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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?

#441

Post by joefourier »

michaelt wrote: post #435
Balgair wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HTME on Youtube also goes into the process of making seemingly simple things and the time and effort it takes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfIqCzQJXvYj9ssCoHq327g One of the more famous videos is where it takes them ~$1500 and 6 months to make a chicken sandwich and they still used a lot of equipment that they didn't make themselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URvWSsAgtJE

it takes them ~$1500 and 6 months to make a chicken sandwich I watched that video and there's nothing really explaining what went into that price. Did they include the flights to the coast to gather salt? Hiring the boat? Renting an apartment to boil the sea water down?

It does seem to be a rather meaningless exercise and depends on what you start with. If you have a back garden or a tiny plot of land, you can easily grow the required ingredients and raise the chicken for far less than $1500, although the wheat will take that amount of time to grow. If you start with absolutely nothing and insist on farming wheat in the middle of San Francisco, it can certainly cost far more than $1500 to get your chicken sandwich.

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

#442

Post by skykooler »

nine_k wrote: post #100
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…

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.

You'd need good steel for spoked wheels too- without that you have heavy solid wheels instead.

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

#443

Post by vinayms »

> Yet it was a simple mechanical invention. It would seem to require no brilliant inventive insight, and certainly no scientific background.

That's a seriously weak premise. A bicycle is more than a metal rod with wheels; it needs a good steering mechanism and driving mechanism, not to mention ergonomic seating mechanism. Humans have certainly had a lot of things in their blind spot which makes us wonder why it took so long, but bicycle isn't one of them. Eraser-butt-pencil, may be. Bicycle, certainly not.

Also, the sheer number of crazy models that happened in its evolution is a testament to the fact that a bicycle is anything but intuitive. Remember, it was an age where mechanical devices was a rage. It was sort of like the AI-ML of that era. There was a lot of activity by people of varying levels of expertise - from tinkerers to people who knew what they were doing to people who thought they knew what they were doing. Despite this it took that long.

So its absurd to start off with the said premise.

Points like material and manufacturing process are red herring IMO. This argument is backwards. What needed to be made was a prototype. The things mentioned would follow naturally. No one had to invent a "professional grade" machine at the word go. An example from software: HLL were not invented first and then OS were written in it, but OS were written first, and in the process people realized HLL would be more productive, and OS were rewritten in them.

The conclusion about cultural and economic factors also seems unconvincing. The only plausible reason could be the clout of horse carriage mafia or something like that which influenced the powers that be and stifled rival technologies.

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

#444

Post by SilasX »

nanomonkey wrote: post #88
SilasX wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From my understanding, the biggest reason was that most buildings were not wheel chair accessible until after the late 80's. Once this started to be mandated, wheeled luggage became useful.

Good point, but I'm not sure this is a major reason. I've used wheeled luggage over long walking trips, and it's still a huge improvement, even if you have to lift it over some steps here and there. I would often wheel luggage from my place in SF to the Powell station, and you had to pick it up for a few short staircases but it was still great.

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

#445

Post by brohee »

f_allwein wrote: post #212

Same can be said, perhaps more accurately, about the wheelbarrow. From https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/312366/the-knowledge... : > The wheelbarrow, for instance, could have occurred centuries before it actually did—if only someone had thought of it. This may seem like a trivial example, combining the operating principles of the wheel and the lever, but it represents an enormous labor saver, and it didn’t appe…

And the European wheelbarrow is vastly inferior to the Chinese one (see https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-wheelbar...)

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

#446

Post by noneeeed »

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…

The same was very much true for Babbage and the Difference Engine. If I remember correctly, the level of repeatable precision and quality needed to make something like that was simply well beyond what engineers could manage even at the height of the industrial revolution. In theory everything that Babbage was designing was technically possible at small scale, but simply couldn't be done on the scale he imagined.

If memory serves, even the London Science Museum's partial reconstruction in the 1980s was a massive challenge of engineering.

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

#447

Post by ateng »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #401
StavrosK wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not?

Because "unused muscle atrophy" applies very much to our technology as well. A lot of knowledge surrounding technological processes isn't really captured beyond institutional culture and individual memory. So if there isn't demand for some specific technology, the capacity and knowledge to build it will wither and die with the organizations and people who built it. We can't do a Saturn V today. We might be able to do…

This. And if one still struggles to understand the importance of institutional culture + individual memory, I would like into invite you to the following thought experiment.

“Imagine waking up the next morning and the world totally forgot all knowledge on Linux Kernel, and you are now tasked to release the next major version with major changes / improvements”

And remember the documentation and tests we have on Saturn V is certainly not as great as what we have on Linux kernel.

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

#448

Post by aqsalose »

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. Do not underestimate the amount of technology that goes into bicycles.

Wright brothers were bicycle mechanics, before they pivoted into inventing heavier-than-air flight craft.

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

#449

Post by maxst »

entee wrote: post #108
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…

I often wonder as I am building/fixing something (often my bicycle as it happens) and I happen to toss an extra screw in the trash how miraculous a simple screw of this type would have been to a middle-ages craftsman. The precision of keeping all those threads perfectly spaced is one thing, but the technology to make them in such volume at these sizes (often quite tiny), and in volumes so as to make them essentially…

Near Stonehenge they found a 4000 year olds dagger. Its handle "was decorated with 140,000 tiny gold studs, each almost as fine as a human hair and set into the wood at more than 1000 to the square centimetre."

Even 21-century craftsman would find that impressive.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/stone...

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