Bicycle Design
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BICYCLE DESIGN BICYCLE DESIGN An Illustrated History TONY HADLAND AND HANS-ERHARD LESSING with contributions from Nick Clayton and Gary W. Sanderson The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2014 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, email [email protected]. Set in Helvetica Neue by The MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hadland, Tony. Bicycle design : an illustrated history / Tony Hadland and Hans-Erhard Lessing; with contributions from Nick Clayton and Gary W. Sanderson. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-02675-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Bicycles—Design and construction—History. 2. Bicycles— Parts—History. I. Lessing, Hans-Erhard. II. Title. TL400.H33 2014 629.2’31—dc23 2013023698 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 I’M MORE INTERESTED IN A WORLD THAT WORKS THAN WHAT SELLS. Paul MacCready, pioneer of human-powered flight CONTENTS Preface xi Acknowledgments xv A Note on Spelling and on the Names of Components xvii 1 Velocipedes and Their Forerunners 1 Mobility before the velocipede 1 A shortage of oats necessitates horseless transport 8 Diffusion of the single-track velocipede 19 The clampdown on two-wheelers and the return to multi-track velocipedes 27 The first roller-skate patents 28 Stable velocipedes for anxious riders 30 The quadricycle years 31 Roller skating gains momentum 34 2 Front Drive 37 Unresolved questions about the origins of front drive 38 The French velocipede and its series production 53 Diffusion to Europe and America 63 Why not drive the rear wheel? Why not use steam or electric power? 71 3 Wire Wheels 83 The evolution of the high-wheeler 84 The high-wheeler 97 High-wheel tricycles 106 4 Indirect Drive 125 Lever-and-crank drives 126 Swinging-lever and linear drives 127 Belts and pulleys 130 Shaft drive 134 Spur-gear drive 144 Chain drive 148 Asymmetric chainwheels 151 viii CONTENTS 5 The Safety Bicycle 155 Early attempts to produce a safer bicycle 156 Diamond-frame rear-drive safeties 160 Cross-frame rear-drive safeties 166 Dwarf front-drivers 169 The triumph of the diamond frame 170 Steel as a frame material 171 Other frame materials 178 Cycling spawns the airplane 184 6 Comfort 187 Tires 187 Sprung supports for saddles 200 Sprung handlebars 207 Wheel suspension 209 7 Improving Transmission 221 Evolution of the automatic freewheel 222 The early development of multi-speed gearing 229 Epicyclic gearing 236 Derailleurs 243 Automatic and continuously variable gears 247 8 Braking 257 Taking the heat out of speed 257 Tire brakes 258 Rim brakes 266 Brakes in or attached to the hub 279 9 Saddles, Pedals, and Handlebars 291 Saddles 291 Seat posts 298 Pedals 298 Handlebars 311 10 Lighting 321 Candle lanterns and oil lanterns 321 Battery-powered lamps 325 Acetylene lamps 328 Tire-driven dynamos 332 Early dynamo designs 332 Toward the dominance of the “bottle” dynamo 335 CONTENTS ix Hub dynamos 344 Spoke dynamos 347 Bottom-bracket (roller) dynamos 347 Battery backup 349 11 Luggage 351 Simple horizontal rear racks 353 Beam racks 358 Front racks 358 Fittings for sports equipment 361 Panniers 361 Baskets 365 Saddlebags 367 Handlebar bags 368 Rack-mounted holdalls 369 Tool bags 370 Child seats 370 Sidecars 376 Trailers 377 Cargo bikes 380 12 Racing Bicycles 385 The evolution of frame geometry 386 Horses for courses 388 Frame materials 393 Aerodynamics 400 Riding position and aero-bars 402 Other aerodynamic components 404 The effect of regulations 411 13 Military Bicycles 413 Early military use of bicycles 414 Design features of military bicycles 420 Folding or separable military cycles 423 14 Mountain Bikes 433 Origins 434 Advantages 436 Changes in suspension and in frames 438 Derivatives of mountain bikes 444 x CONTENTS 15 Small-Wheeled Bicycles 447 Early small-wheelers 448 Vélocio’s experiments with small wheels 451 Early portable bicycles 454 British small-wheelers, 1960s–1980s 459 Folders 461 High-performance small-wheelers 465 Ultra-small wheels 466 BMX 469 Small-wheeled bicycles today 471 16 Recumbent Bicycles 473 Early recumbents 474 The recumbent boom of the 1930s 478 Recumbents after World War II 485 The recumbent revival of the 1970s and its aftermath 487 Appendix A Debunked Priority Hoaxes 493 Appendix B Davies’s Lecture “On the Velocipede” (May 1837) and Spencer’s Report of the Defeat of the Dandy or Hobby-Horse 503 Appendix C Bicycle Aesthetics 521 Appendix D The Parts of a Bicycle 527 Select Literature 529 References 537 Index 549 PREFACE With more than a billion (that is, 109) machines produced so far, the bicycle ranks among the world’s most numerous vehicles. Yet the automobile has received much more