Learning to Live with the e-Bikes

Until recently, I almost never saw e-Bikes - there is one fellow near where I live who rides along much of the same route I take who, depending on our respective schedules, I would see often enough, but that was pretty much it.

Suddenly I am seeing them a whole lot more - I assume this is a result of higher gasoline prices combined with increasing options for the e-Bikes available. I am having trouble getting used to them, which is not very tolerant of me, I guess.




An e-Bike, parked on the bike rack where I work

Wikipedia has a reasonably good article describing e-Bikes, although some of the conclusions aren't terribly current, based on 2010 information. The kind of e-Bikes I am seeing are various types of "hybrids" that combine pedal power and electric battery driven power - I think most of these require pedaling in order for the electric drive to engage, but it isn't obvious when looking at them whether this is true. By federal law, they are supposed to be limited to 20 mph with electric power alone and 750 watts.

The above e-bike, which has been parked recently at work, is a http://prodecotech.com/bikes/storm-500/">Prodeco 'Storm-500' model (the 500 is for 500 watts). It has the most common configuration I am seeing, with the drive in the rear hub - I believe that the the drive system (in the hub) is made by a separate company, because I see this same sort of hub on different companies' products. The main utility of this is that it means the chain doesn't have to carry the power of the motor's propulsion, just the (much lower wattage) energy of the rider, so presumably no special chain is required and all the parts of the bike associated with the chain are the same as a regular bike. (Another way of achieving this result is to put the drive in the front hub.)

The information on the Prodeco web site is a little vague. It does not appear one has to pedal to engage the motor, since it has a "Press the Throttle for ‘Power-On-Demand’ propulsion system." I assume the frame is still, but perhaps it is aluminium - they don't say. The "group" is reasonable, although I'm not sure I agree entirely with the later part of Prodeco's statement that it has, "High quality components (as with all Prodeco, we use only the highest quality components)." In some of their choices, they could have made more costly choices that would have represented higher quality, I think. The most obvious place to offer something better would be the cable actuated disk brakes, where hydraulic would seem a better (but more pricey) choice. But if one accepts that the cable brakes are OK, then what they have is "the highest quality" (since there isn't that much difference between the choices, as far as I know). The rotors are nice and big, which should help.

The Prodeco site also leaves the bicycle weight out of their "product details" - but lifting the Storm-500 up at the bike rack, it's clearly over 50 pounds. (I did find a review of the 200 watt Storm model saying it weighed 46 pounds, so "over 50" seems about right comparing features etc.) One of Prodeco's priorities is to keep the weight of the bike down compared to other companies' products, but without the electric propulsion, riding this bike would be a real chore at this weight. So I'm not sure I'm very impressed with its "low weight." For $1,299 however, it seems like a pretty good deal, all things considered.

It still takes some getting used to, having folks who don't exactly look like Speed Racer zipping along on the trails with these things - again, I need to work on my tolerance. I remind myself that they are more like cyclists than motorists, and therefore presumably our ally - but I'm not all that sure. I read in Wikipedia that one in eight bicycles sold now in the Netherlands are e-Bikes, so we likely have many more such bikes on the roads and trails in our future.

Something to ponder.

By the way, electric bicycles were attempted very early after the introduction of the diamond frame "safety" bicycle - here is a short item from the 1892 "Pittsburg Dispatch" (yes, spelled without an "h" at the end of Pittsburgh).

ELECTRIC BICYCLES

One Devised in England for Which Great Things Are Claimed.

SOME GROUND FOR GRAVE DOUBT as to the Practicability of the Machine Until Thoronghly Tested

THE LATEST ABOUT THE SUBTLE FLUID

The electrical bicycle is again cropping up. This time it is in England, and its inventor promises to give the public a machine that can go from the most northerly to the southern extremity of Great Britain without stopping to have its batteries refilled. The weight of the batteries when filled with liquid is to be 44 pounds, and the whole weight of the apparatus is to be 155 pounds. The English financial papers also announce that a small company is to be brought out with a capital of $15,000 for the manufacture of electric cycles. Until, however, the practicability of the electric cycle is demonstrated beyond question, the public may be pardoned some degree of incredulity concerning it. The electrical tricycle, which was designed by a well-known electrician in this country some two years ago, failed to reach the practical stage, and although the storage battery is turned to better account in England than here, the record of English electrical bicvcles is not by any means satisfactory. Whether this latest form of bicycle will be an improvement on its predecessors remains to be proved.

By "subtle fluid" they mean electricity. Of course, electric, steam, and gas-powered two wheel and three wheel vehicles evolved into cars. Round and round the cycle goes. So to speak.

