scans from bike book
carl...@comcast.net
Published in 1956, it has over 250 photos and can be found used at
www.bookfinder.com.
***
A smaller wheel needed gearing, so highwheelers usually turned to
weird gearing because the inventors wanted to minimize the dangerous
height of the huge front wheel.
But this highwheeler went the other way:
http://i12.tinypic.com/72udph1.jpg
Despite the series of mounting pegs running up the backbone, I can't
see how anyone except an exceptional acrobat could get up and rolling
on the thing without helpers or a high starting step.
***
Weight weenies, eat your hearts out:
http://i10.tinypic.com/87m2g3t.jpg
Eight pounds fourteen ounces is 4.034 kg. I've seen another reference
to this lightweight wonder, but can't find it.
***
Speaking of lightweight racing bikes . . .
http://i7.tinypic.com/6xv3j4g.jpg
Two-and-a-half minutes for a mile works out to 24.0 mph. I can't tell
if the tiny black marks are tied-and-soldered spoke crossings, but
that's what they look like.
***
This nice page shows the original remote-steering 1884 Starley safety,
the much more popular 1885 "modern" version, and Starley's later
inexplicable shift in 1887 to a wire-truss cross-frame that shows how
erratic a genius can be:
http://i5.tinypic.com/7331vlh.jpg
Yes, it was called the Psycho. No, Starley didn't have the Hitchcock
film and modern meaning in mind. Probably he had the innocent meaning
of "mind" that would have clearer as "Psyche."
But the dark posters for the Psycho might have pleased Hitchcock:
http://www.wonderfulitems.com/brasil623.jpg
***
Speaking of weird frames . . .
http://i19.tinypic.com/8gjdvsz.jpg
The 1890s marketing department probably claimed that the racquette had
a large sweet spot. The 1890s RBT probably pointed out that the sweet
spot was located in thin air.
***
That leads us to weird fairings . . .
http://i6.tinypic.com/6tepwyt.jpg
Look closely because the contrast is faint. What look like two
umbrella sections on either side of the front wheel are reducing wind
drag, protecting the rider's modesty, and making the Batmobile's heart
beat faster.
***
Time for more highwheeler antics, specifically a how-to-mount and
(more importantly) how-to-fall manual.
The how-to-fall directions are at the lower right and continue to the
next page, where the picture is worth a thousand words:
http://i6.tinypic.com/6k8za84.jpg
http://i6.tinypic.com/6kqj3f6.jpg
As he toppled over sideways, the rider whipped one leg around the
steering rod (what we'd call the steering tube) and wrestled his
dangerous mount to the ground. It probably didn't work at any
reasonable speed, but it may have appealed to cowboys used to
bull-dogging steers in rodeos.
***
Multiple-use paths?
Bah! In 1900, Pasadena and Los Angles were to be connected by an
elevated wooden track dedicated to bicycles (and the handful of
pitiful motorcycles then available):
http://i13.tinypic.com/6jg2654.jpg
http://i8.tinypic.com/8ebkz8k.jpg
Alas, what actually happened wasn't quite as grand as the book claims:
"Pasadena Cycleway: The world's first elevated cycleway, which was
slated to run nine miles between Pasadena and downtown Los Angeles.
The wooden construction was to have two six foot wide lanes, and a
maximum grade of 3%, made possible with elevations of three to 50 feet
off the ground. Incandescent lighting was going to be placed every 50
feet. For a ten cent toll, riders were to be permitted to stay on the
cycleway all day, and have access to a 100 acre park."
"The economics looked very good at the time of planning, and by 1900,
a single lane was built that went two miles out of Pasadena. At that
time, however, the Southern Pacific Railroad, fearing competition, got
an injunction issued against construction of a bridge over their
railroad. In the meantime, interest in cycling began to wind down with
the growing popularity of the automobile, and the cycleway eventually
failed and was torn down by the city of Pasadena."
http://oklahomabicyclesociety.com/thisthat.htm
***
Two portraits caught my eye.
