Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff Works dot com. He there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer here
Speaker 1: and How Stuff Works. And yes, before I get into it,
Speaker 1: I still have a cold. I'm still dealing with allergies.
Speaker 1: In fact, I am recording an episode right after I
Speaker 1: just recorded another episode, so you get the not at
Speaker 1: Jonathan's voice version of Jonathan today. I apologize for that.
Speaker 1: But today I've got the subject that I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to talk about. Now. I've done episodes in the past
Speaker 1: about electric bikes, but a listener recently pointed out that
Speaker 1: I'm not yet actually discussed the bicycle itself. And so
Speaker 1: today we're gonna take a look at the bicycle. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take off the training wheels, and we're gonna look
Speaker 1: at this evolution and probably make some queen references. We'll
Speaker 1: see how it goes. But yes, I like to ride
Speaker 1: my bicycle. I like to ride my bike. So where
Speaker 1: did the bicycle come from? We're gonna really focus on
Speaker 1: that today. We're looking at the birth and evolution of
Speaker 1: the bicycle as opposed to the latest engrazed in bikes.
Speaker 1: I'll do another episode about that later on. Well, As
Speaker 1: is the case with many inventions, the answer of where
Speaker 1: the bicycle came from is not really that simple an answer.
Speaker 1: The bicycle evolved from a series of different inventions, and
Speaker 1: it would be disingenuous to point to a specific person
Speaker 1: as the inventor of the bicycle. Now, I should start
Speaker 1: all of this by talking about the earliest evidence of
Speaker 1: wheeled vehicles in general, but I'm not gonna spend a
Speaker 1: whole lot of time on it, because come on, you
Speaker 1: don't need a fourteen series episode about the invention and
Speaker 1: modernization of the wheel. But the actual wheel dates back
Speaker 1: to at least in both Asia and Europe, and going
Speaker 1: into more detail would be a bit much, even for me.
Speaker 1: The early wheeled vehicles used four wheels for the most part.
Speaker 1: That's not a surprise, as it provides a stable base.
Speaker 1: Historians discovered a few early two wheeled vehicles dating from
Speaker 1: around that same time, but these were carts and the
Speaker 1: wheels were aligned side by side as opposed to front
Speaker 1: and back like a bicycle. Skipping ahead thousands of years,
Speaker 1: let's talk about Geovanni Fontana. He was known as not
Speaker 1: just a fifteenth century doctor of medicine, but also an
Speaker 1: engineer and even in some circles, a magician, though he
Speaker 1: was using a proto form of the scientific method to
Speaker 1: get results and didn't necessarily present his work as that
Speaker 1: of a magical nature. He was replicating what magicians claimed
Speaker 1: they could do using scientific principles and saying, doesn't it
Speaker 1: make more sense that it's done this way? Well. In
Speaker 1: fourteen twenty five he published a manuscript that detailed a
Speaker 1: self driving carriage. By that he did not mean an
Speaker 1: autonomous car, though that would have been incredibly forward thinking
Speaker 1: back in the fourteen hundreds. Rather, he had suggested a
Speaker 1: vehicle that would be propelled by the people inside the
Speaker 1: vehicle itself. Up to that point, land vehicles had to
Speaker 1: be pulled by animals or other human beings. Fontana suggested
Speaker 1: that a hand powered vehicle could allow for a new
Speaker 1: method of getting from place to place. His proposal included
Speaker 1: a brief description of a carriage that used ropes and
Speaker 1: cogs to transform power from a writer or transfer power,
Speaker 1: I should say, from a writer to the wheels of
Speaker 1: the vehicle. So imagine sort of a loop of rope
Speaker 1: wrapped around cogs like their pulleys, and if you pull
Speaker 1: on the rope, you transfer the energy needed to rotate
Speaker 1: the wheels of the carriage itself. But that's about all
Speaker 1: the details we have for this proposed device. If Fontana
Speaker 1: actually ever tried to build one of these things, it
Speaker 1: was lost to time. And on a tangential note, before
Speaker 1: I trend for away from Fontana, I have to also
Speaker 1: mention that he proposed a sort of proto rocket car
Speaker 1: that would be fueled by gunpowder. Now I mentioned that
Speaker 1: only because I love how crazy that sounds. I don't
Speaker 1: think he ever made one of those either, because there
Speaker 1: are no reports of Fontana having to be dug out
Speaker 1: of the side of a mountain. A French mathematician ended
Speaker 1: up laying out the argument for human powered vehicles in
Speaker 1: a six nine six manuscript titled Recreations Mathematiques a physiques
Speaker 1: because it's French. He hypothesized that such conveyances would be
Speaker 1: much more readily available to the general population because you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to care for an animal. You wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to have the space to keep a horse, and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't have to feed it. Plus you could even get
Speaker 1: some exercise and some fresh air using such a vehicle. However,
Speaker 1: this was just sort of a armchair philosophizing kind of approach.
Speaker 1: He didn't actually build anything. There is interesting story about
Speaker 1: a sketch that was attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, and
Speaker 1: supposedly that sketch dated back to fourteen three, and not
Speaker 1: only was it a sketch of what looked like a bicycle,
Speaker 1: it even had pedals like it was. It was pretty
Speaker 1: much a modern style bike, uh in a in a
Speaker 1: sketch format. It's it's undeniably that sort of thing, but
Speaker 1: it is a somewhat crude design. The sketch had remained
Speaker 1: undiscovered and I say that in air quotes until nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, So it was attributed to fourteen but it
Speaker 1: wasn't uncovered until nineteen seventy four. That was when there
Speaker 1: was an art restoration project. Experts were working on Da
Speaker 1: Vinci's Codex Atlanticus, and supposedly this particular design was part
Speaker 1: of that and just had not been seen for centuries.
