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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?

#151

Post by atoav »

mikepurvis wrote: post #86
loeg wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For human-scale power, I am not sure a bicycle without bearings or pneumatic tires works other than as a curiosity. Pretty much all modern rideshare bicycles do not have pneumatic tires, FWIW. Ride quality suffers, but it's not an awful tradeoff for short trips with whatever squishy compound they use now.

Yeah but the alternative in antiquity wasn't "whatever squishy compound", it was wood, perhaps with a metal strap around it, like a carriage wheel.

Which is why in the early wooden “bikes” (you were sitting on a wooden bar and pushing with your legs) they made the bar “squishy” by adding some sort of saddle or some adapted spring dampers or sth.

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

#152

Post by astine »

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…

Did you read the article or just that line? Most of what you mention is addressed plus a number of other factors.

"Technology factors are more convincing to me. They may have been necessary for bicycles to become practical and cheap enough to take off. But they weren’t needed for early experimentation. Frames can be built of wood. Wheels can be rimmed with metal. Gears can be omitted. Chains can be replaced with belts; some early designs even used treadles instead of pedals, and at least one design drove the wheels with levers, as on a steam locomotive."

"Second, advances in materials and manufacturing were probably necessary for a commercially successful bicycle. It’s a bit hard, from where I stand, to untangle which advances in design were made possible by new materials and techniques, and which were simply sparks of inventive imagination that hadn’t been conceived or developed before. But the fact that people were willing to put up with the precarious high-wheeled design indicates to me that pneumatic tires were crucial. And it’s plausible to me that advanced metalworking was needed to make small, lightweight chains and gears of high and consistent quality, at an acceptable price—and that no other design, such as a belt or lever, would have worked instead. It’s also plausible to me that wooden frames just weren’t light and strong enough to be practical (I certainly wouldn’t be eager to ride a wooden bicycle today)."

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

#153

Post by loeg »

mikepurvis wrote: post #86
loeg wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For human-scale power, I am not sure a bicycle without bearings or pneumatic tires works other than as a curiosity. Pretty much all modern rideshare bicycles do not have pneumatic tires, FWIW. Ride quality suffers, but it's not an awful tradeoff for short trips with whatever squishy compound they use now.

Yeah but the alternative in antiquity wasn't "whatever squishy compound", it was wood, perhaps with a metal strap around it, like a carriage wheel.

Understood.

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

#154

Post by iguy »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #55

One possibly overlooked factor: the nature of travel has changed dramatically in the last 200 years. Right up until World War 1, my ancestors literally had no reason to ever go more than ten miles from home, and even that was rare. The entire extended family lived within a two mile radius. This was because they were all farmers, and farmers didn't need to travel often. Furthermore, if you did travel, well, you alread…

Well, I'd argue that they didn't need to travel, because their world was set up for people who couldn't. The spacing of villages most places was set by how far you could walk to the fields & still do a good day's work. Riding around on horseback was for a tiny elite, most places -- a horse eats more than a person, in a world where food was the majority of income. Once people could travel, they did, and the world got re-organized around this assumption.

But still, bicycles took off as a technology when they were too expensive for farm-workers, as a sort-of upper-middle class leisure craze. Only later did they enable mass mobility.

[comment moved]

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

#155

Post by goldcd »

iguy wrote: post #78
goldcd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got fascinated by this when I saw mention of this elsewhere. I'll agree that getting sturdy casters at a reasonable price was definitely part of the problem. As the linked wikipedia article reminded me, 20-odd years ago you'd still come across wonky casters on very expensive supermarket trolleys. I think like the bicycle, it was just combination of factors preventing adoption - and once these had all moved, it was…

But early wheeled luggage didn't have casters, just straight wheels. And those wheeled carts that you see old people dragging home from the supermarket (in some cities) existed long before -- metal frame, sagging canvas bag, works great. There are lots of other factors though. One was buildings with lots of smooth floors & no stairs, which IIRC was partly about designing to be wheelchair-friendly, and partly about lu…

I agree with every single one of those points.

Other thing I'd meant to mention, was that the territory of "wheeled luggage" has expanded. Previously maybe at an airport you'd haul your luggage to a car at the kerb that will take you to your destination.

Modern airport usually has some public transport that takes you into town, and from there you get further transport to where you wish to go. i.e. Having your luggage be less of a burden opens up your choices.

I live in a university town with a lot of foreign students. It's now entirely normal for me to see one 'herding' (for want of a better word) a flock of cases quite successfully down the pavement infront of me.

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

#156

Post by dasil003 »

TheGRS wrote: post #137
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…

I have seen bicycles built using bamboo. I mostly agree with the assessment that the tech and need just wasn't there in antiquity, but I would definitely stress that it could have plausibly been built using the materials available.

What were the hub and drivetrain made out of?

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

#158

Post by ajuc »

nordsieck wrote: post #148
ajuc wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be less efficient, but still workable. Even just wood on wood is sufficient. Proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcvFpbh2fjE [1] I think people vastly underestimate what you can do with very simple "naive" technology. [1] Yeah it uses aluminium spacers on the chain, but you can do a bicycle without a chain.

> It would be less efficient, but still workable. Even just wood on wood is sufficient. Proof: > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcvFpbh2fjE Your "proof" is unconvincing. 1. The bike looks super wobbly and seems like it takes a lot of effort to just make it function properly. Yes, it is an example of a wooden bicycle, but it is not an example of a useful wooden bicycle. It seems like it probably has a pretty short wo…

Well it was a youtube gimmick, just a proof that wood-on-wood isn't as high friction as people think.

But there were wooden bicycles without ball bearings in real-life history and they worked with the infrastructure they had. How well they worked is a different thing, but still it proves "no tech to build a bicycle" isn't the reason we waited for bicycles for thousands of years.

We had people jumping off towers with wooden wings for centuries before aeroplanes were made after all ;)

It would be perfectly possible for Romans to make bicycles from technological POV. Just wouldn't make sense because 2 slaves with some chair on sticks were cheaper.

BTW - first real world mass-produced bicycle added ball bearings after several years:

> On the new macadam paved boulevards of Paris it was easy riding, although initially still using what was essentially horse coach technology. It was still called "velocipede" in France, but in the United States, the machine was commonly called the "bone-shaker". Later improvements included solid rubber tires and ball bearings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_bicycle#1860s_a...

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

#159

Post by geoka9 »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #139
vipbababd wrote: post #95

One possibly overlooked factor: the nature of travel has changed dramatically in the last 200 years. Right up until World War 1, my ancestors literally had no reason to ever go more than ten miles from home, and even that was rare. The entire extended family lived within a two mile radius. This was because they were all farmers, and farmers didn't need to travel often. Furthermore, if you did travel, well, you alread…

Plagiarism. Thanks dude.

It's a bot that hijacks comments, see this (and upvote, I guess, for the moderators to take notice):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20445029

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

#160

Post by atoav »

nickbauman wrote: post #77
atoav wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but I don’t think that was the factor here. Ancient technology was astoundingly precise (see the famous Antikythera mechanism). I think the problem was roads. If you combine bad (or nonexistent) roads with airless hard tires, the result is much much less useful than any modern bike on any modern road. The first bikes were indeed wooden with wooden wheels. No ball bearings, no hollow steel tubes etc. But streets.…

The Antikythera Mechanism was a completely exotic Roman artifact. It was the space shuttle of its time. Not really a fair comparison. Dually, Romans were known for their extensive roads system. My family home sites directly below the Ancient Roman frontier in Germany, where you can climb a mountain and still find a 10 foot wide stone road they built 2000 years ago mostly intact

I grew up close to old roman streets and even in it’s best times it is nothing that you would wanna ride on with any kind of bike.
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