I'd never seen this picture that shows Mile-a-Minute Murphy's solution
to the choking dust and train cinders as he pedaled behind the train:
http://i7.tinypic.com/8a30k6g.jpg
And here's what the Bill Gates of 1900 rode, the best bicycle that
money could buy:
http://i17.tinypic.com/6ujx4pv.jpg
That's John D. Rockefeller, smiling and posing next to his shaft-drive
bicycle, presumably confident that the silly contraption would never
cut into Standard Oil's profits.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
A Muzi
> An older book arrived yesterday, Arthur Judson Palmer's "Riding High."
> Published in 1956, it has over 250 photos and can be found used at
> www.bookfinder.com.
> Weight weenies, eat your hearts out:
> http://i10.tinypic.com/87m2g3t.jpg
> Eight pounds fourteen ounces is 4.034 kg. I've seen another reference
> to this lightweight wonder, but can't find it.
Could there be a misunderstanding someplace? Looks like a reasonably 8-9
pound frameset in carbon steel tube.
For a complete bike of that style, with steel bars and crank, wide
tires, carbon steel frame, under nine pounds seems improbable.
--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971
carl...@comcast.net
wrote:
>carl...@comcast.net wrote:
>> An older book arrived yesterday, Arthur Judson Palmer's "Riding High."
>> Published in 1956, it has over 250 photos and can be found used at
>> www.bookfinder.com.
>-snip-
>> Weight weenies, eat your hearts out:
>> http://i10.tinypic.com/87m2g3t.jpg
>> Eight pounds fourteen ounces is 4.034 kg. I've seen another reference
>> to this lightweight wonder, but can't find it.
>-snip-
>
>Could there be a misunderstanding someplace? Looks like a reasonably 8-9
>pound frameset in carbon steel tube.
>For a complete bike of that style, with steel bars and crank, wide
>tires, carbon steel frame, under nine pounds seems improbable.
Dear Andrew,
There might be, but I remember seeing the same claim elsewhere. I
couldn't track it down, but now you've motivated me.
First half-remembered find, not the one I'm after, but at least
hinting of weirdness:
"Among the freaks at shown [at the 1896 cycle show at Madison Square
Gardens, not the 1895] was one at the Worcester Cycle Company's booth.
It is a regulation pattern bicycle and is ticketed as weighing seven
pounds. The visitor is invited to lift it. He then finds that it
weighs about 100 pounds instead of seven. Its weight is obtained by
filling the entire frame and forks with lead."
So far, no luck finding the original half-remembered article. If true
and made of steel, what made it possible was extremely small diameter
tubing, not easy to see in the drawing.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
fiu...@yahoo.com
> An older book arrived yesterday, Arthur Judson Palmer's "Riding High."
> Published in 1956, it has over 250 photos and can be found used atwww.bookfinder.com.
>
> ***
>
> A smaller wheel needed gearing, so highwheelers usually turned to
> weird gearing because the inventors wanted to minimize the dangerous
> height of the huge front wheel.
>
> But this highwheeler went the other way:
>
> http://i12.tinypic.com/72udph1.jpg
>
> Despite the series of mounting pegs running up the backbone, I can't
> see how anyone except an exceptional acrobat could get up and rolling
> on the thing without helpers or a high starting step.
I rode a pennyfarthing once in a parade. It came from the museum at
Oudtshoorn in South Africa. I don't remember the maker -- if indeed
anyone knew. The front wheel might have been four feet high because
the pedals drove the centre of the wheel directly and a six footer has
an inner leg measurement of around 30 inches. As a teenager the pedals
were a bit of a stretch for me. Mounting was by being boosted onto the
crossbars of a rugby goal and hanging there while the bike was wheeled
under me. I then pedalled out and joined the parade already in motion,
being unable to dismount until I reached the showgrounds, where bales
of hay had been prearranged for dismounting. There was a step on it,
just above the small rear wheel, but the contortion required to reach
it was always more destabilizing than any speed one could get up to on
the level. At the dress rehearsal, dressed in loud check pants and a
striped jacket also from the museum, trying for a dignified but
dashing dismount, I fell and damaged the clothing; even if I had the
instructions, further down in your post, for dismounting, I would
merely have split the trousers at the seams rather than at the knee
(1). People those days either wore very tight clothes (the opinion of
one my editors, who of course is an expert, having published a series
of books on fashion through the ages) or were smaller than we are now,
the statistical/demographic/historical theory I hold to. The penny-
farthing was the devil's invention!
