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Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

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Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

#31

Post by bdamm »

asark wrote: post #11
closeparen wrote: post #4

Why 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 paid $800 for a bicycle in 2008, have put thousands of miles on it, gone through three chains, two cranks, perhaps a half dozen tires. All that for maybe $200-$300 of total cost. That’s equivalent to four or five low-end car payments. And the bike is in great shape and has thousands more miles in it. Doesn’t seem to bad when you compare actual quality bicycles meant to last.

Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

#32

Post by smacktoward »

I wonder if the 19th-century emergence of mass urbanism wasn't a factor. If you're a farmer living in the countryside you already have the space and supplies necessary to keep animals, so keeping a horse along with all the others isn't a problem. But if you're an industrial worker living in a city where space is at a premium, keeping a horse becomes complicated and expensive -- you have to maintain a place to stable it, have to find a way to keep it fed and watered, etc.

Even if you could afford all that it's still a pain to deal with, and outside the aristocratic class I doubt most people could afford it. So urbanization meant there was a steadily growing market for some non-horse alternative that fit the facts of urban life better.

Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

#33

Post by Dumblydorr »

dboreham wrote: post #2

Same for steam engines: it turns out Watt spent most of his effort on getting components manufactured and having the associated manufacturing processes developed. The basic idea of the steam engine had been around for a long time prior. You can ask the same question of Romans and electricity. They had all the necessary tech: glass for insulators, acid for batteries, metallurgy for wire etc.

He also innovated the engines processes, using heat efficiently and reducing waste. Effective machining and manufacturing then scaled his innovations.

Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

#35

Post by mc32 »

burkaman wrote: post #24
mc32 wrote: post #6

So 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

Interesting! Trikes make sense. Better stability and have cargo hold capability making them pretty useful for light transport of goods. Alternatives were porters or an actual cart; horse, ox or human drawn.

Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

#36

Post by wmf »

peterwwillis wrote: post #7

Why did we wait so long for the elevator? Circular dependency and incentive. Combining a ratchet with a pulley is incredibly simple and both have been around since the ancient Greeks. But with a few exceptions, it didn't make sense to build buildings big enough to need elevators. I mean, how would you get up and down the buildings? Answer: an elevator... but it didn't exist yet... hence, nobody could imagine how to g…

And there wasn't enough water pressure for the upper floors.

Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

#37

Post by sinker »

Excel_Wizard wrote: post #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 t…

Anyone who had tried to make anything, especially anything original and with mechanical components knows this to be true. Even simple machines require a lot of forethought, planning, and iteration to be able to perform consistently and reliably. When we see an every day object like a bicycle we take it for granted and think that it must be obvious. But that couldn't be further from the truth.

Take even just a single part from it, like the chain for example probably represents centuries worth of technology. Each link has to be uniform to operate smoothly on a chainring or sprocket, which indicates some form of mass production.

Chains must be hardened to withstand stress, resist stretching. Soft steel would wear and deform too quickly.

Each link is in itself a complex component composed of a uniform bushing and pin shaped oblong symmetrical down the center and also quite small. It must pivot smoothly.

I doubt there are many people, even skilled people, who could make a complete bicycle from raw metal stock.

Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

#39

Post by jedimastert »

Excel_Wizard wrote: post #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 t…

Yeah, whoever said that should try to make one without being able to go the the hardware store

Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

#40

Post by jharger »

SilasX wrote: post #19
otabdeveloper2 wrote: post #10

Bad quality article. There's a simple answer: ball bearings are relatively high tech that requires lots of innovation to come together at the same time.

Relatedly, my favorite example of "why didn't this get invented before" is wheeled luggage which (from what I've read) wasn't sold until 1989, even though the wheelbarrow (the same basic idea) has been around since prehistoric times. IIRC, the reason it didn't appear sooner was a combination of a) getting reliable castors[1] for wheels that small is a non-trivial problem, and b) there wasn't much demand for it until…

Do you have an article or book you can link to on the subject? I'm very curious why there wasn't much demand for wheeled luggage until the 80's.

Is it because people flew less? Because more people checked luggage more often and carry-on was less common? Because airports were smaller?

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