Schrader valve advert in Horseless Age v43 1918-02-15

August Schrader (1807–1894) was a

German-American German Americans (, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. According to the United States Census Bureau's figures from 2022, German Americans make up roughly 41 million people in the US, which is approximately 12% of the pop ...

inventor and mechanic. He is known for inventing the

Schrader valve The Schrader valve (also called American valve (AV)) is a type of pneumatic tire valve used on virtually every motor vehicle in the world today. The original Schrader valve design was invented in 1891 and patented in the United States in 1893.G ...

Life

Schrader immigrated from Germany to the United States and opened a shop dealing in rubber products in

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. His original shop was located at 115 John Street. In 1845, he began supplying fittings and valves for rubber products made by the Goodyear Brothers, including air pillows and life preservers. He also made

daguerreotype Daguerreotype was the first publicly available photography, photographic process, widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. "Daguerreotype" also refers to an image created through this process. Invented by Louis Daguerre and introduced worldwid ...

apparatus. Then he went into partnership with Christian Baecher, a brass turner and finisher. After watching divers at work, Schrader sought to improve diving helmets. In 1849, he created a new copper helmet. Later, his interest in diving led to him to design an air pump. Around 1890, after reports of English cyclists' success using

pneumatic Pneumatics (from Greek 'wind, breath') is the use of gas or pressurized air in mechanical systems. Pneumatic systems used in Industrial sector, industry are commonly powered by compressed air or compressed inert gases. A centrally located a ...

tires A tire (North American English) or tyre (Commonwealth English) is a ring-shaped component that surrounds a wheel's rim to transfer a vehicle's load from the axle through the wheel to the ground and to provide traction on the surface over w ...

, August Schrader saw the need for a bicycle tire valve. By 1891 he had produced the

, which was his most popular invention and is still used today on many bicycle tires and almost all automobile, truck, and motorcycle tires. August's son, George, is generally credited with the experimental work that resulted in the valve's creation. In 1893, Schrader patented the tire valve cap. As with the introduction of the bicycle, early automobiles had solid wheels similar to those on carriages, followed by solid hard rubber. In time, tubed pneumatic tires and Schrader valves were introduced to cars, trucks, and motorcycles. Most of these ultimately went tubeless, but retained Schrader valves. For comparison, the Schrader valve can be compared with the Presta and Dunlop valves.

References and notes

External links

Schrader-Bridgeport website
* ttps://patents.google.com/patent/US495064 Schrader valve patent - US495064A 1807 births 1894 deaths 19th-century American inventors Emigrants from the German Confederation to the United States {{US-inventor-stub