Also further down, I'm amazed at how modern Mile-a-Minute Murphy's
bike is, and at Rockefeller's shaft drive bike: you think he imported
it from Denmark?
Andre Jute
http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/BICYCLE%20%26%20CYCLING.html
(1) It might have been easier to go forward over the handlebars and
roll over your forearm, something like a breakfall in the martial
arts. I was reminded of this recently when, to avoid a motorist
speeding through a stop sign at a multiway junction, I went up the
wheelchair access to a pavement (sidewalk to the Americans), clipped
the angled part and was sent into the air, bike and all. The front
wheel stuck momentarily in a palings fence, and then bike and I went
over, ten or twelve feet into the air. My judo came back to me from
decades ago and I rolled over my forearm, mainly to protect my new
Metro helmet and mirror. This was such a spectacular accident that
people came running from stopped cars and a nearby pavement cafe, but
my jacket wasn't even scuffed and the only harm done to me was a
broken little finger where the bike handle came down on it; several
hundred euro of scratched HRM and bike computer and the Flight Deck
control, all on the handlebars; fortunately no bent wheel (Keith
Bontrager builds them strong!) which might have been a nuisance. The
driver got away on the day but I found him a couple of weeks later; he
won't be stupid ever again.
carl...@comcast.net
>Also further down, I'm amazed at how modern Mile-a-Minute Murphy's
>bike is, and at Rockefeller's shaft drive bike: you think he imported
>it from Denmark?
>
>Andre Jute
Dear Andre,
By 1899, the double-diamond bicycle frame looked pretty much like what
we see today. It only took a few years for the safety bicycle to
settle down after it appeared in its first commercially successful
form in 1885. The changes since then are hard to see except in
close-ups.
http://i7.tinypic.com/8a30k6g.jpg
You can see the moustache bar on Murphy's Tribune bicycle and just
make out the bulging end-grips later replaced by handlebar tape. The
picture is dark, but you can infer the old-style 7-shaped seat post
(like a handlebar stem) with its greater fore-and-aft range of
adjustment. The widely spaced teeth on the sprocket on his shirt
reminds you that he used inch-pitch chain.
The inch-pitch chain slowly faded, wooden rims hung around even
longer, forward-facing dropouts appeared, ram's horn handlebars
replaced the moustache design, thick oval aluminum cranks replaced
thin round steel cranks, frames and wheels became smaller, seat posts
and handlebar stems lost some of their adjustment range, cable brakes
and derailleurs were added, and so on.
But at a distance, one safety bike usually looks like another by 1900
because bizarre things like this had vanished:
http://books.google.com/books?id=gFMN3-srupsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:archibald+inauthor:sharp&as_brr=1&ei=qK8vR5ezL4GktAPMvqiwCQ#PPA278,M1
or http://tinyurl.com/26463x
As for Rockefeller's shaft-drive bike, it's not likely to be an
import. It's probably just one of the many Spalding, Pierce, Monarch,
Gormully-Jeffries, Stearns, Columbia, and other chainless models that
were widely sold in the U.S. circa 1900. They cost a bit more than
chain-drive bicycles and practically vanished when the bike boom
collapsed.
Here are a few examples of the flood of shaft-drive bikes.
1890s Spalding:
http://www.nostalgic.net/bicycle399.htm
(The May 13 1888 date stamped into the Spalding frame in one picture
refers to a patent for some part on the bicycle, not to the date of
manufacture. There were huge legal wars over bicycle patents, so
absurdly long patent lists were often stamped into the frames. Dunlop
patented the pneumatic bicycle tire on December 7, 1888, so we can be
sure that this bicycle wasn't built seven months earlier. In fact,
there's a good chance that Spalding wasn't even making bicycles in
1888, which illustrates how quickly safety bicycles went from nothing
to the bicycle boom that exploded by 1900.)
