon" is illustrative**: It depicts the 1911 introduction of pneumatic (air-filled) truck tires, showing the massive tire alongside early automobiles and trucks—visualizing how revolutionary and oversized this innovation appeared to the public. **The historical point**: When pneumatic truck tires debuted in Detroit in 1911, observers called them "balloons" because the technology seemed absurdly impractical. The ad emphasizes that U.S. Rubber Company spent two years developing tires specifically engineered for trucking—not simply enlarging passenger car tires. **For modern readers**: This illustrates how unfamiliar pneumatic tires were to early-20th-century people. The ad positions the company as innovative pioneers, distinguishing between "pioneering a tire" versus merely "pioneering a market"—claiming technical superiority over competitors.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
WHAT /S A PNEUMATIC TRUCK TIRE has ever seen appeared on the streets of Detroit in July, 1911, people called them “balloons”. The idea of putting a heavy truck on air was so far in advance of anything the automobile world had yet thought of that it took time for people to grasp it. Even today there is still a confusion in some people’s minds as to exactly what con- stitutes a pneumatic fruck tire. . . . Before it produced the first pneumatic truck tires ever made, the United States Rubber Company knew that an overgrown passen- ger car tire would never solve the truck owner’s tire problem. What it started with was an idea—the idea of creating an en- tirely new kind of a tire—a truck pneumatic — designed to meet trucking conditions and not mere- ly market conditions. . . . The U.S. Nobby Cord of today is the pioneer pneumatic truck tire— lineal descendant of the first of its kind — brought out by the United States Rubber Company in 1911, after two years spent in developing it. There is a difference between pioneering a tire and pioneering a market. U.S. Pneumatic Truck Tires United States @ Rubber Company ond largest Rubber Orgenisction i the World Two hundred and thirty-five Branches comicbooks.com