Speaker 1: Historians debated the legitimacy of this sketch, and the general
Speaker 1: consensus is that it's hocum. Here's the weird thing. This
Speaker 1: is not the only example of false attribution to the
Speaker 1: bicycle's evolution. Another sketch, this one supposedly dating to fift
Speaker 1: thirty four and made by one of da Vinci's pupils,
Speaker 1: also appears to be a fraud. So what was going on?
Speaker 1: There are these crazy fake sketches claiming to be the
Speaker 1: proto design of the bicycle centuries before it was ever
Speaker 1: really introduced. Well to understand, we need to take a
Speaker 1: quick detour and then I'll get back to the actual
Speaker 1: timeline of the bicycles invention. But I think this is
Speaker 1: pretty fascinating. So in the early twentieth century, European nations
Speaker 1: were becoming increasingly isolated and jingoistic. It became a point
Speaker 1: of national pride to champion the various advancements and inventions
Speaker 1: each country could lay claim to. I think of it
Speaker 1: a lot like the way we treat the Olympics at times.
Speaker 1: How some people will reduce the Olympics to a discussion
Speaker 1: of our country took home twelve gold medals and your
Speaker 1: country only took home eight. It's sort of a one
Speaker 1: upsmanship tendency, which I think it's pretty darn tacky because
Speaker 1: it takes attention away from the actual accomplishments, but that's
Speaker 1: just my own opinion. While his tensions in Europe built
Speaker 1: toward World War One, more nations were getting involved in
Speaker 1: kind of this one upsmanship. They were scrambling to prove
Speaker 1: that they were the seat of ingenuity and innovation. And
Speaker 1: sometimes it meant that some rather um let's say, creative
Speaker 1: but undaunted by ethics sorts of people would fabricate evidence
Speaker 1: that clever inventions came from their respective homelands. Historians suspected
Speaker 1: that the alleged Da Vinci sketch is one of those examples.
Speaker 1: It was a forgery intended to give the honor of
Speaker 1: creating the bicycle to Italians rather than to say, the Germans.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, Most historians agree that the bicycle really got
Speaker 1: started in Germany first. Another bogus claim to the invention
Speaker 1: of the bicycle dates to See and a fellow known
Speaker 1: as Compt. Deceive Rack. Though it maybe that this bogus
Speaker 1: claim was arrived at honestly by mistake, as opposed to
Speaker 1: a hoax perpetuated by someone. The good Count allegedly developed
Speaker 1: a vehicle called the Salt Affair, which by a nineteenth
Speaker 1: century historians description sounded a lot like the basic frame
Speaker 1: of a bicycle. According to the description, it had two wheels,
Speaker 1: one set in front of the other. It did not
Speaker 1: have any pedals or brakes or handlebars. It was essentially
Speaker 1: a frame with a saddle on it, a leather seat,
Speaker 1: and you would sit on the saddle and you would
Speaker 1: propel yourself with your feet pushing against the ground, and
Speaker 1: you would steer yourself by leaning left or right, and
Speaker 1: that's as best as you could do. As it turns out,
Speaker 1: there were vehicles sort of like this, but they were
Speaker 1: all three or four wheeled vehicles, not two wheeled vehicles.
Speaker 1: Many people, particularly French people, adopted the belief that a
Speaker 1: Frenchman had come up with the idea for a bicycle.
Speaker 1: But it appears that was not quite the case. It
Speaker 1: may well have been an error in translation or transcription.
Speaker 1: Now I prefer stories that actually have evidence to support them,
Speaker 1: and I am inclined to give the nod of the
Speaker 1: invention of the bicycle, or at least the invention of
Speaker 1: a device that would evolve into the bicycle, to a
Speaker 1: certain Baron Carl von Dreiss in eighteen seventeen. He was
Speaker 1: concerned with finding a way for people to get around
Speaker 1: due to recent unfortunate events see an eighteen fifteen. A
Speaker 1: couple of years earlier, there was a volcano in Indonesia
Speaker 1: called Mount Tambora, and it done blowed up. The volcano
Speaker 1: ejected an enormous cloud of ash into the atmosphere. Now
Speaker 1: that ash cloud had a global effect. It lowered temperatures
Speaker 1: across the world. It was kind of like a nuclear winter, except,
Speaker 1: of course, this is a volcanic one. This in turn
Speaker 1: led to massive crop failures in certain regions around the world,
Speaker 1: like in Europe, and that led to other problems such
Speaker 1: as animals like horses, dying of starvation. So there was
Speaker 1: a shortage of horses in Europe at the time. Dryce
Speaker 1: wanted to invent a means of getting around quickly despite
Speaker 1: this lack of horses. The good Baron came up with
Speaker 1: a novel idea, assuming that the previous examples I mentioned
Speaker 1: were in fact hoaxes and not just poorly recorded history.
Speaker 1: It was again a two wheeled vehicle, with one wheel
Speaker 1: set in front of the other. It had a padded
Speaker 1: saddle to sit upon and a set of handlebars for steering.
Speaker 1: There were no pedals and only a single wheel break
Speaker 1: so again, and for real, the writer would push him
Speaker 1: or herself along the ground with his or her feet.
Speaker 1: Let's be honest, it was mostly hymns and he's that
Speaker 1: we're talking about because there were lots of laws about
Speaker 1: what women could and could not wear, and most of
Speaker 1: those were not conducive to riding a vehicle of this design.