1895 Stearns:
http://www.nostalgic.net/bicycle378.htm
1901 Monarch:
http://www.nostalgic.net/bicycle373.htm
1901 Pierce with front and rear suspension:
http://www.nostalgic.net/bicycle471.htm
1901 Tribune with wooden rims, 7-shaped seat post, and round steel
crank arms visible:
http://www.nostalgic.net/pictures/1631.htm
1902 Gormully & Jeffries:
http://www.nostalgic.net/bicycle362.htm
1903 two-speed Tribune with front suspension:
http://www.nostalgic.net/index.asp?S=arc/pre1920/1903tribune+shaft+drive%2Ejpg
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
Ryan Cousineau
carl...@comcast.net wrote:
Even so, I daresay that reproducing that bike today, using steel, would
be nearly impossible, even if you accepted that it would be all but
unrideable.
My suspicion is that either the quoted weight was a frame weight, or
that the usual sort of lying and exaggeration was occurring.
If not, then I would like to find out more about any individual who was
fearless enough to ride it. Maybe on a board track?
--
Ryan Cousineau rcou...@sfu.ca http://www.wiredcola.com/
"My scenarios may give the impression I could be an excellent crook.
Not true - I am a talented lawyer." - Sandy in rec.bicycles.racing
A Muzi
>>>> An older book arrived yesterday, Arthur Judson Palmer's "Riding High."
>>>> Published in 1956, it has over 250 photos and can be found used at
>>>> www.bookfinder.com.
>>> -snip-
>>>> Weight weenies, eat your hearts out:
>>>> http://i10.tinypic.com/87m2g3t.jpg
>>>> Eight pounds fourteen ounces is 4.034 kg. I've seen another reference
>>>> to this lightweight wonder, but can't find it.
>>> -snip-
>> A Muzi <a...@yellowjersey.org> wrote:
>>> Could there be a misunderstanding someplace? Looks like a reasonably 8-9
>>> pound frameset in carbon steel tube.
>>> For a complete bike of that style, with steel bars and crank, wide
>>> tires, carbon steel frame, under nine pounds seems improbable.
> carl...@comcast.net wrote:
>> There might be, but I remember seeing the same claim elsewhere. I
>> couldn't track it down, but now you've motivated me.
>>
>> First half-remembered find, not the one I'm after, but at least
>> hinting of weirdness:
>>
>> "Among the freaks at shown [at the 1896 cycle show at Madison Square
>> Gardens, not the 1895] was one at the Worcester Cycle Company's booth.
>> It is a regulation pattern bicycle and is ticketed as weighing seven
>> pounds. The visitor is invited to lift it. He then finds that it
>> weighs about 100 pounds instead of seven. Its weight is obtained by
>> filling the entire frame and forks with lead."
>> http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9D07E1D6173BEE33A25755C
>> 2A9679C94679ED7CF&oref=slogin
>> So far, no luck finding the original half-remembered article. If true
>> and made of steel, what made it possible was extremely small diameter
>> tubing, not easy to see in the drawing.
Ryan Cousineau wrote:
> Even so, I daresay that reproducing that bike today, using steel, would
> be nearly impossible, even if you accepted that it would be all but
> unrideable.
>
> My suspicion is that either the quoted weight was a frame weight, or
> that the usual sort of lying and exaggeration was occurring.
>
> If not, then I would like to find out more about any individual who was
> fearless enough to ride it. Maybe on a board track?
The lightest modern steel frames, using material unavailable a hundred
years ago, are about 3 pounds. 9 pounds doesn't leave much room for that
forged steel crank, steel bars, wide tires, etc.
frkr...@gmail.com
>
>
> I rode a pennyfarthing once in a parade. It came from the museum at
> Oudtshoorn in South Africa. I don't remember the maker -- if indeed
> anyone knew. The front wheel might have been four feet high because
> the pedals drove the centre of the wheel directly and a six footer has
> an inner leg measurement of around 30 inches. As a teenager the pedals
> were a bit of a stretch for me. Mounting was by being boosted onto the
> crossbars of a rugby goal and hanging there while the bike was wheeled
> under me. I then pedalled out and joined the parade already in motion,
> being unable to dismount until I reached the showgrounds, where bales
> of hay had been prearranged for dismounting. There was a step on it,
> just above the small rear wheel, but the contortion required to reach
> it was always more destabilizing than any speed one could get up to on
> the level.