Little Lost Bikes

Riding to work, I saw these bikes by the tidal basin, not far from the Jefferson Memorial. Three days in a row! (Going home, navigating the intersection there, I kept forgetting to look to see if they were still there in the afternoon.) Today I looked up the vendor, Capital City Bike Tours online and sent them an email.


After more than 48 hours locked here, still both in one piece

Michael,

Thanks for the email and the heads up. I appreciate you letting us know about this. As it turns out, some guests who rented them decided to not bring them back. Anyway, we took care of it and picked them up today.

Thanks again and have a great day!

So, they were then rescued. Even if they are slightly beach cruiser-ish rental bikes, better they should return to service in one piece.

I was reminded of the photo book, Bicycles Locked to Poles This is a most peculiar book of photographs of books, mostly partially or completely vandalized, locked to poles in New York City.


This isn't from the book, but is the sort of thing that is

Of course bicycle theft has been a problem since . . . there were bicycles to steal. The Washington Times had an article, for example, in December 1899 that reported on this issue:

THE THEFTS OF BICYCLES
How the Thieves Secure Possession of Valuable Wheels.
The methods of regularly organized gangs of robbers exposed by the police - Machines, shipped out of the city others rebuilt - One good effect of the cold weather.

According to the reports at Police Headquarters the bicycle thieves who have been carrying on extensive operations for months past and particularly during the warm weather period, have to a very great extent ceased their operations. As a result tho complaints of bicycle thefts which until recently have been numerous are now reduced almost to a minimum, and the prospects are that as long as the cold weather continues the present condition of affairs will exist.

The diminution in the number of complaints, or rather the fact that a decrease in the number of thefts is apparent. Is attributable, say the police, directly to the weather conditions. The police claim that cold weather is in more than one way responsible for the scarcity of bicycle thefts.

Detective Muller, of headquarters, whose especial duty it ist to look out for and recover lost or stolen bicycles, and arrest all such thieves, stated yesterday that the most annoying thief which the police had to deal with was the sneak who made a business of stealing bicycles.

According to Muller no one can tell where the bicycle thief is going to turn up. He will steal a bicycle in one portion of the city in the morning, and before the sun sets will have made off with one and sometimes more from other sections. Almost invariably the thief leaves no clew [sic] and is only captured when, after weeks and sometimes months, he gains enough temerity to offer his ill gotten gain for sale.

Even then it is often the case that the original stolen bicycle is so disfigured that it is almost an impossibility to identify it. The recent arrest and conviction of a regularly organized gang of bicycle thieves and the recovery from them of a number of bicycles exemplified the difficulty met by the detectives in establishing the ownership of such recovered property. . . . .

The article continues further with more details of bicycle theft in DC at the turn of the last century. I like the idea that cold weather is good since people keep their bikes indoors, don't use them, and therefore they aren't stolen so much.


An ad from 1898 pitching "Bicycle Protective Company" services

Bicycle Protective Company? Well, we don't have that today.

Searching for "Queen of the Wheel"

Even though I'm a librarian, I am often surprised by how difficult it is to find images from cycling history that have been digitized and put on the Internet - particularly when you are pretty sure they are out there!

Looking at David Herlihy's book, Bicycle: the History, one can find many interesting photos from cycling history - if one searches for really interesting ones in the book online and finds them, perhaps nearby will be other interesting cycling history photos - well, it's a theory. Which brings us to "Queen of the Wheel," a photo taking up all of page 413 of Herlihy's book with a caption that says, "'Queen of the Wheel,' copyrighted in 1897 by the Rose Studio of Princeton, New Jersey."

Aha - "copyrighted" - so I thought to myself, perhaps he got this from the Library of Congress, since photos deposited for copyright that are now in the public domain are sometimes digitized and put into PPOC, the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.


Queen of the Wheel from the Library of Congress

Title: Queen of the wheel
Creator(s): Rose Studio, photographer
Date Created/Published: c1897.
Medium: 1 photographic print.
Summary: Photograph shows studio portrait of a partially nude young woman, dressed in white flowing material, sitting on a bicycle, holding a glass of wine.
Library of Congress
Full record:www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011661551/

So, as it turns out, this was correct - sort of. The Library of Congress has digitized "Queen of the Wheel" but when I looked in the "Illustration Credits" in Herlihy's book, this item is credited not to the Library of Congress but to "The Granger Collection, New York." So, what is that? Their slogan is, "The people, places, things, and events of the past . . . in pictures!" (R) but "Registration at this site is open to professional buyers of pictures only, not the general public." and "At this time we are unable to furnish any illustrations for personal or school use." So for most of us - this is not for us.

