1895 Cycle Racing, Home Version

1895 Patent for a "Racing Index for Home Trainer Cycles"

From the patent application:

The idea of the invention is, to form a game or sport by which persons can contest against each other on home trainer cycles; a model on the track representing each contestant and the faster either person pedals his home trainer cycle the faster will the model representing him, travel on the model track.

In other words, you pedal your stationary bike and the little bike in front of you races your opponent (at the correct relative speed, hopefully).


Looks better from this angle . . .

Perhaps a modern version focusing on the exercise and "fun" aspects would be suitable for a Kickstarter funding proposal?


I think a proposal for funding a modern racing trainer duo cycle thing would do better than yet another Kickstarter LED cycle lighting proposal - enough, already.

Cycling Patents Monthly (1890s) & Bike Child's Seat

Looking at Cycling Patents Monthly in the Hathitrust digital library is easier for browsing old bicycle-related patents than searching for them in Google.

The digitized issues of the journal, Cycling Patents Monthly, cover the years 1892-1895. Nothing but cycling related patents! Apparently the volume of patents connected with bicycles was unprecedented during the cycling craze of the 1890s. As usual, I found a patent for something that one sees today as "new."



1895 patented version above includes a sunshade


Today's version, but no shade

Bike + Umbrella, Then & Now

I have noted this before, but there are very very few new ideas for how to improve bicycles (that are good, anyway).


A "new" product first patented in 1896

Other bloggers have looked at this device, the "Überhood," and critiqued its likely performance, for example Mr. BikeSnob and the Wired Gadget Lab. (It turns out an Überhood isn't a neighborhood that is better than all the rest.)

And I had a blog post about a similar product - patented in 1896!


One assumes they weren't trying to get the 1896 equivalent of $79 like the Uberhood people, but it still failed

I wonder why they haven't looked for Kickstarter funding.

Long Freight Fuji Bike on National Mall

The National Mall is hardly a place to see many hipster bikes. While jogging at lunch I snapped a photo of this "longbike" with my cell phone camera. On the way back, we saw another one near the Supreme Court! Now I'm wondering if it wasn't the same bike. . .


Fuji frame, Xtracycle platform bike

At the moment Fuju does not have its own Xtracycle platform bike (like the Surly Big Dummy) so this is a custom modification of a standard frame - a mountain bike, in fact, with a disk brake and full suspension fork on the front, and the person has added a fender as well. With the Xtracycle add-on to the frame, the freight-carrying bags and the childseat, the thing probably weighs 50+ pounds. Not to mention that NYC-style chain.


Fortunately Washington has few steep hills

Small Change Where 14th St Bridge Meets GW Trail

National Park Service had a bit of asphalt added to make this better

This is where the "off ramp" from the outbound 14th St Bridge trail/path meets the north-south GW Parkway trail. The NPS apparently realized that for cyclists the narrow "T" intersection was not working particularly well (which it wasn't) and added some asphalt to ease things.

By the way, in the above photo, it isn't that the cyclist (heading left-to-right) is incredibly fast so much as the camera is incredibly slow.


Looking south - extent of added asphalt more visible

It isn't clear if they are done adding turf or if there was some particular reason to add turf right next to the path, perhaps to make things safer/better for bikes that run off the trail?


I suppose they will put it back up, but I liked seeing the "dismount" sign this way

What! Yet Another Kickstarter Bike Lighting Project

If I strap LEDs to my bike's fork and seat posts, it becomes relevant???

Earlier in the day, I posted about another, successfully funded Kickstarter bike lighting proposal - well, I had forgotten to search on Kickstarter for both 'bike' and 'bicycle' and it turns out there is this one as well, for the 'LED by Lite' bicycle lighting system.

These folks are taking the more difficult fundraising approach and emphasizing safety over fun. (Fun proposals seem to do better on Kickstarter with bikes in my experience than ones emphasizing safety benefits.) They also introduce a "dashboard" and the ability to have your bike lighting system operate as a turn signal system - a recipe for previous failed Kickstarter proposals.

As someone who rides somewhere over 4,000 miles a year on my bikes, there are a number of issues with this thing. Mostly it is just too complicated - the idea of having these things attached all over my bike plus a 12 volt battery system is just a non-starter. It takes the clean elegance of a bike and messes it up.

I also don't think much of the turn-signal idea. I don't think electric bicycle turn-signals contribute to safety; they are more of a distraction/complication for the rider. What's important is that motorists see the cyclist - that's it.

While the LEDs are bright, no doubt about it, they end up being low on the bike, which is the opposite of what is wanted generally. That's why some people wear headlights and tail-lights on their helmets, for example - to get the "be seen" lighting up high.

Even if you concede the "be seen" function of these lights as OK, the "see" part seems a little sketchy as shown in the video - the front-facing white lights are housed in a defuser (that is waterproof and crushproof should a car drive over them, an interesting possibility presented in the video, that a car might be driving over them) that means there doesn't seem to be much focused light forward.

I switch between four different bikes, but three if you don't include the semi-serious road bike. A "lighting system" that can't be swapped between different bikes in less than 5 minutes isn't particularly useful for me just on that basis.

But what really fries my something-or-other is the notion that wacky technology like this is what's needed to make my bike a "relevant vehicle." I tend to assume that they simply are using "relevant" (oddly) to mean that the bike will be as visible ("relevant") as a car, but . . . anyway, ugh.

A Successful Kickstarter Bike Lighting Project

The "mini-monkey" wheel lighting system

This is one of a number of products out there trying to push the combination of making cycling in the dark safer (by providing a more visible bicycle) with a version of "fun" achieved with a bike that displays lighting patterns on the spokes.

The video shows riders chugging along with their wheels lit up nicely by these devices, making amusing patterns of light. As is usual with such videos, the riders don't have either headlights or tail-lights, so while they have lights they aren't following the law (in most jurisdictions) or common sense, for that matter.

The video spends a fair amount of time on technical aspects and not just showing how much fun this is, which is good. The design does seem better than some others - the "mini" aspect is that the unit that attachs to the spokes is small, so it doesn't throw off the wheel balance (much). The battery pack attaches to the hub, again to prevent the wheel from being unbalanced. Of course it does mean you have a wire running down a spoke to connect the hub unit to the lighting panel thing.

I am not much in favor of solutions (if one considers this a solution to the bicycle lighting problem) that don't scale well. If there were lots of cyclists all using this sort of lighting, it would be annoying and distracting.

Fortunately (again, in my view) at 50 bucks a unit (and what cyclist wouldn't insist on one for both wheels?) I don't think we'll be seeing too many of these around. I was also amused that they supply a steel security strap - nothing like having something new on your bike to attract "mini-theft."

What might be kind of cool would be something far more subtle (not making patterns) that would put a couple of LEDs on the wheels of bikes that have power generator hubs. I guess.

Anyway . . . they got over-funded, so good for them.