Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

Post by Someone » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:14 PM UTC

atoav wrote: post #147

sk5t wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think bicycling was really not relevant, because the peasants would probably rather take a mule or a wagon to carry stuff around and the aristocrats would rather take a comfortable carriage. There was basically no rich middle class which had the time and money to fool around with individual transportation, and the other classes had either no real reason to want this or it was pure luxury.

Post by lovemenot » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:18 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #201

lucideer wrote: post #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…

>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. This! It's completely non-obvious that balancing will work and there is no analog in nature…

Post by lovemenot » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:26 PM UTC

woodandsteel wrote: post #145

tcmb wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you saw off a disc-shaped slice from a log of wood, and it rolls a few meters, you experience first hand that a single wheel can balance itself. Some say this is how the wheel was invented in the first place [citation needed].

That sounds like a unicycle, which is a hundred times harder to balance than a bicycle. The physics of how a bicycle balances itself when you are moving is very different than that, complicated, and quite unintuitive. Basically when the bike starts to lean to one side, the rotation of the front wheel causes it to steer to move the bike underneath the direction you are leaning. This happens several times a second, and…

Post by hinkley » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:28 PM UTC

dredmorbius wrote: post #200

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…

The technologies developed in ancient China are staggering, the more so as they'd been largely fogotten by / rendered invisible to the Chinese themselves. A find of the past few years has been Joseph Needham's truly epic Science and Civilisation in China . Begun in 1954, still in production -- the series is not yet completed, 7 volumes, 27 books. Simon Winchester (also author of The Perfectionists , mentioned in this…

Post by s0rce » Mon, Jul 15, 2019, 11:42 PM UTC

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…