In 1888 the first commercial pneumatic bicycle tyre was produced by John Boyd Dunlop. This was the beginning of the bike tube or bicycle inner tube as they are often called. There are two common valves used on bicycle tubes, the French or Presta valve (F/v) and the American or Schrader valve (A/v).
Sports and racing bicycles used Presta valves because they are slender and enabled racers to inflate tires with a simple pump with attached chuck (pump head) and no hose. Presta valves are easier to pump than Schrader, because they have no valve spring to overcome. The small diameter of the Presta valve requires a smaller hole in the rim, whose size is important for narrow rims where cross sectional strength of is significantly reduced by a stem hole. In narrow rims, clincher tires also leave insufficient space between tire beads for larger Schrader valves.