Speaker 1: So what was this thing called? Well, it actually had
Speaker 1: several names. Dryce called it the laos machine, which means
Speaker 1: running machine. You gotta love the German language in which
Speaker 1: new words are invented by just stringing existing words together
Speaker 1: and you just end up with a very long new word.
Speaker 1: According to the sources I referenced, he used this name
Speaker 1: originally for a four wheeled vehicle of his design, but
Speaker 1: he later adapted the same name to the two wheeled model.
Speaker 1: It was known in English as the dry zine or
Speaker 1: dry Zine d r A I s I n E.
Speaker 1: In French it was the dry zen oh, and it
Speaker 1: was also called a velocipede. Velocipede would become a generic
Speaker 1: term for these sort of two wheeled vehicles for many
Speaker 1: many years. Uh In England, it was also sometimes called
Speaker 1: a hobby horse or and this is my favorite a
Speaker 1: dandy horse because they were expensive, so typically only really
Speaker 1: rich people in nice clothing were striding along with these suckers.
Speaker 1: The word velocipede would be used for many such vehicles
Speaker 1: for decades until the term bicycle came around. Now people
Speaker 1: liked these when they could ride them on nice, smooth surfaces,
Speaker 1: because a push with your foot would propel you much
Speaker 1: further than just if you were to take a regular step,
Speaker 1: so you travel more ground faster than normal, So you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be going at ridiculous speeds, but you could certainly
Speaker 1: get across a sidewalk area much faster than if you
Speaker 1: were just strolling, and it had a certain appeal. Dryce's
Speaker 1: invention was a hefty one. It was made out of
Speaker 1: wood and brass and iron shod wheels, plus that leather saddle.
Speaker 1: The whole thing weighed around fifty pounds or twenty three
Speaker 1: For a few years, his invention was all the rage
Speaker 1: in Europe. Over in England, a coachmaker named Dennis Johnson
Speaker 1: began to market his own variation of Dryce's invention, and
Speaker 1: the inspired a few seasons of vigorous sporting events among
Speaker 1: the aristocracy of London, but turned out to mostly just
Speaker 1: be a fad, and excitement died down by the eighteen twenties.
Speaker 1: So why did it go out of style so quickly? Well,
Speaker 1: it might have had something to do with writing conditions.
Speaker 1: The vehicles worked best on smooth paved surfaces. Now, most
Speaker 1: roads in Europe did not fit that description. They were
Speaker 1: a cobblestone if you were lucky, But sidewalks were frequently
Speaker 1: very smooth, so velocopied writers would stick to sidewalks and
Speaker 1: they would terrorize pedestrians. This might sound pretty familiar if
Speaker 1: you're a pedestrian out there, and I'm sure you've got
Speaker 1: your own story or stories of crazed bicyclists barreling down
Speaker 1: pedestrian walkways. Anyway, many places ended up passing laws that
Speaker 1: would forbid velocipede writers to go on sidewalks, and since
Speaker 1: they were incredibly uncomfortable to ride on rutted roads or
Speaker 1: a cobblestone streets, they faded from common use. Meanwhile, across
Speaker 1: the pond, the early invention had debuted in the United States.
Speaker 1: There was a man named W. K. Clarkson Jr. Who
Speaker 1: received a patent for a velocipede in eighteen nineteen and
Speaker 1: I would love to tell you more about mention, but
Speaker 1: sadly all records of that particular patent were destroyed in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six and a fire at the U. S.
Speaker 1: Patent Office, And I may have to do an episode
Speaker 1: one day about that particular event, because it definitely had
Speaker 1: a major impact on innovation and invention at the early
Speaker 1: nineteenth century in the United States. Next, we come to
Speaker 1: another possible hoax, or at least potential misinformation. There's a
Speaker 1: story that a Scottish blacksmith named Kirkpatrick McMillan came up
Speaker 1: with the idea of attaching pedals to a bicycle in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty nine, which would be decades before anyone else
Speaker 1: had thought of this. Now, these pedals didn't turn gears
Speaker 1: that were connected by a chain the way a modern
Speaker 1: bicycle does. According to the story, they were treadle style pedals,
Speaker 1: so they were connecting to rods that were in a
Speaker 1: position so that they in turn would rotate the rear wheel.
Speaker 1: So solid rods as opposed to a chain drive. You
Speaker 1: can kind of think of the way a locomotive uses
Speaker 1: these sort of rods to turn wheels. If you've ever
Speaker 1: seen pictures of that same sort of idea for these
Speaker 1: particular bikes. The front wheel was steerable, so you had
Speaker 1: to have that be freely turnable left or right. That's
Speaker 1: why it was a rear wheel drive. But some historians
Speaker 1: are skeptical of this account. The stories of McMillan's work
Speaker 1: were first publicized in the eighteen nineties and they came
Speaker 1: from a guy named James Johnston, who, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: was related to macmillan. There is an account from an
Speaker 1: eighteen forty two edition of a newspaper in Glasgow of
Speaker 1: a minor accident involving a quote velocipede of ingenious design
Speaker 1: end quote, and Johnston says that article is all about McMillan.
Speaker 1: But since there's no actual mention of macmillan's name in
Speaker 1: the article, nor a description of how the velocity design
Speaker 1: was ingenious, the matter is not quite settled. In fact,
Speaker 1: one bit of evidence arguing against this claim is that
Speaker 1: the article referred to the operator of the velocipede as
Speaker 1: a gentleman. Macmillan, who was a tradesman, would not have
Speaker 1: qualified for that distinction in the extremely class conscious United Kingdom.
