It was very familiar to Australian car owners in the 50s and 60s, particularly if they had to take the tyre off the rim to repair a puncture.
A tyre with an inner tube was universal in the days when car tyres were made by the bias-ply method.
It was so called because the layers of rubberised cords were embedded in the rubber in alternating diagonal layers at a 55-degree angle to the rim.
But that technology was replaced by the radial method of tyre construction which are steel-belted with the ply cords radiating at 90-degrees to the wheel rim.