The character pictured above is commonly known as the Michelin Man. He's the mascot for Michelin, the company that makes automobile tires. If you weren't familiar with him before, you may have thought he was a cousin of the Pillsbury Doughboy or perhaps a more muscular version of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Those two mascots, though, kind of make sense -- the doughboy looks like a pile of raw dough (but with a hat) and the marshmallow man looks like a big angry marshmallow (again with a hat). The Michelin Man, though, doesn't have a hat, and more importantly, looks more like a doughboy in a muscle suit than anything resembling a car tire. What's going on here?

Michelin, the company, got its start in 1892, at first making tires for bicycles. Those tires were made from the latex that came from rubber trees, or just "rubber" in today's terms. Previous tires were made from wood, metal, or leather, but all of those materials quickly fell prey to the normal wear and tear of transversing across bumpy, informal roads and paths; the wheels they ended up protecting would crack, and usually while in transit. Rubber tires were able to adjust somewhat to the terrain and lasted a lot longer, and rubber quickly became the material of choice for the wheels of would-be motorists. The tires we use today are still made, primarily, of rubber.

But while the tires of today are black, natural rubber isn't. Rubber, in its natural form, is white, as seen here. And when Michelin was founded, they made white tires. Here's a restored Ford Model T from 1909, and you'll see immediately that the tires it sports are thin, white ones.