Bicycle was useless without paved roads. Horse was much more convenient. I have personal anecdote about these issues. As a kid in 1967 I made 250 km bicycle trip in two days. My father was amazed: "How this is possible? I made exactly the same trip in 1929 also in two days, but I had a very good horse galloping half the time."
We were both camping at the same forest at halfway point too..
Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
101–110 of 515 posts
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#102>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…
You don't need steel tubes for a bicycle, you don't even need steel at all. In fact there were (and still are) wooden bicycles and they work fine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wooden_bicycle As for ball bearings these are incremental improvements not a necessity (see horse chariots and carriages with wheels used for millenia before we had ball bearings). For another example see medieval wooden windmills - all cogs a…
> As for ball bearings these are incremental improvements not a necessity (see horse chariots and carriages with wheels used for millenia before we had ball bearings). For another example see medieval wooden windmills - all cogs and bearings made from wood with some animal fat and skin for bushings and lubrication - worked well enough for centuries.
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>> Anyone accustomed to modern practice finds it hard to believe that wood-on-wood could function as a bearing at all. This primitive arrangement was improved in a few cases by the addition of a leather bushing. Lubrication in the form of animal fat or tallow is known to have been used, although the exact composition has not been determined.
You'll notice that your examples involve a lot of power driving the mechanism - a team or horses or a windmill can overcome the kind of friction a wood-on-leather bearing implies. If you've ever ridden a bicycle where the fender was rubbing on the wheel, you'll know that human power is much more limited.
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
An average human can peak above 1HP for short amounts of time (think sprinting). They definitely cannot maintain that. I think the Horse Power was defined at a sustainable rate for the horse. 1 HP = 746 watts and most people on a bike would cruise in 100-250 watts range. The top cyclists can maintain more like 400 watts https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/blog/2018/06/how-does-your-...
1 HP actually equals 746 watts / second
No. HP is a measure of power. So is watts. Watts/second is not a meaningful unit.
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
i think this is off base. Don't forget the cost to own a car with depreciation, insurance, fuel, maintenance etc etc. Not even mentioning the cost of infrastructure required to drive said car. I don't recommend it, but you can buy a bike from Walmart for $78.
I'm from the middle of the US so all my experience is with $200 and cheaper bicycles (maybe $300 adjusted for inflation) since I'm not in the racing "scene" and bike commuting's infeasible outside very small areas (though I was able to, and did, do it for a while), but bikes never seem to quite work right—one set of brakes keeps slipping no matter how many times you fix it, a couple gears that you just cannot get to…
Did you ever try a bike from a bike shop? This sounds like a department store bike experience. Multispeed bicycles are not generic widgets you unbox, hop on, and go. They need tuning, like a musical instrument, and a lot of the adjustments are interdependent on one another.
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#105My answer to this question these days is: "What good is a bycicle if there is nothing you can ride it on?" Sure bycicles may be hard to engineer, but the environment in which a bycicle could be useful only existed in a select few places on earth.
I think the author is to quick to dismiss road quality as a primary issue.
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#106As 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
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.
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#107One 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…
You can look at the history of the fax machine. There were primitive fax machines very early, but they were a bit cumbersome, but more importantly nobody needed to send documents that fast anyway. It was easy and normal to send a guy on a horse, and for business purposes at the time, that was more than fast enough, for the distances that were being covered by the first fax lines.
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#108>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…
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 disposable is a true marvel.
We think a computer is an impressive piece of technology, but many of the things around us that we consider less than mundane are just as incredible if we look just a couple hundred years back.
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#109>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…
Anyone who had tried to make anything, especially anything original and with mechanical components knows this to be true. Even simple machines require a lot of forethought, planning, and iteration to be able to perform consistently and reliably. When we see an every day object like a bicycle we take it for granted and think that it must be obvious. But that couldn't be further from the truth. Take even just a single…
The Toaster Project is a good example of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ODzO7Lz_pw
https://www.amazon.com/Toaster-Project-Attempt-Electric-Appl...
He attempted to build the basic components of a toaster from scratch. Smelting metal, molding plastic, etc. The book is a tough recommendation because he sortof gives up on the later parts and limps to a finish, but overall its a fascinating look at how difficult these processes are if you build them up from scratch.
Re: Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
#110In 100 years will we wonder why recumbent bicycles took so long to catch on? MIT's David Gordon Wilson, the writer of the excellent book Bicycling Science, had been advocating for recumbents as a more efficient design to replace traditional modern bicycles for decades. http://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-designer-inventor-author-bike-b... and https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/bicycling-science-third-editi...
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 indeed above my eye-level, but sporty cars are usually below it.
I usually get exceptional room allotted to me by other drivers when I'm on the road. The exception being assholes, but luckily the are the exception and not the rule.
>TBH the current design is efficient enough, is well understood both in terms of the technology. Almost all improvements now are iterative.
"Efficient enough" ? All of the land-speed records for human-powered vehicles are held by recumbents. http://www.ihpva.org/home/
It's ok if you don't like them. But please don't pass off your opinion as fact.