My experience has been different. I've ridden penny farthings a few
times, and I was always amazed at how easily they balanced, even at
sub-walking speeds. This allowed easy mounting, and almost as easy
dismounting.
To mount, I grabbed the handlebars and put my foot on the step above
the rear wheel. (Yes, that was a bit of a stretch, but not much.) A
couple scooter-style pushes got the bike moving at 3 or 4 mph, and it
was so stable it was no problem to get astride the seat.
IIRC, dismounting was a little trickier because my foot had to find
that rear step. One owner explained that many riders preferred to
hook their legs up over the handlebars, lock the spoon brake and
catapult forward, landing on their feet in a sort of trick dismount.
- Frank Krygowski
jobst....@stanfordalumni.org
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/
Jobst Brandt
Paul Myron Hobson
> Those high wheelers are still around and making news:
>
> http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/
This link will last a little longer:
http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/article/2007-12-6-12-06-07-pa-high-wheel
or
\\paul
Andre Jute
> orhttp://tinyurl.com/26463x
>
> Cheers,
>
> Carl Fogel
I'm always delighted to meet an historian of some esoteric niche. I
expect that a real expert would probably know those bikes as vintage
jobs from the details -- the devil is always in the details -- but
you're right, if I were to cycle past those bikes on the street, I
would not cast them a second look, or at least most of them. However,
the reason the rest would catch my eye is for the front suspension
detail, a passion I bring with me from auto racing. Is that Pierce
really suspended by leaf springs? Amazing. (Mind you, I daily ride a
bike with electronically controlled adaptive damping, for which you
could probably find some outright unbelievers even on this august
conference.)
Thanks for the hard work of providing specific references to educate
me, Carl; it is much appreciated.
I tried to enhance your Murphy scan but no luck; what you can see is
what you will be able to see unless a much higher resolution scan
becomes available; I suspect the original photograph doesn't resolve
the detail all that well. But the 7-type saddle is clearly visible in
several other pics; the eunuch-maker saddle is another thing that was
settled very early, like the diamond frame.
Andre Jute
http://members.lycos.co.uk/fiultra/BICYCLE%20%26%20CYCLING.html
Donald Gillies
>carl...@comcast.net wrote:
>> Weight weenies, eat your hearts out:
>> http://i10.tinypic.com/87m2g3t.jpg
>> Eight pounds fourteen ounces is 4.034 kg. I've seen another reference
>> to this lightweight wonder, but can't find it.
>Could there be a misunderstanding someplace? Looks like a reasonably 8-9
>pound frameset in carbon steel tube.
>For a complete bike of that style, with steel bars and crank, wide
>tires, carbon steel frame, under nine pounds seems improbable.
Well, the bike frame might have been very small and flexy. If that is
the case, I can easily see someone welding together a 4 lbs
frame/fork. Wooden rims could weigh about 1.5 lbs (700 grams), tires
could be almost arbitrarily thin, just by using fine cloth and
skimping on rubber, maybe 1 lbs total, in those day all tires were
tubular. Then you need hubs, cranks, bars, stem, and saddle. If that
was 4 lbs, I get a weight of 10.5 lbs ~ pretty close to the claimed
wait of 8 lbs 14 oz.
- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA
carl...@comcast.net
wrote:
Dear Don & Andrew,
Still no luck finding the article that I half-remember about the light
bike, but groveling through the NYT and Outing magazine is tedious and
their searches often miss things.
The ultra-light bike was probably made just for the exhibition,
meaning that the manufacturer had no intention of actually selling the
thing, much less having anyone get on it and see how far it could be
ridden before it broke.
A) It will turn out that I'm mis-remembering the article.
