Thomas B. Jeffery

Thomas Buckland Jeffery (1845 to 1910) was a British emigrant to the United States who co-founded the Gormully and Jeffery company, maker of the Rambler bicycle, and later built Rambler automobiles. Born in Stoke Damerel, Devon, he emigrated to Chicago at eighteen and worked making telescopes and patent office models before starting the bicycle firm with R. Philip Gormully in 1878 or 1879. He patented the ancestor of the clincher tyre in 1892, a rim that locked the tyre with hard rubber flanges, and clinchers were the most common automobile tyre in the United States from about 1900 to 1913. In 1897 he built the first Rambler motor car, and around 1900 he sold his stake in the bicycle firm and founded the Thomas B. Jeffery Company, buying a factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Ramblers were built on a large scale. He died on holiday in Pompeii in 1910, and in 1916 his family sold the business to Charles W. Nash, who renamed it Nash Motors. This entry rests on his English Wikipedia article alone and a second source pass is owed.