What likely happened here is that Granger (or someone) had the item duplicated at the Library of Congress in film and then digitized that reproduction. (I can't be sure that the Granger copy is from the LC item, but it seems most likely - as with all such images-for-sale outfits they aren't going to tell you such things.) In fact, the Library of Congress image is not from the original either, but digitized (as it says in the record) from "b&w film copy neg." One also notes that the record does not include the dimensions of the original item, a cue that the original wasn't even looked at in order to create the digital version. (So, to be clear - LC has the original, but digitized a surrogate to save wear-and-tear on the original.) To sum up - Granger (or someone) at some point in the past bought a film copy for their own use, the Library kept a copy of the negative for itself, and only relatively recently digitized that negative and made it publicly available.

What is amazing to me is that one can go to Granger and purchase digital copies of many such photographs and other visual materials that are in the public domain or you can go to places like PPOC and find high resolution copies that are free. (But remember, as PPOC says in every record, "Rights assessment is your responsibility.") Granger's view is they have a copyrighted interest in these reproductions that they can defend (their image of the image) while the government view is that the government agency (the Library of Congress) does not have any copyright in the reproduction - all rights are associated with the underlying source material (in this case, in the public domain) and not in the government funded reproduction. (Note that I am speaking for LC officially . . . )

For example, Granger will sell you a high resolution copy of the cowboy with a bike that I blogged about recently. Or you can purchase copies of Lewis Hine images of bicycle messengers from the early 20th century, such as the one below, that are freely available in PPOC. (Here are 158 photos of messengers by Lewis Hine, mostly with bicycles - a very compelling, if sad in some cases, set of photographs.) Granger's version of the Shreveport messenger, by the way, is from the color version below that they then converted to grayscale. PPOC has both the color version from a print and a grayscale version from the glass plate negative. The two are cropped somewhat different.


A Lewis Hine photograph in the public domain at the Library of Congress

Title: Fourteen year old messenger #2 Western Union, Shreveport. Says he goes to the Red Light district all the time. See Hine report on Messengers. Location: Shreveport, Louisiana.
Creator(s): Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940, photographer
Date Created/Published: 1913 November.
Medium: 1 photographic print.
1 negative : glass ; 5 x 7 in.
Library of Congress
www.loc.gov/pictures/item/ncl2004002194/PP/

A final mystery - Granger's title for the photograph "Queen of the Wheel" is "One for the Road" and they give the publication date as 1900, both clearly wrong. So even though Herlihy got the image from Granger, he then corrected their citation information. Strange.

My search for Queen of the Wheel was kind of a dead end - the only digitized photograph from this "Rose Studio" in PPOC is this one. And I still don't know if it was created as some sort of 1890s erotica or if it was to serve as the inspiration for one of the many stylish bicycle company posters of the time, such as this one below (with a man, for a change).


Orient cycles lead the leaders

On Bicycles (Book Review)

On Bicycles: 50 Ways the New Bike Culture Can Change Your Life by Amy Walker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a collection of fifty four-to-eight page essays on various aspects of bicycling, organized in four sections. The essays in the first section, "All the right reasons," are the part of the boom intended for those who may be new(er) to subject of "bike culture" (which I take to mean urban cycling as a significant part of one's lifestyle). Otherwise I think the intended audience would be people who have some knowledge and interest but want to know more - a blurb states, "the 'Whole Earth Catalog' of bicycle culture for the current era."

The editor, Amy Walker, is a co-founder of a cycling "lifestyle magazine," Momentum Magazine, that advocates "smart living by bike." Momentum is a little too youthful for my taste but this book is broader than that. Walker also wrote several of the essays.

The essays are good, and reasonably thoughtful. I came away with some new information and some new things to think about, which I like. The essay "Cycling for all abilities and needs" makes good points about problems with the so-called vehicular cycling approach for many folks, for example.

I had heard of some of the authors - Jeff Mapes, author of Pedaling Revolution, has several essays here.

Even though the book was published in 2011, some of it is already somewhat out of date. A chapter on bike sharing is probably the most glaring example, but an essay about bikes with internal hubs (that remove potentially messy and complicated derailleurs from the bicycling equation) describes a lack of popularity for these hubs that is not nearly so true now.

Perhaps the only complaint I have is that the underlying feeling is almost like this bicycle culture lifestyle is a religion that will require conversion and a significant commitment, when I know from personal experience that you can move in this direction more slowly if that is more appealing - and economical. On the other hand, nothing in any of the essays seemed completely outlandish or annoying and much was interesting or entertaining.