B) I'll find that it was the frame alone, not a complete bicycle.
C) Someone will have written a different article, explaining that the
8 lbs 14 oz was a mis-print for eighteen pounds and fourteen ounces
(or 14 lbs 8 oz).
D) I'll never find anything and give up.
E) I'll stumble over unrelated points of interest, like this article
in which Murphy details his mile-a-minute ride, apparently an earlier
version of the better-known article. It mentions lots of things left
out in the pages that I found, so I was quite startled when I realized
that my extensive searching a few months ago never turned the damn
thing up:
http://www.phys.uri.edu/~tony/bicycle/murphyli/lirrsky.htm
Maybe this guy hadn't put that page up on the internet when I was
looking:
http://www.phys.uri.edu/~tony/
He looks like a promising recruit for RBT.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
Tim McNamara
jobst....@stanfordalumni.org wrote:
Why am I not particularly surprised to see Martin Krieg in this article?
What a unique guy. I haven't met him but I did have some e-mail
correspondence with him some years back, and I read his autobiographical
account of his recovery from a traumatic brain injury and coma. I had
thought that he was heavily into recumbents nowadays, but this is as far
from a recumbent as you can get and still be on a bike.
carl...@comcast.net
Tom Sherman
> Those high wheelers are still around and making news:
>
> http://www.paloaltodailynews.com/
>
The man who used to include an ASCII map of the US in his Usenet signature.
Are those SPuD compatible sandals?
--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
"Localized intense suction such as tornadoes is created when temperature
differences are high enough between meeting air masses, and can impart
excessive energy onto a cyclist." - Randy Schlitter
Tom Sherman
My favorite Martin Krieg moment was when he cross-posted an announcement
about the Cherry Pie Criterium to both rec.bicycles.racing and
alt.rec.bicycles.recumbent. The resulting flame-war was quite entertaining.
carl...@comcast.net
F) Found it in "Bicycling Science," 2nd edition, Rowland and Wilson,
figure 10.16 on page 267. But it's just the same picture, credited to
"Riding High." So I saw the 8 lb 14 oz claim and picture reproduced
there years before I bought the original book it was taken from.
Unfortunately, I still half-remember seeing something about the
ultra-light bike at the show, which isn't mentioned in "Bicycle
Science," so I have to grovel through the NYT archives, having found
nothing in "Outing" magazine.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
M-gineering
> Dear Don & Andrew,
>
> Still no luck finding the article that I half-remember about the light
> bike, but groveling through the NYT and Outing magazine is tedious and
> their searches often miss things.
>
> The ultra-light bike was probably made just for the exhibition,
> meaning that the manufacturer had no intention of actually selling the
> thing, much less having anyone get on it and see how far it could be
> ridden before it broke.
>
> A) It will turn out that I'm mis-remembering the article.
>
> B) I'll find that it was the frame alone, not a complete bicycle.
>
> C) Someone will have written a different article, explaining that the
> 8 lbs 14 oz was a mis-print for eighteen pounds and fourteen ounces
> (or 14 lbs 8 oz).
>
> D) I'll never find anything and give up.
According to 'the ingenious mr Pedersen' in 1903 mikael pedersen built a
bicycle with 0.3mm tubing weighing 4100 grams. You might want to search
for an article in the 'Boys own Paper' by Rev. J.Hunt ;)
A 5 kilo version was ridden from London to Dursley
--
/Marten
info(apestaartje)m-gineering(punt)nl
carl...@comcast.net
Dear Marten,
Santa may be bringing me the book dedicated to the odd Pedersen-frame
bicycles, but he's wavering toward Pryor Dodge's lavishly illustrated,
overpriced, and more general "The Bicycle."
I'd seen some lightweight claims for Pedersen models, but as usual
they weren't clear about whether the weight was just the frame or
included the tires, gearing, and so forth.
The Dursely-Pedersen site mentions what seems to be a complete 5.4 kg
(11 lb 15 oz) Pedersen bicycle:
http://www.dursley-pedersen.net/dp_history.html
But it seems to be a weight for a patent application for bicycle that
was yet to be manufactured, and it's a whopping ~3 pounds or 33%
heavier than the ~9 pound Tribune at the bike show, so I left it
alone.