Speaker 1: So it may well be that McMillan was the first
Speaker 1: to attach pedals to a two wheeled vehicle in this manner,
Speaker 1: but we just lack the evidence. There's a similar story
Speaker 1: that tells the tale of Gavin Dalzel of les Mahago,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure I'm mispronouncing because you get to these
Speaker 1: tiny English names and Scottish names and you get fourteen
Speaker 1: syllables once written out, but you realize that when you
Speaker 1: pronounce it it's Fanshaw. Anyway, Dalzel was a cooper in
Speaker 1: the eighteen forties. That means he's he made barrels. He's
Speaker 1: a barrel maker, and he was said to have made
Speaker 1: a rear drive bicycle in eighteen forty five based off
Speaker 1: of Macmillan's design, though again this is undocumented. Now his
Speaker 1: son would go on to donate one of Dalzell's bikes
Speaker 1: to the Lasgow Transport Museum, but that happened several years later.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty three, a French design changed the way
Speaker 1: people got around on these two wheeled vehicles, another entry
Speaker 1: into the velociped category. This design had pedals mounted to
Speaker 1: the hub of the front wheel, so there's no chain
Speaker 1: drive or anything like that. The pedals were literally attached
Speaker 1: to the wheel hub. Peddling would drive the front wheel
Speaker 1: and provide the power needed to move forward. It was
Speaker 1: a bit of a challenge to operate, and on top
Speaker 1: of that, most models were made of unyielding materials and
Speaker 1: had steel wheels or ironclad wheels, so if you were
Speaker 1: to ride one of those on say a couple Stone Street,
Speaker 1: you'd be in for a pretty rough ride. As a result,
Speaker 1: those sort of vehicles gained a nickname bone shakers. Some
Speaker 1: large cities began to build special indoor writing academies were
Speaker 1: well to do. Velociped owners could come together and ride
Speaker 1: without worrying about shaking themselves to pieces. And it was
Speaker 1: right around this time that the word bicycle began to
Speaker 1: enter the common lexicon, slowly replacing velocipede and other names
Speaker 1: for two wheeled human powered vehicles. Now I've got a
Speaker 1: lot more to say about the evolution of bicycles, but
Speaker 1: first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: The first documented rod driven two wheeled vehicle might not
Speaker 1: be the first one ever, but the first one that's
Speaker 1: documented dates to eighteen sixty nine. Thomas McCall of Kilmarnock
Speaker 1: was the inventor, but his design didn't gain much popularity
Speaker 1: as the front crank velocipedes did, which were mostly three
Speaker 1: or four wheeled vehicles at that time, and they were
Speaker 1: easier to operate. Also, in eighteen sixty nine, there was
Speaker 1: a Frenchman named Eugene Meyer who patented the wire spoke
Speaker 1: tension wheel for bicycles. Wire spoke wheels were first proposed
Speaker 1: decades earlier, back in eighteen o eight, in fact, by
Speaker 1: George Kayley, but that was for a totally different type
Speaker 1: of vehicle. And this gives me a chance to talk
Speaker 1: about how wire spoke wheels work. Only enough, it's more
Speaker 1: complicated than you might imagine. All right, so why would
Speaker 1: we even have a wire spoke wheel? What? What's the
Speaker 1: big deal here? It's largely to provide stability to the
Speaker 1: wheel and connect the rim of the wheel, which is
Speaker 1: the outer edge, with the hub of the wheel that's
Speaker 1: the inner edge, the part that rotates around an axle.
Speaker 1: The spokes help a wheel support a load such as
Speaker 1: a rider on a bike, without collapsing. Now, the wire
Speaker 1: spokes are just what they sound like. They're spokes made
Speaker 1: out of thin wire. You'll have a couple of dozen
Speaker 1: spokes connecting the rim to the hub, and each wire
Speaker 1: spoke has to be tightened carefully in a process called
Speaker 1: pretension ing. Now, ideally, you want each of the spokes
Speaker 1: to create the same amount of tension on the hub
Speaker 1: in the center. They're all pulling the hub, but from
Speaker 1: different directions and at the same strength. So let's make
Speaker 1: an analogy to understand what's going on here. Imagine that
Speaker 1: you are standing in the center of a circle of friends,
Speaker 1: and each friend is holding a rope, and that rope
Speaker 1: connects to a sturdy hula hoop that's at your feet.
Speaker 1: You're standing right in the middle of that hula hoop.
Speaker 1: At a signal, all of your friends pull on their
Speaker 1: ropes and they all exert exactly the same amount of force.
Speaker 1: The hula hoop will rise up around you, but it
Speaker 1: won't touch you because everyone is pulling on it from
Speaker 1: all directions at the same amount of force simultaneously. So
Speaker 1: that's what a bicycle wheel is doing with the hub.
Speaker 1: Those spokes are all pulling on the hub simultaneously and
Speaker 1: with the same amount of force. Now Here enters a
Speaker 1: tricky question when you place a load on a bicycle wheel,
Speaker 1: such as you know when you get on a bike. Uh,
Speaker 1: so you and your regulators all mount up on bicycles.