View my list of cycling books and reviews

Americans & Narrow Tires in the 1890s

It is not so easy to come up with certain kinds of historical information about cycling, but mass digitization of many out-of-copyright books has certainly offered up material to plow through looking.


The basic (really basic) view of the single-tube tire, popular in America

In reading Peddling Bicycles to America recently I came to understand that most Americans in the 1890s and into the 20th century used "single tube tires" but I really didn't understand much about them - But I then found Pneumatic tires, automobile, truck, airplane, motorcycle, bicycle: an encyclopedia of tire manufacture, history, processes, machinery, modern repair and rebuilding, patents, etc., etc. ... in Google books, by Henry Clemens Pearson, published by the India Rubber Publishing Co. in 1922. While it talks a great deal about car, truck, and other tires, it also has a section about bicycle tires.

It starts with this introduction:

History Of The Bicycle Tire

The history of bicycle tires has not been studied as carefully as it deserves, because the majority is not so much interested in historical development as in actual results. Inventors and a few who are students by nature may be interested, but they generally prefer to read their history at first hand, which is in the patent office reports.

Ah yes, actual results. After some discussion of this and that, it continues:

The Single-tube Tire In America

. . . Nevertheless, it was not the Morgan & Wright tire, built by tire specialists, but the Hartford tire [a single-tube tire], built by a bicycle manufacturing company, that ultimately triumphed in America. The reason for this lies partly in the love of Americans for fast riding and partly in their mechanical aptitude and ability to handle tools. While the Europeans were riding 2-inch double tubes, held on by wires in France, and by beaded edges in Germany, and by both methods in England, the tendency in the United States was wholly toward single tubes of even smaller diameters, it having been found that a small single tube, pumped hard, is the fastest of all for road use. The Tillinghast Tire Association, which controlled the manufacture of all single tubes, finally produced an article which represented the high-water mark in bicycle tire making, in resilience, cheapness, beauty and speed. For anybody with deft fingers, it was also the easiest of all to repair, and this fact appealed strongly to the American.

So, the theory that thinner tires inflated to a higher pressure will encourage going faster - lower rolling resistance - than fatter tires inflated less goes all the way back to the 1890s. (Of course this says nothing about the accuracy of the theory, just that it is of long standing.)


Above, a single-tube tire, mounted on a rim - no clinching!

Then there are more somewhat complex ruminations about the European use of something other than single-tube tires . . . mostly included here for the slightly amusing categorization of the mechanical aptitude of various nationalities.

Though American single tubes invaded Europe and found hosts of friends, on account of their many virtues, the question of their repair could never be mastered by either the British or the Continentals. Could the Tillinghast Association have set up repair shops at convenient places throughout Europe, single tubes might have swept the world as they did America. Even despite hostile tariffs, they were sold in Europe cheaper than the home made kind. There were only 200 single-tube tires made in United States in 1891, while 1,250,000 were sold in 1896. In England the single tube was cultivated during the early years, the Avon Rubber Company being most successful; then, too, the W. &. A. Bates Company was using plugs for its tires in 1892; so that the repair of single tubes by the regulation method has been known in England as long as in America. The British are tolerably quick with tools, and the reason that the double-tube tire survived in the United Kingdom is probably to be found in the prevalence of hedge thorns on the English roads. These hedge thorn pricks are easily stopped with the thick repair fluids which were later developed here in America; and had the English known of this method early in the day, the single tube might have had a different history there. There are no hedges in France, and the avowed reason of the failure of the single tube there was the inability of the French to repair it. Another reason was probably due to the great influence of the Dunlop company there, no less than to the great growth of the Michelins. Even to this day, the wired-on tire is the dominant type in France.

A British "clincher"

The book then includes, apparently for amusement, a photograph of the largest tricycle in the world (and its tires) described in an earlier post - this photo is different than the one I used that came from a magazine of 1897.


Poor quality due to low quality original and Google book digitization processes - the immense Vim tire sales aid, a nine-man tricycle

It is of course difficult for the non-specialist (that is, me) to be sure I am understanding what is suggested by all this, but it is still entertaining on some level. The more things stay the same, the more things . . . stay the same. Or so it seems reading this.

