On Sunday, June 23, 2019 at 10:06:50 PM UTC+1, Chalo wrote:
In the early days of cycling, it was the pastime of rich fux, which gave it a certain implied legitimacy. Then for a time, it was the leading edge of high tech, to the point that the US government opened a second patent office just to serve cycling-related patents. So when this coalition of rich fux and tech boffins (and folks who aspired to be them) asked for some decent pavement, we started to get decent pavement.

It was the moral equivalent of today's public resources being thrown around to develop 5G, or yesterday's public resources being squandered to subsidize jet travel or freeways or railroads. Then as now, the rich and influential can use other people's money to get what they want. Sometimes it works out for those who pay the cost, and sometimes it doesn't. In the case of Good Roads, I think it worked in favor of almost everybody.

I didn't know that in the beginning cycling was the pastime of rich folk, but it stands to reason, because bicycles were expensive and required a lot of leisure to maintain. In Britain the clothes of the cyclists in old photos tell us they're middle-class or upper-middle-class folk, professionals and suchlike. In the States the major boost cycling got in the ten-speed era of the wretched (by modern standards) Peugeot bikes was led by middle class trendies and tofu-eaters, the sort of people how worried that if they jogged, their knees would wear out.

But not too long afterwards -- I would guess after WW1, this side of the water cycling became the sport of the workingman, and for those athletic enough an escape for a few years from the grinding life of the poor. Though, it must be said, the stories of drugs, including cocaine, consumed by some of those interwar endurance racers sounds like a modern UCI nightmare. (Not that the UCI doesn't deserve everything they got coming.)

Andre Jute
Who paid for Major Taylor's first bike?