Speaker 1: When you do that, that deforms the wheel slightly. The
Speaker 1: increased weight causes the bottom of the wheel to flatten
Speaker 1: out just a little bit. So the question is does
Speaker 1: the hub stand on the wire spokes that are below it,
Speaker 1: as in the ones that lead straight down to where
Speaker 1: the ground is, or does the hub hang from the
Speaker 1: spokes that are above it connecting it to the rim. Now,
Speaker 1: remember each of those wires is tightened so that it
Speaker 1: has tension, deforming the bottom of the wheel, which means
Speaker 1: that you're slightly pushing the rim inward. Reduces that tension
Speaker 1: because you are applying a compressive force. If this were
Speaker 1: a table instead of a bicycle, and the spokes were
Speaker 1: the table legs, we'd say the table legs were experiencing
Speaker 1: compression and we're holding up the table, and that the
Speaker 1: table was standing on its legs. But with wheels it's
Speaker 1: not quite so simple. The wire spokes beneath the hub
Speaker 1: experienced compression, but it's not enough to return the wires
Speaker 1: to their pretensioned state. So, in other words, the wires
Speaker 1: below the hub still have tension on them, just not
Speaker 1: as much as they did before the wheel had to
Speaker 1: carry a load. Some argue that if the spokes still
Speaker 1: have tension, which means technically they are still pulling on
Speaker 1: the hub, they're just not pulling as hard as they
Speaker 1: were before the compression was applied, they cannot be said
Speaker 1: to support the hub. So the hub cannot stand on
Speaker 1: those spokes. You can't stand on something that's pulling downward.
Speaker 1: It's because standing on references like a push, so you
Speaker 1: can't push if the forces a pull. So these folks
Speaker 1: argue you'd have to say the hub hangs in place
Speaker 1: from the spokes around it, rather than stands on the
Speaker 1: spokes below it. Other people argue that this stance doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense, and that the hub does in fact
Speaker 1: stand on the wire spokes beneath it, and some of
Speaker 1: them have used a lot of math and computer simulations
Speaker 1: to back up their arguments. In some cases, I think
Speaker 1: you could just say that this is semantics, that one
Speaker 1: side and the other aren't really arguing opposites, but rather
Speaker 1: they are working from different perspectives and definitions in an
Speaker 1: attempt to describe the same thing. I think it is
Speaker 1: fascinating that something is seemingly simple as a wire spoke
Speaker 1: bicycle wheel could evoke such a fuss in the first place,
Speaker 1: and there really is a fuss. If you want to
Speaker 1: go down a rabbit hole, you can start doing searches
Speaker 1: on how wire spoke wheels work and see the incredible
Speaker 1: arguments between people who insist that the hub stands on
Speaker 1: the spokes or that the spokes hang the hub. Now,
Speaker 1: all we really need to know is that the wheels
Speaker 1: work and that they made bicycles lighter. That's really important
Speaker 1: because there using these thin wires, you don't have to
Speaker 1: use massive amounts of materials to build working wheels. That
Speaker 1: reduced weight of the bicycles and made them more attractive,
Speaker 1: because up to this point you were still talking about
Speaker 1: bicycles that weighed fifty pounds or more. I was incredibly heavy.
Speaker 1: Reducing the amount of materials you needed to make your
Speaker 1: bicycle was an attractive proposition. It brought the cost down
Speaker 1: and made them more practical, and so slowly we saw
Speaker 1: bicycles become lighter, particularly as metallurgical sciences progressed and lighter,
Speaker 1: stronger metal alloys became available. Myer's approach led to an
Speaker 1: interesting trend in design known as the high bicycle or
Speaker 1: high wheeler, sometimes also known as the ordinary and later
Speaker 1: on known as the penny farthing. These are those old
Speaker 1: timey bikes you've likely seen in photographs or maybe even
Speaker 1: in person. They feature a much larger front wheel than
Speaker 1: the rear wheel, sometimes significantly larger, and the pedals are
Speaker 1: attached directly to the hub of the front wheel, so
Speaker 1: when you pedal, your directly rotating that front wheel. Improvements
Speaker 1: in construction and design meant that you could have a
Speaker 1: wheel with a sixty diameter. That's that's five ft or
Speaker 1: one and a half meters diameter. Of course, to ride
Speaker 1: such a bicycle, you'd have to have legs long enough
Speaker 1: to reach the pedals, so you were limited by the
Speaker 1: length of your legs what sort of bicycle you could ride.
Speaker 1: But why would you even want a large wheel in
Speaker 1: the first place? What what was the deal there? Well,
Speaker 1: that has to do with wheel circumference, rotational speed, and
Speaker 1: travel speed. So get out your pencils and paper. Let's
Speaker 1: do some drawing. So first draw two circles and make
Speaker 1: the second circle about twice as big as the first circle.
Speaker 1: Then in the middle of those two circles, draw a
Speaker 1: smaller circle in each That inner circle will represent the
Speaker 1: wheel hub and the outer circles will represent the wheel rims. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine you have pedals attached to each of those hubs.
Speaker 1: One rotation of the petals will equal one full rotation
Speaker 1: of the respective wheel. Let's assume you've matched the revolutions
Speaker 1: per minute on both wheels, so you're peddling the same
Speaker 1: speed on the small wheel as you would on the
Speaker 1: big wheel. From that perspective, from just the revolutions per minute,
Speaker 1: you might say you're going the same speed on both wheels. However,
Speaker 1: the larger wheel will cover more ground in a single
Speaker 1: rotation than the smaller wheel. So if you took those
Speaker 1: circles and you straighten them out so that they were
Speaker 1: just straight lines, the circumference just becomes a straight line.
Speaker 1: The larger wheel would be a longer line, and that's
Speaker 1: the amount of space you would cover in one rotation.
