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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?

#391

Post by arethuza »

tlear wrote: post #207
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

That does not sound like a good argument at all. Metal for vast majority of human history gave you massive edge in weapon technology. Some Mandarin just shut something like that down? Seems super unlikely Vikings transported Crucible steel all the way from Afghanistan to make high end swords. Damascus steel(actually manufactured in India) and then forged into weapon in Damascus.. etc There got to be other reasons. Be…

Perhaps that was Wootz steel from southern India?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wootz_steel

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

#392

Post by dotancohen »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #346
vageli wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The precision of keeping all those threads perfectly spaced is one thing" > Making the first precision screw requires a "screw originating machine".[1][2] This is a special-purpose device which can make a better screw than the ones used in building it. I hadn't realized screws would be needed to create a screw-making machine. I love that we have machines that make better versions of their own components, something…

Which is incidentally yet another reason why it's very important to ensure stability of our technological civilization. We've pulled ourselves by the straps of our boots a couple hundred meters into air now; it's not safe to stop pulling. Given big enough shock to economies and populations, we'll regress not a decade or three, but all the way to the beginning of industrial revolution - you can't build the technology…

> It would need to be rebooted from scratch.

With no readily-accessible source of energy, we would never be able to reboot. And everything readily-available has already been mined. We now drill deep below the ocean surface for oil.

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

#393

Post by jaclaz »

snazz wrote: post #51
jaclaz wrote: post #17

As a side-side note, ever asked someone (friends, family, etc.) to draw a bycicle by heart? This guy did: http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html

Those renders are extremely cool. It looked like he made them without any 3D modeling at all which seems really challenging. The perspective is spot-on.

There is a video here:

https://www.facebook.com/GianlucaGiminiLTD/videos/1419410561...

where the Author shows 9 hours of work (condensed in 4 and a half minute)

From here:

https://www.core77.com/posts/53240/Five-Questions-for-the-De...

>The renderings are all done in 2D with an elaborate editing technique that mixes post-production and digital painting. So I would pick a sketch, then I would look for a picture of a real bicycle that seemed a good starting point for my representation. Then I would search for pictures of all the components I needed to match the sketch: saddle, handlebar, chain, etcetera. All had to be shot in the same angle and light. Then everything was put together with many parts designed from scratch. Especially frames.

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

#394

Post by dotancohen »

jl6 wrote: post #363
TeMPOraL wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is incidentally yet another reason why it's very important to ensure stability of our technological civilization. We've pulled ourselves by the straps of our boots a couple hundred meters into air now; it's not safe to stop pulling. Given big enough shock to economies and populations, we'll regress not a decade or three, but all the way to the beginning of industrial revolution - you can't build the technology…

In some ways this is what has happened with the transfer of manufacturing to China. Building things requires building components, and their components, and their components, and so on down. That whole stack is withering in western democracies, so it’s incredibly difficult to “bring back” something like iPhone manufacturing without retaining a deep dependency on China anyway.

This is the answer to the question "Why not build more Saturn Vs". We no longer have the tools to build the tools to build the machines to build the parts of the Saturn V.

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

#395

Post by the2and7 »

> First, the correct design was not obvious. For centuries, progress was stalled because inventors were all trying to create multi-person four-wheeled carriages, rather than single-person two-wheeled vehicles. It’s unclear why this was.

In the 1800, most people were poor, and any transportation should be aimed for people with some level of wealth, who would not like to labor to drive themselves around.

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

#396

Post by kingludite »

Its a lovely article, I much enjoyed reading it. I now think of it as part of a long list of scattered around publications that tried to describe the same process. Each with their own flower bed of opinions I don´t agree with and soiled with technical misconceptions.

Having red a good number of patents and an interest in the innovation process I had to giggle a bit how the 100 year old design was described as THE bicycle. As if we've reached the final destination. Iḿ sure they thought the same about the bone breaker and the face smasher designs long after better ones were made.

We use to have a local bicycle shop ran by a guy who financially really didn't need to, it was his passion (and rumor had it it that he did it to get away from his wife.) I went there one day to ask him why he only sold normal bikes, you have a huge store but all the bikes are pretty much the same? He explained that he use to have 1 or 2 special designs but that people looking to buy a bicycle changed their behavior from circling the shop 2 or 3 times then buying something to making half a lap then standing there gazing at that "weird" bike for a minute... and then they just left! He apparently put a good bit of thought into it since the loss of sales didn't bother him. His eventual decision was that he didn't want to disrupt peoples train of thought. They are here to look for a new bike, I should facilitate that to the best of my abilities.

Most bicycle mods or improvements are not useful but they are all weird to people. I invented 2 myself that increase efficiency and the quality of the work out by a truly unbelievable amount. The process was wonderful, I made rusty old clunkers that felt like high end bikes. While there was some encouragement from cycling enthusiasts I didn't care much for other peoples opinions, the manufacturing and marketing was already boring to me but the moaning was truly something else. The funniest part was when I left a rusty old test bike parked among hundreds of other bikes, something I never did, then someone let the air out of both tires. It was poetry to me, I wasn't even mad. How dare I have something weird on my bike.

more on the normality enforcement: https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/59406/why-are-r...

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

#397

Post by StavrosK »

dotancohen wrote: post #394
jl6 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways this is what has happened with the transfer of manufacturing to China. Building things requires building components, and their components, and their components, and so on down. That whole stack is withering in western democracies, so it’s incredibly difficult to “bring back” something like iPhone manufacturing without retaining a deep dependency on China anyway.

This is the answer to the question "Why not build more Saturn Vs". We no longer have the tools to build the tools to build the machines to build the parts of the Saturn V.

Why not?

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

#398

Post by wolfv »

akadruid1 wrote: post #374
dTal wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The existence of huge numbers of wooden scooters called chukudu in Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda disproves this. Apparently they are made with simple woodworking tools, transport 500 pounds and last 2-3 years.

The Chukudu is more practical and simpler than the penny-farthing. And the roads in the Democratic Republic of Congo are rough.

Leonardo da Vinci could have built a Chukudu in 1490.

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

#399

Post by kevinstubbs »

gamedori wrote: post #368
TeMPOraL wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is incidentally yet another reason why it's very important to ensure stability of our technological civilization. We've pulled ourselves by the straps of our boots a couple hundred meters into air now; it's not safe to stop pulling. Given big enough shock to economies and populations, we'll regress not a decade or three, but all the way to the beginning of industrial revolution - you can't build the technology…

This is also why the protection of supply chains and international trade is essential. The cause of the Dark Ages was the collapse of the security surrounding the Roman road network, making trade hazardous, and subsequent reversion to local production of everything resulting in the loss of technological prowess. In our current economy, that reversion would be even more painful. In the short term, as much as I hate th…

Your first paragraph is very interesting. Got a link or book you could recommend to learn more?

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

#400

Post by psychoslave »

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

Could you please give us coordinate of that road? Or even a link to some map service pointing at it? :)
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