If i had to point to a specific technical factor, it's pneumatic tires.
I recall hearing that it's tube steel. The previous iterations used solid steel (maybe cast iron?) and were super heavy.
Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
21–30 of 515 posts
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#22Why did we wait so long after the modern bicycle to see it as transportation rather than recreation? Awareness of climate change maybe? It seems that a) bicycles were not primary transportation even before cars, and b) the push to replace cars with bikes could have happened at any point, even before cars took off. So why now?
Bicycles seem really expensive to me, relative to cars, considering how much simpler they are and how much less total material's involved. Plus they're a whole lot easier to ship. Not TCO, sure, but sheer cost of the manufactured object at retail. And on the cheaper end they often barely work correctly at all anyway, and all of them seem to require a lot more maintenance than a car, per hour of use or (especially, by…
To address costs: most bicycles on the market are sport/racing bikes. Road racing, time-trial, track, cross-country, downhill, trials, BMX. If all cars on the market were sports cars for road racing, track racing, or off-road racing, cars would be far more expensive than they already are.
Commuter and touring models are a small part of the bicycle market, particularly in the west. Inexpensive commuter bicycles with very little maintenance requirements are more common in other parts of the world. Even so, a name-brand commuter bike can be had in the US for $300 (Giant Escape, similar bikes from competitors exist) that will run with minimal maintenance for many, many years.
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
While it’s maybe surprising, have you ever tried riding something with a 1:1 drive ratio? There’s a reason even bikes with a fixed gear still have gears... Pedals connected directly to the front wheel would be truly awful for virtually all adult bicycle use cases.
Well, the obvious contender for that is the penny farthing. It’s not dreadful (it was good enough to be commercialised with vague success at least), but it’s inconvenienced by the necessary size of the front wheel to make any progress, and the fact that you can’t have a front-wheel brake as you just rotate over the top of the bicycle when applied.
Have you seen a human ride a penny farthing? I don’t think dreadful is overstating it. Sure it made the most of available technology at the time, but one doesn’t need to be expert in bikes to see why this design died.
Just getting on a Penny Farthing can be problematic, given it tries to compensate for 1:1 drive by using an enormous front wheel.
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#24So it looks like there were attempts but they had fatal design flaws and technology (metallurgy) was immature. One question raised is why didn’t we see a trike come about before the bike? It’s more stable and propulsion via direct front pedal isn’t as awkward as the front pedal bike.
We did. The ad for the Rover Safety Bicycle in this article says "Safer than any Tricycle". From Wikipedia you can see that trikes beat bikes by at least a hundred years, depending on your definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricycle#History
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#25I think the article misses:
1) Those 'hypotheses' seem like a perfectly good starting point for a very long list of cumulative reasons as to "Why not to get a bike".
2) It doesn't separate bicycle 'the tool' from bicycle 'the toy'. All those original machines were fashionable playthings for the wealthy. Bicycles the tool took off they were demonstrably better than walking (which is then the combination of improved tech and reduced cost overtook walking and alternative transports)
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#26> (Some commenters have suggested that it was not obvious that a two-wheeled vehicle would balance, but I find this unconvincing given how many other things people have learned to balance on, from dugout canoes to horses themselves.)
I'll be one of those commenters I guess.... What!??
Balancing in a canoe is in no way similar to a bicycle. I can jump in a canoe having never been in one, and it will balance itself. I can probably even manage a few trepidous rows of an oar (or hand, or arbitrary object) without tipping it. Without me, the canoe will stand on its own. If I fall, it will often right itself without me.
On top of that, a canoe is both an evolution on previous working designs (rafts), and analogous to nature (whether it be a fish, crocodile or a floating log).
The horse, with its four (not two!) legs is an even more ridiculous comparison.
It seems pretty clear that the development of the bicycle would've been significantly hampered by the fact that balancing on two wheels was:
(a) unintuitive as an idea with no analogue in nature or previous innovations
(b) had a marked learning curve
(c) that learning curve was separate and independent for each design. Riding a modern bicycle doesn't automatically make you an adept penny farthing, unicycle, nor tandem rider. Nor any of the umpteen other technological iterations.
I wouldn't be surprised if this trumped material/manufacturing limitations as a hurdle. See this whimsical video for "evidence" of this [0]
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#27> I don’t think horses explain it either. A bicycle, from what I’ve read, was cheaper to buy than a horse, and it was certainly cheaper to maintain (if nothing else, you don’t have to feed a bicycle).
I don't think this is so simple. A horse can haul a lot more than a human can. How much human bicycle power is equal to one horse power?
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the obvious contender for that is the penny farthing. It’s not dreadful (it was good enough to be commercialised with vague success at least), but it’s inconvenienced by the necessary size of the front wheel to make any progress, and the fact that you can’t have a front-wheel brake as you just rotate over the top of the bicycle when applied.
Have you seen a human ride a penny farthing? I don’t think dreadful is overstating it. Sure it made the most of available technology at the time, but one doesn’t need to be expert in bikes to see why this design died. Just getting on a Penny Farthing can be problematic, given it tries to compensate for 1:1 drive by using an enormous front wheel.
Yep, there’s a bunch of late-Victorian enthusiasts who ride them around London every year: https://pennyfarthingclub.com/
They have obvious faults of course, but they were around for 15-20 years, were better than their predecessors, and didn’t kill off the concept of the bicycle in general to stop future development. That’s enough to give them some credit at least!
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#29>Yet it was a simple mechanical invention
As a mechanical engineer, this statement baffled me. All manufactured technology exists in the context of the manufacturing capabilities available to the designer. The manufacturing tech had to be tremendously complicated before a decent bike could be made. Hollow steel tubes aren't simple. Ball bearings aren't simple. There is a reductionist viewpoint among "theory" people that misses the trees for the forest.
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#30Why did we wait so long after the modern bicycle to see it as transportation rather than recreation? Awareness of climate change maybe? It seems that a) bicycles were not primary transportation even before cars, and b) the push to replace cars with bikes could have happened at any point, even before cars took off. So why now?
Bicycles seem really expensive to me, relative to cars, considering how much simpler they are and how much less total material's involved. Plus they're a whole lot easier to ship. Not TCO, sure, but sheer cost of the manufactured object at retail. And on the cheaper end they often barely work correctly at all anyway, and all of them seem to require a lot more maintenance than a car, per hour of use or (especially, by…
i think this is off base. Don't forget the cost to own a car with depreciation, insurance, fuel, maintenance etc etc. Not even mentioning the cost of infrastructure required to drive said car.
I don't recommend it, but you can buy a bike from Walmart for $78.