attention. In- deed, few areas within the history of technology have been as neglected as the history of the bicycle. In this book we attempt to dig a bit deeper into its history than was done in the earlier scattered literature. It took the oil crisis of 1973 to renew interest in the bicycle and its history. Interest was, however, already being nurtured by special-interest groups in various countries—notably the Veteran-Cycle Club, founded in England in 1955 by John and Derek Roberts. The V-CC’s journal, The Boneshaker, has long been a major resource for cycle historians. Since 1990, an International Cycling History Conference has been held in a different country every year, and the proceedings have been published under the title Cycle History. The impressive research material accumulated by the Veteran-Cycle Club and the International Cycling History Confer- ences (founded by Nick Clayton) proved very useful to us. We also used many other sources, especially technical literature and patents. This does not mean, however, that all the ques- tions have been fully answered. Many of the early manufacturers are long gone, having left no traces in any historical archive. It is also a sad fact that, thus far, few contributors from Asia, Africa, and South America have found their way to one of the International Cycling History Conferences, so our perspective is necessarily that of the developed countries of the West. A complete world encyclopedia of bicycle inventions remains to be compiled. xii PREFACE We begin by focusing on the early evolution of the bicycle in the days before it achieved its most successful and enduring form, the diamond-frame safety bicycle. We then look at the further development and refinement of the bicycle for specific purposes, such as racing, por- tability, and all-terrain use. We also examine the evolution of bicycle components with specific functions, such as the enhancement of speed, comfort, and luggage carrying. We use patent drawings where we can, because they are more instructive than manufacturers’ illustrations. We are well aware, however, that patent drawings leave the social implications of inventions obscure. As the title of an Open University module once put it, “invention is not enough,” and just because something was patented doesn’t mean that it was widely adopted or even that it was put into production. It does, however, show that a problem and a solution were understood by someone at a particular time and in a particular place. A patent may also have influenced later inventors and stimulated change. We therefore consider not only the com- mercially successful designs, but also many noteworthy designs that failed to find widespread acceptance. In some cases, lack of success was due to inherent weaknesses of concept. But many designs failed because of other factors, such as cost, fashion, poor marketing, or a lack of appropriate manufacturing techniques. For example, a perfectly feasible bicycle disc brake was patented 100 years before such devices became commonplace, reliable, and affordable. Sometimes an invention is ahead of its time. We concentrate on the technological aspects rather than the sociological. We don’t pro- vide histories of companies, our feeling being that this should be done at a national level. The rise of personal mobility was a strangely resistible process. Despite booms in 1817– 1820, 1867–1870, and 1895–1900, seven decades elapsed before the arrival of a practical vehicle for the masses. Widespread adoption of the bicycle was thwarted by the interplay of the learning curve for balancing, various clampdowns by authorities, and competition from roller skating. After its strictly utilitarian beginnings as a replacement for starved horses, the bicycle could survive the later gaps between booms in its popularity only as a piece of sports equipment. In the twentieth century, this link with sport turned anti-progressive when techni- cally conservative racing professionals displaced sewing-machine mechanics as prominent retailers of bicycles. Racing-oriented dealers were accustomed to the Union Cycliste Interna- tionale’s policy of suppressing “unfair advantages.” And bicycle manufacturers haven’t always served the needs of commuters, who, unlike the UCI, want as many “unfair advantages” as they can get. Since 1976, the International Human-Powered Vehicle Association, founded by Chester Kyle and Jack Lambie, has nurtured novel designs, unconstrained by the dead hand of the UCI. We also discuss some of the myths that bedevil bicycle history. For example, while brows- ing the Internet we have read that Leonardo da Vinci invented the bicycle, that Frank Bowden PREFACE xiii of the British bicycle firm Raleigh devised the Bowden cable, and that Messrs.