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Old September 5th 08, 08:08 PM posted to rec.bicycles.tech,alt.rec.bicycles.recumbent
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On Fri, 5 Sep 2008 10:05:42 -0700 (PDT), Chalo
wrote:

'Bents seem to be in a state of development comparable to where normal
bicycles were in the 1870s-- there is no real consensus as to the best
configuration for a 'bent, and nobody has yet succeeded in making one
that clearly demonstrates the inferiority of other basic designs.


Dear Chalo,

That's an interesting comparison.

Velocipedes were the first bicycles with pedals. They appeared in the
1860s and looked like huge, clumsy modern bicycles with a crank
attached to the front wheel.

By the early 1870s, velocipedes had evolved into highwheelers.

The front wheel grew larger and larger to provide decent gearing, the
rear wheel shrank to allow easy mounting and to save weight, and the
seat moved up higher and higher for comfort and leverage, so the rider
ended up perched close enough to the front axle to tumble forward on
his face if he braked hard or hit a bump.

Safety highwheelers were developed at the same time, since the danger
of a header became obvious as soon people started riding highwheelers.

The safety versions were either dwarf highwheelers with mechanical
gearing to overcome the limits of a small front wheel, normal-size
highwheelers with mechanical gearing tricks to move the rider back
toward the rear wheel, or reversed highwheelers, with the big wheel in
back.

The safety highwheelers were never very popular, even though they were
prized by collectors. The primitive mechanical gearing tended to fail
outright or else wear out quickly, it cost far more than a simple
solid crank, and there was some stigma attached to riding a small
wheel bicycle when real men fearlessly rode 56-inch wheels.

The triumph of the highwheeler around 1880 was clear--it was known as
the ordinary because the brick-simple highwheeler was indeed the
ordinary bicycle, and everything else was just a silly contraption
that was less reliable, more expensive, and so on.

Like recumbents, the safety highwheelers did well in competition,
often winning races. The victories of the safety highwheelers had
about the same effect on their sales as recumbent victories have
today--the Tour de France is not likely to switch to recumbents, no
matter how fast the Varna Diablo II goes.

In 1884, half a dozen or so bizarre versions of the modern safety
bicycle appeared, most of them using chains, sprockets, and steering
borrowed from the thriving tricycle world.

Tricycles were enormously popular back then. Uncle James Starley is
famous because he came up with tangent lacing for highwheelers in the
early 1870s, but most of his production was tricycles, not
highwheelers. (And Starley's tricycles mostly used radial lacing. In
fact, most highwheelers ignored tangent lacing until 1885.)

Why were tricycles so popular?

First, tricycles were much easier to learn to ride. Nowadays, anyone
who tries to ride a highwheeler already has has years of experience
riding safety bicycles. Back then, the typical bicyclist was a grown
man who had never balanced on two wheels or turned a pedal.

Next, tricycles were much safer. They didn't fall over, anyone could
get on or off them, and they didn't go very fast. Just learning to
mount and dismount a highwheeler on flat ground usually involved a
number of falls.

Most of all, tricycles handled hills much better. You could climb
hills with a tricycle and pass highwheelers whose riders had gotten
off and were pushing. Then you could turn around and go back down,
comfortably and safely, while the highwheelers were careening out of
control past you, unable to brake safely and liable to being thrown
over the handlebar if they hit a bump.

That's why so many old books have titles that mention bicycles _and_
tricycles--the tricycles gave bicycles serious competition for just
riding around in the 1880s.

But 1884 was the beginning of the end for tricycles and highwheelers.
A spate of weird-looking two-wheelers with tricycle gearing and chains
and steering erupted--Humber, Marvel, Antelope, Pioneer, BSA, and the
prototype of nephew John Starley's Rover with remote steering, which
was improved in 1885, and soon we had the modern double-diamond safety
bike.

Curiously, nephew John Starley later wrote that he had hill climbing
in mind when he built the Rover, not safety. Looking back, we tend to
emphasize the obvious safety of sitting between two wheels, while our
great grandfathers took the highwheeler's dangers for granted and
cared more about getting up those damned hills.

The safeties quickly evolved to the classic double-diamond, with
inflatable tires appearing in 1889. Again, our modern notions lead us
to the wrong impression. The cushioning advantage of the pneumatic
tire is so obivous to us that we assume that Dunlop was looking for
comfort, but in fact his first experiments were aimed at showing that
an inflated tire rolled faster and farther than a solid rubber tire,
and the early pneumatics were used for racing.

By 1894, a decade after the first horde of chain-driven designs
appeared, the modern bicycle design was practically set in stone:

http://www.nostalgic.net/index.asp?S...2D94pg00%2Ejpg

Page down past the aluminum bicycle ad at the top and look at the
25-lb 1894 Warwick. It's a fixie with wooden rims, balloon tires, and
inch-pitch chain. The big chain disappeared first, the wooden rims
lasted longer, and many riders still use big tires for comfort (and
more riders would use wider tires if the roads were still unpaved).

Caliper brakes, rear hub brakes, hub gears, and derailleurs were all
available before 1900.

It took only ten years for safety bicycles to wipe out the
highwheelers--1894 was last year that highwheelers were produced.
Since then, the safety bicycle hasn't really changed much in 120
years. We have more gears, lighter frames, fewer spokes, thinner
tires, and so on, but 99% of the pedals are still attached to upright
double-diamond designs.

A few illustrations . . .

Velocipedes with two big wheels and front crank:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:T...Velocipede.jpg

Highwheeler with small rear wheel and lamp hanging under front axle:
http://i12.tinypic.com/4tz3tp0.jpg

A dwarf Kangaroo safety highwheeler, with coasting pegs sticking out
front and chain gearing hanging below the axle:
http://tinyurl.com/5ugd6o

The Star safety highwheeler, which put the big wheel in the rear:
http://tinyurl.com/5ugd6o

Starley's first remote steering Rover with a 36-inch front wheel:

http://books.google.com/books?id=VDl...ntcover#PPP237

The more sensible Rover:
http://i13.tinypic.com/4v67a5z.jpg

Again, Chalo makes a good point--the enormously popular upright
bicycle went through its bizarre variations in about ten years and
then settled on the modern bicycle design that hasn't changed much in
over a century, while recumbents have been wavering between various
designs since the 1930s (or earlier) without ever achieving much
popularity.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel
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