Speaker 1: So rotation speeds are the same, and you're getting maybe
Speaker 1: let's say, let's make it simple. We'll say one rotation
Speaker 1: per second, so sixty rotations per minute. So both wheels
Speaker 1: turn at sixty rotations a minute. But the larger wheel
Speaker 1: is going to cover more ground in that space, which
Speaker 1: means your travel speed. Using a larger wheel is faster,
Speaker 1: so that was why you started seeing penny Farthings. With
Speaker 1: these larger and larger wheels in the front. It meant
Speaker 1: that rich people who had a death wish could ride really,
Speaker 1: really freaking fast. So the Ordinaries and penny Farthings became
Speaker 1: popular for gentlemen with long legs and a desire to
Speaker 1: go quite fast and potentially terrifying pedestrians because we made
Speaker 1: our own fund back then. One big disadvantage of that
Speaker 1: design was safety, or rather a lack of so the
Speaker 1: writer had to maintain our position high up over the
Speaker 1: front wheel to pedal properly. You know, you need to
Speaker 1: be able to see where you're going, you had to
Speaker 1: be able to balance, and you had to be able
Speaker 1: to pedal that front wheel. The handlebars were typically directly
Speaker 1: over the hub, and your legs would be snug underneath them.
Speaker 1: In fact, most handlebars were designed in such a way
Speaker 1: where there was a little bit of a bulge across
Speaker 1: the handlebars so that your your legs could move up
Speaker 1: and down underneath them, but otherwise it was really close
Speaker 1: to the wheel, so you're you're kind of sandwiched in.
Speaker 1: If you were to hit an obstruction like a rut
Speaker 1: in the road or a rock or something, you might
Speaker 1: find yourself flying over the top of the wheel quite
Speaker 1: high up, in such a way that you're nearly guaranteed
Speaker 1: to land on your head. Those handlebars would prevent you
Speaker 1: from flying straight off. You would end up following the
Speaker 1: rotational direction of the wheel, and you would face plant
Speaker 1: in front of your bicycle. And remember you're potentially more
Speaker 1: than five ft up because of the size of those wheels.
Speaker 1: This is where the phrase taking a header came from.
Speaker 1: The scenario happened frequently enough for there to be a
Speaker 1: phrase to describe it, and to this day, taking a
Speaker 1: header means to experience a sharp and sudden decline. Writing
Speaker 1: these things was really hard. You had to get a
Speaker 1: running start, for one thing, and then you had to
Speaker 1: jump onto the ordinary or penny farthing and hope that
Speaker 1: you did it correctly. When you came to a stop,
Speaker 1: you had to jump off again, as there was no
Speaker 1: way to put your feet down to steady yourself. A
Speaker 1: famous American author wrote about this experience, that author being
Speaker 1: Mark Twain, and he summed it up pretty nicely. I
Speaker 1: think his is This is a quote from Mark twain
Speaker 1: about writing an ordinary or penny farthing. When you have
Speaker 1: reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the
Speaker 1: machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then
Speaker 1: comes your next task, how to mount it? You do
Speaker 1: it in this way. You hop along behind it on
Speaker 1: your right foot, resting the other on the mounting peg,
Speaker 1: and grasping the tiller with your hands. At the word,
Speaker 1: you rise on the peg, stiffen your left leg, hang
Speaker 1: your other one around in the air in a general
Speaker 1: and indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of
Speaker 1: the saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side,
Speaker 1: maybe on the other. But you fall off. You get up,
Speaker 1: and you do it again, and once more, and then
Speaker 1: several times. By this time you have learned to keep
Speaker 1: your balance and also to steer without wrenching the tiller
Speaker 1: out by the roots. I say tiller because it is
Speaker 1: a tiller. Handlebar is a lamely descriptive phrase. So you
Speaker 1: steer along straight ahead a little while. Then you rise
Speaker 1: forward with a steady strain, bringing your right leg and
Speaker 1: then your body into the saddle. Catch your breath, fetch
Speaker 1: a violent hitch this way, and then that, and down
Speaker 1: you go again. Seems pretty accurate to me, Mr Twain. Well,
Speaker 1: I've got a lot more to say about the evolution
Speaker 1: of bicycles, but before I continue, let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break and thank our sponsor. Around this time when we
Speaker 1: start to see the rise of the ordinary or Penny Farthing,
Speaker 1: materials for bicycles were slowly changing as well. Wheels started
Speaker 1: to switch over to solid rubber wheel, so instead of
Speaker 1: having iron sheets nailed to a wooden frame, you had
Speaker 1: solid rubber that provided a softer ride, though obviously not
Speaker 1: nearly as soft as the later pneumatic tires would. Ball
Speaker 1: bearings also became a thing that made wheel rotation along
Speaker 1: the actle much more smooth, as well as handlebar motions.
Speaker 1: So these are just ball bearings that that allow for
Speaker 1: a smoother movement between different elements. You just have to
Speaker 1: make sure that the fit is snug without being too tight,
Speaker 1: because if it's too tight, then the balls will just
Speaker 1: snug up against the edges and it will prevent any
Speaker 1: sort of turning at all. But it meant motions in
Speaker 1: general on the bicycle became more elegant and less jerky
Speaker 1: and and violent and difficult to control. Oh and you
Speaker 1: might wonder why these things were called penny farthings. Well,
Speaker 1: in England at the time penny coin measured either thirty
Speaker 1: four millimeters or thirty one millimeters in diameter. That would
Speaker 1: depend on whether it was an old carper copper penny
Speaker 1: before eighteen sixty or a bronze penny. When they switched
Speaker 1: over far things which were worth one quarter of a penny,
Speaker 1: as in one fourth of a penny, we're twenty two
Speaker 1: millimeters in diameter if they were made of copper, or
Speaker 1: twenty millimeters that they were made of bronze. So the
Speaker 1: ordinaries wheels were similarly of different sizes. You had the
Speaker 1: larger penny and the smaller farthing. Well, that was kind
Speaker 1: of like the larger front wheel and the smaller rear wheel.
Speaker 1: While rich men were causing themselves head trauma on penny farthings.
Speaker 1: Groundbreaking work was underway in France as far back as
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty eight. A French watchmaker named Andre Gulime came
Speaker 1: up with an alternative to the front wheel pedal mounts
Speaker 1: of the ordinary bicycles. His design used a chain drive,
Speaker 1: and in fact, we didn't even learn about his contributions
Speaker 1: to this uh. In fact, you could argue that there
Speaker 1: weren't contributions at all, because it was pretty much kept
Speaker 1: to himself when one of his relatives discovered one of
Speaker 1: Glum's old bikes in storage after Gloomy himself had passed away.
Speaker 1: The simple chain right by the way consists of pedals
Speaker 1: mounted to a crank. The crank has got a gear
Speaker 1: wheel typically called the chain wheel, mounted to it, so
Speaker 1: when you pedal, you turn the crank, and the crank,
Speaker 1: in turn is since it's mounted to this chain wheel,
Speaker 1: turns the chain wheel. The teeth of this chain wheel
Speaker 1: fit into links on a bike chain. The chain is
Speaker 1: in a loop, and the other end of that loop
Speaker 1: is mounted around a second gear wheel. This one is
Speaker 1: connected to the hub, typically of the rear bicycle wheel,
Speaker 1: although there were front wheel chain drives as well, UH
Speaker 1: in sort of a hybrid of this style and penny farthings.
Speaker 1: So if you push on the pedals you would turn
Speaker 1: this chain wheel. That would end up engaging the teeth
Speaker 1: into the bicycle chain, rotating the chain loop anyway, and
Speaker 1: then that would again transfer rotational motion to the back
Speaker 1: gear wheel, which would in turn turn the that wheel.
Speaker 1: The freely turning rear wheel most of the time. So
Speaker 1: the ratio of gear teeth between the rear wheels gear
Speaker 1: wheel and the chain wheel would determine how fast you
Speaker 1: would go per rotation of the pedals. So let's take
Speaker 1: a standard bike wheel so that I can explain how
Speaker 1: chain drives work. It makes it easier if we just
Speaker 1: work with an easily understandable standard. A typical bike wheel
Speaker 1: might be twenty six inches in diameter. So if we
Speaker 1: take the good old handy formula and we can figure
Speaker 1: out that the circumference of this wheel is eight one
Speaker 1: seven inches or so, meaning that if we were to
Speaker 1: take the wheel and lay it out flat, you know,
Speaker 1: un unwheel it. In other words, it would lay out
Speaker 1: to a length of eighty one point seven inches. One
Speaker 1: full rotation the wheel would take you that far. But
Speaker 1: how much pedaling is required to make one rotation that
Speaker 1: would depend upon the gear ratio. So let's say that
Speaker 1: the chain wheel, you know, the one that attaches to
Speaker 1: the crank that is attached to the pedals, has twenty
Speaker 1: two teeth, and the rear wheels gear has thirty teeth.
Speaker 1: That gives us a twenty two to thirty ratio. Also,
Speaker 1: a you could argue it down to a point seven
Speaker 1: three to one ratio, which means if you were to
Speaker 1: do a full pedal stroke on the chain wheel one
Speaker 1: full rotation, the rear wheel would only turn point seven
Speaker 1: three times, so not quite three quarters of a rotation.
Speaker 1: But if the ratio were different, let's say the chain
Speaker 1: wheel has and the rear wheel has eleven teeth on
Speaker 1: its gear, you'd see a lot more turning in that
Speaker 1: rear wheel per turn of the crank. That would give
Speaker 1: us a four to one ratio, which means every time
Speaker 1: the crank wheel turn once, the rear wheel will go
Speaker 1: around four times. So if you tried it out two
Speaker 1: bikes with the gear ratios I just mentioned, and you
Speaker 1: were peddling those two bikes at exactly the same rate,
Speaker 1: you get on one and you peddle it where you're
Speaker 1: again going maybe sixty revolutions per minute, and then you
Speaker 1: get on the other one and you do it sixty
Speaker 1: revolutions per minute. On the first bike, you'll find yourself
Speaker 1: ambling along at a leisurely pace, and on the second
Speaker 1: bike you'll find yourself zooming down at ridiculous speeds. The
Speaker 1: gear ratios are what allowed bicycle manufacturers to create chain
Speaker 1: driven bikes that could attain speeds of the high wheelers
Speaker 1: without all those drawbacks. Remember the high wheelers. The reason
Speaker 1: they kept getting taller and taller was that the taller
Speaker 1: wheels would allow people to go faster as long as
Speaker 1: their legs were long enough to pedal the pedals. Using
Speaker 1: gear ratios with chain drives would allow the same thing,
Speaker 1: although it would take quite some time to get there,
Speaker 1: and it would take even longer to get two bicycles
Speaker 1: that would have multiple gears and not just a single gear.
Speaker 1: Goolo May didn't really do anything with that bike design,
Speaker 1: Like I said, it just kind of sat in his workshop.
Speaker 1: It would take a few decades for others to kind
Speaker 1: of pick up this particular approach. It wasn't until the
Speaker 1: mid eighteen eighties, well into the mid eighteen nineties that
Speaker 1: you start seeing chain driven bikes emerge and get some popularity.