The 4.1 kg special Pedersen bike with special tubing sounds like the
kind of silly made-to-impress one-of-a-kind bike that I suspect the
Tribune company made for the bike show, so I may have to insist that
Santa get me the Pedersen book. I couldn't find the 4100 gram wonder
with a quick look on the internet, since the "Boy's Own Paper" isn't
online.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
carl...@comcast.net
Aaargh!
I should have looked closer at "Riding High" instead of running off to
the internet to search for details of the lightweight Tribune.
The photo and caption that I scanned are on the right-hand side of the
right-hand page 125. The text on that page doesn't seem to mention the
bike.
But the left-hand page 124 says:
"But we were talking about lightness. The limit in this seems to have
been reached at the National Bicycle Exhibition at Madison Square
Garden in February, 1895, where a Tribune bicycle weighing eight
pounds, fourteen ounces was shown to an almost unbelieving public. It
was a full size adult bicycle in every respect, with 28-inch wheels
and a 43 3/4-inch wheel base, and had been thoroughly tested by an
average-weight rider. For some reason unknown at this time, this
featherweight never attained the popularity it would seem to have
warranted."
So it was a full-size, rideable bike at 8 lbs 14 oz. Despite the
allegedly thoroughly testing, I'd be afraid to ride anything that
light very far.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
carl...@comcast.net
wrote:
>carl...@comcast.net wrote:
>> An older book arrived yesterday, Arthur Judson Palmer's "Riding High."
>> Published in 1956, it has over 250 photos and can be found used at
>> www.bookfinder.com.
>-snip-
>> Weight weenies, eat your hearts out:
>> http://i10.tinypic.com/87m2g3t.jpg
>> Eight pounds fourteen ounces is 4.034 kg. I've seen another reference
>> to this lightweight wonder, but can't find it.
>-snip-
>
>Could there be a misunderstanding someplace? Looks like a reasonably 8-9
>pound frameset in carbon steel tube.
>For a complete bike of that style, with steel bars and crank, wide
>tires, carbon steel frame, under nine pounds seems improbable.
Dear Andrew,
Aha!
After all the other fuss, I'll put my find here.
No, no mistake, full bicycle, 8 lbs, 14 ounces. People picked it up
and held it, and the maker claimed that it had been ridden and tested.
Here's where the drawing that I scanned from "Riding High" originally
appeared:
http://www.printsoldandrare.com/autos/015auto.jpg
The caption reads, "THE EIGHT POUND FOURTEEN OUNCE TRIBUNE BICYCLE."
No, you can't read the caption in the link--I wrestled with my
library's microfiche reader. The fat-tired thing on the left is "THE
MOTORCYCLE"--you can just see the tiny engine at the rider's knee.
The drawing appeared on the cover of the Scientific American, Feb.
9th, 1895.
Here are the details from page 86:
"The curiosities of the show [the 1st National Bicycle Show at Madison
Square Garden] included several light wheels [the term then meant
entire bicycles], and we illustrate a real wonder in this line, an 8
pound 14 ounce Tribune bicycle, shown by the Black Manufacturing
Company, of Erie, Pa. It is full size throughout, having 28 inch
wheels and a 43 1/2 [misquoted as 3/4 in "Riding High"] inch wheel
base. It is only on taking it in the hand that its lightness can be
realized. It has 13 ounce [~370 gram] M. & W. tires; the tubing is No.
26 gauge (0.016 inch thick) and steel forgings are used for all frame
joints. The full number of spokes are used for the wheels, 28 for
front and 32 for rear wheel. It has been thoroughly tested by an
average weight rider and is doubltess the lightest full sized wheel
ever made, being a veritable tour de force. Regular racing wheels are
made as light as 15 pounds in weight."
The ~370 gram tires were probably like our modern tubulars, with the
weight including the inner tube.
So the Tribune bicycle really was that light, but my eyebrows are
still raised as high as yours.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel