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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?

#171

Post by kingkawn »

Animats wrote: post #66
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…

Right. And one point that cannot be stressed enough. Good steel, in quantity, only goes back to 1880. Lots of things that "could have been built in antiquity" foundered on that basic fact. Before Bessemer, steel was as exotic as titanium is now. The alternatives are not good. Cast iron? Too heavy and too brittle. Wrought iron? Maybe, but not that great. Lead? Too soft. Brass? Could work, but expensive. A king's kid m…

The Haya people from contemporary Tanzania began making steel 2,000 years ago.

http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi385.htm

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

#172

Post by smileysteve »

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…

To amplify number 2; I just spent a week in Rome; Cobblestone would seemingly destroy the fragility.

Anecdotally, on a bike ride recently, on a modern bike, hopping an inch curb snapped a chain.

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

#173

Post by hadlock »

loeg wrote: post #71

Bicycle chains are really complicated and have tons of moving parts.

Bicycle chains are pretty complicated, but steam powered devices (mills, saws, etc) were using flat leather belts for decades, and rope drive existed as well. Many modern bicycles come with belt drives. Also periodically people produce shaft drive bicycles which require a bit more machining, but have few moving parts and are quite reliable.

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

#175

Post by ScalaFan »

dTal wrote: post #149
nine_k wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good steel would only be strictly needed for axles. Bearings could have been polished and oiled wood. The frame, wood. The hinge of the front wheel, brass or another small bit of steel. Transmission could be a leather belt. Wheels, wood again. Would such a device somehow emulate a modern bicycle? Very likely. Would such a device be practical, reliable, fast, to say nothing of comfort? I greatly doubt it.

Bamboo-frame bicycles exist today as a fashionable item, and as far as I can tell without having ridden one, they work for practical purposes just as well as metal-frame ones. I suspect you could make a perfectly acceptable modern bicycle with 18th century technology, albeit not as durable. Metal axles aren't much of a problem. Light and strong wheels are trickier, but you could get away with solid wooden ones, or em…

Might not rubber belts have been possible instead of chains? Rubber was available 18th Century - maybe not in industrial quantities but still. In fact, latex was was available to the Mayans and Aztecs according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rubber#History

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

#176

Post by dTal »

dmurray wrote: post #142
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is cool. Except it's driving me nuts that I can't figure out what's wrong with the first picture, or at least why it would immediately break.

The back fork should be connected to the seatpost with a pair of horizontal braces. It's an exaggeration to say it would immediately break. But if you put weight on it, it will tend to spread out (imagine putting weight on a bent piece of metal shaped like a ^). Still, the front fork isn't braced, and bikes exist with quite a large rake angle on the front fork (think a Harley-Davidson style chopper). So maybe you can…

As it's a single speed with no derailleur and the missing braces would be in tension, might not the chain itself fulfill the role?

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

#178

Post by thaumasiotes »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #93
Animats wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. And one point that cannot be stressed enough. Good steel, in quantity, only goes back to 1880. Lots of things that "could have been built in antiquity" foundered on that basic fact. Before Bessemer, steel was as exotic as titanium is now. The alternatives are not good. Cast iron? Too heavy and too brittle. Wrought iron? Maybe, but not that great. Lead? Too soft. Brass? Could work, but expensive. A king's kid m…

What killed the Chinese iron industry wasn't the lack of a Bessemer converter. What killed them was the mandarin bureaucracy. The mandarins saw that some commoners were getting rich in the iron industry, declared it to be contrary to the proper order, and shut it down. (Source: "The Victory of Reason" by Rodney Stark.)

Commoners got rich in commerce and in agriculture and landlording for most of Chinese history. A merchant legendarily put the first emperor's father on the throne of Qin in the third century BC.

The merchants were despised, as merchants everywhere are; the rich farmers weren't. And a hereditary distinction between commoners and nobles was gone by the tenth century.

So I'd want to hear a little more context to the claim that "the iron industry was shut down because of the effrontery of commoners getting rich there".

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

#179

Post by icebraining »

UI_at_80x24 wrote: post #110
davesmith1983 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've ridden many different types of bicycle from fixed gears, single speed mountain bikes and more traditional mountain bikes and racing bikes. Recumbent is horrible to ride in traffic (you are below the height of most traffic) and the handling is atrocious. Yes they are maybe more efficient but they are not pleasant to ride. TBH the current design is efficient enough, is well understood both in terms of the technolo…

>Recumbent is horrible to ride in traffic (you are below the height of most traffic) and the handling is atrocious. I disagree. Some of them certainly are 'below eye level', but that is an awfully broad criticism of the group as a whole. I ride a LongBike Slipstream. The length of the bike is LONGER then a Smart Fortwo. I sit eye-level with almost every sedan I've encountered. SUV's and raised pickup trucks are indee…

> The length of the bike is LONGER then a Smart Fortwo

Yes, and that's another big disadvantage. One of the criticisms against cars is that they waste a lot of space, but recumbent bikes reduce that advantage. Bicycle lanes can get quite packed already.

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

#180

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

sk5t wrote: post #70
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.…

Would a wooden bicycle, with not-very-freely-spinning wheels, and a bone-jarring ride, be worth the considerable expense of purchasing? Would it even be better than walking and/or using a wheelbarrow? Doesn't the thing produced have to rise above a certain level of utility to merit making some copies of it? For human-scale power, I am not sure a bicycle without bearings or pneumatic tires works other than as a curios…

> be worth the considerable expense of purchasing

Anyone with the means to pay would much rather use an animal-pulled cart instead of literally making an ass of himself.

Or just ride a horse like a gentleman. (Until the 'mad dogs and Englishmen' craze hit.)

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