Originally Posted by
HerrKaLeun
...it is just that when MTB were "invented" there were no wide tires available in 28", so they used the cruiser 26" balloon tires. At some point they came back to 28", but to be cool called it 29"....
The availability of wide 28" tires depended on where in the world you lived and how wide a tire you wanted. In Finnland they used heavily treaded 700x47C (28x1.75" or 47-622 ISO) and
700x44B (44-635 ISO) snow tires on roadster bicycles. In Europe there where also some 700C x 52mm balloon tires. Though these were lightly treaded road tires.