Speaker 1: Some of them actually used chain driven front wheels like
Speaker 1: I mentioned, and they still had a larger wheel in
Speaker 1: the front as well Penny Farthing style. But a British
Speaker 1: engineer and entrepreneur named John kept Starley changed things with
Speaker 1: a bicycle called the Rover two. John kept Starley was
Speaker 1: the nephew of John Starley. John Starlely was a successful
Speaker 1: businessman who had started off with sewing machines really and
Speaker 1: had moved on to making ordinaries or penny farthings and
Speaker 1: did quite well with them. So his nephew J. K.
Speaker 1: Starley picked up the mantle and his first bicycle was
Speaker 1: known as the Rover, and it featured a chain drive.
Speaker 1: It also had a larger front wheel, so still kind
Speaker 1: of penny farthing ish, uh, But because his design didn't
Speaker 1: require the writer to perch at the top of a
Speaker 1: precariously high wheel, it became known as a new type
Speaker 1: of bicycle. Instead of it being a velocipede or a
Speaker 1: penny farthing or an ordinary or a bone shaker, these
Speaker 1: became known as safety bicycles. That classification would be used
Speaker 1: for chain bikes for years, So the bicycle that you
Speaker 1: and I are familiar with is really an outgrowth of
Speaker 1: these safety bicycles from the late nineteenth century. The Rover
Speaker 1: two was different. It had two wheels that were more
Speaker 1: or less of equivalent size, so no longer did we
Speaker 1: have that larger front wheel. It also had a frame
Speaker 1: that looks a lot like the typical diamond shaped frame
Speaker 1: you'll see in modern bikes, although it lacked a few
Speaker 1: things like the seat tube that modern bikes have. So
Speaker 1: a frame on a modern bike has a tube inside
Speaker 1: which you can fit a pipe where the bike seat
Speaker 1: is mounted, and you can typically adjust the height of
Speaker 1: the seat. That was not a feature of the rover too.
Speaker 1: But if you take a look at a picture of
Speaker 1: a rover too, you'll see the unmistakable features of a
Speaker 1: modern bicycle. The fact that these style bikes were called
Speaker 1: safety bicycles might have hurt sales a little bit. They
Speaker 1: actually did have other names too that also seemed diminutive,
Speaker 1: like in France, they were known as bicyclets like little
Speaker 1: bicycle essentially is what that means, and some people interpret
Speaker 1: this as meaning the vehicles weren't meant for big, old, rugged,
Speaker 1: manly men who had better things to do than avoid
Speaker 1: having their brains smashed in whenever they hit a small
Speaker 1: rut in the road. Around the same time, other engineering
Speaker 1: advances brought about features like caliber brakes, which made it
Speaker 1: easier to control bicycles, and pneumatically inflated tires helped smooth
Speaker 1: out the ride and made bicycling more comfortable, as well
Speaker 1: as safe. The pneumatic tire was originally meant to help
Speaker 1: a young boy have a smoother ride on a tricycle.
Speaker 1: The inventor of the pneumatic tire was a Scottish veterinarian
Speaker 1: named John boyd Dunlop. He had a son who was
Speaker 1: in poor health and Dunlop wanted to help his boy
Speaker 1: be able to play, and so he invented the pneumatic
Speaker 1: tire in order to help his son have a good
Speaker 1: time on his tricycle, and that would go on to
Speaker 1: change bicycling and later on the car industry. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of the advancements made during this era with
Speaker 1: bicycles would carry over into the automotive industry. By the
Speaker 1: late eight nineties, mass production had become a thing, and
Speaker 1: that meant the bicycles could be made in greater numbers,
Speaker 1: which brought down their cost and it made them more
Speaker 1: easily accessible to a larger customer base. At the same time,
Speaker 1: there were changes in the way women were allowed to dress.
Speaker 1: I hate having to use that phrase that way, but
Speaker 1: that is how things were back then, and so there
Speaker 1: are also changes in bicycle design that we're catering so
Speaker 1: to women so that they too could ride bicycles, because
Speaker 1: up to that point, the design of bicycles was such
Speaker 1: that women were unable to ride them while also uh
Speaker 1: committing to the social morays of how they should dress
Speaker 1: in polite society. Women would typically ride larger, three wheeled
Speaker 1: vehicles that were similar to the penny farthing in design,
Speaker 1: but didn't require you to sit astride an enormous bicycle, which,
Speaker 1: as it turns out, is hard to do if you
Speaker 1: also have to wear an ankle length dress. I think
Speaker 1: this is a pretty good place to wrap up this episode.
Speaker 1: There's a whole lot more we could talk about, even
Speaker 1: in the evolution of the bicycle, and then, of course
Speaker 1: there's more to talk about with the future developments, things
Speaker 1: like gear switching bikes, UH, the UH, the first appearance
Speaker 1: of the fix E and then the return of the
Speaker 1: fix E, the evolution of materials like carbon fiber, and
Speaker 1: a lot more. So. Maybe I'll do a follow up
Speaker 1: episode in the future where I touch on those. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you have any suggestions for future episodes
Speaker 1: of tech Stuff, you can get in touch with me.
Speaker 1: My email address for this show is tech Stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, or you can drop me
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both
Speaker 1: of those is tech Stuff hs W. Remember I stream
Speaker 1: live on Wednesdays and Fridays over at twitch dot tv
Speaker 1: slash tech Stuff. Hope to see you over there and
Speaker 1: join me in the chat room. Also, don't forget to
Speaker 1: follow our Instagram account. And I think that's it. I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go, uh go for a bike ride and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com