Spring Tire Change - Front & Rear Wear

Before the winter was "scheduled" to start (which never appeared here in Arlington VA) I switched my tires on my "bad weather" bike. Because of the mild not-very-winterish weather and because of some trouble with my steel road bike, I ended up riding my carbon fiber Scattante commuting more than I would have expected. I did spend a lot of time cringing, because there seemed to be considerable amounts of broken glass lately on the trails, but I think I only had one flat on this bike - actually, I don't think I had any on this bike at all, but that can't be possible, can it?

As spring has sprung, I was eyeballing the Scattante's tires after another week riding it every day and observed that the front tire, while having plenty of rubber, looked like a grit magnet - see below. Small bits of stuff that have stuck to the tire over time have opened up small holes but perhaps more worrisome, the tire surface has a grainy aspect (not so visible in the photo) that doesn't look the way one would want a bike tire to look.


Michelin Pro-Race 3 23 x 700 road tire, mounted on front

Anyway - this is the front tire. When I last switched tires on this bike, I decided to have one manufacturer's tire on the front and a completely different tire on the back. Michelin road tires, when new, are very rounded, so that without a rider, the bike sits up on a very narrow strip of tire. Of course, with a rider, this flattens out - still, in my mind this seems good for lowering so-called "rolling resistance." However these Michelin tires, when mounted on the rear, wear out that raised area at a terrific rate, so that rotating front-to-back (and back-to-front) just means that much of the time you have at least one tire if not two with significant center-line wear.

So I was at Performance Bike and I saw these Vredestein Fortezza SE tires for thirty dollars. As a road tire, these were a but odd looking compared to the Michelins I have used - a very flat surface meets road, even new, even without a rider. In my idiosyncratic thinking, it seems reasonable for the rear tire to be flat(er) since it is providing the traction to push the bike (and rider) down the road. And after a not while, based on my experience, it will be flat anyway, so why not just start that way? So I bought a couple of these tires and put one on the back the same time as a new Michelin Pro-Race 3 on the front.


Vredestein Fortezza SE after a couple of thousand miles on rear

I guess Vredestein makes serious road tires, but this "Fortezza SE" model is something that is peculiar to Performance, near as I can tell. That isn't necessarily bad - and after all, my Scattante is a Performance Bike house brand bike, although none (zero) of the group are Performance house brand stuff, just the frame. But I thought I might get only so-so results. In fact, I figured I would end up replacing the Fortezza on the rear relatively quickly, but instead I have decided to replace both the front and the back tires at the same time. Mostly the Fortezza looks better than the Michelin on the front - it certainly doesn't have all those holes. Whatever it is made of sheds grit more consistently. But there is this one spot (visible in photo), and another smaller one (not in photo), where the rubber has worn through so you can see the material below. Uh-oh! And checking with a caliper, about 1/3 or more of the material in the center area of the tire is worn off generally. So it's time to change this tire, but I have gotten pretty good results from it, I think.


The new Vredestein Fortezza SE mounted on the rear

The Vredestein, for whatever reason, has a somewhat pebbly pattern when new down the middle and some fine angled tread-like lines in the blue area just next to the rubber in the center - this helps give some sense of tire wear but contributes nothing to traction (I assume) but isn't enough to slow things down, either.

1890s bike tires were mostly smooth, and in those days the early tires with any tread used that as a marketing feature.


Part of a VIM tire ad from 1897, praising the "pebbled tread"

Of course, the VIM tire people were very big on clever marketing - they were the ones who built the giant tricycle that required nine "riders" to operate it as a way to push their product.

Different Views of Women & Cycling, the 1890s in Stereographs

The rider's attire, typical for at least some women riders of this time, but still regarded by some as unorthodox

It's unclear where the above photo was taken.

Title: The start
Creator(s): American Stereoscopic Company.,
Date Created/Published: c1897.
Medium: 1 photographic print on stereo card : stereograph.
Summary: Woman standing with bicycle.
Library of Congress
Full record


Were the women with umbrellas connected with the women with bicycles?

The women in this photo who one assumes are cyclists, with the bicycles, are dressed more conventionally. Perhaps that is because they are in Washington, D.C.

Title: Capitol and Fountain, Washington, D.C.
Date Created/Published: c1896.
Medium: 1 photographic print on stereo card : stereograph.
Summary: Group of women, some with umbrellas or bicycles, by spraying fountain; Capitol in background.
Library of Congress
Full record


Presumably to be considered humor

Perhaps because this was a posed photograph, the bicycle depicted is not a "step-through" but a man's frame. And, although it is a little hard to be that sure, it seems too large for the woman holding it. Since she is wearing a conventional dress, she would have trouble riding a bike like this - not just because of the dress and tube but because her skirt would get caught in the rear wheel - bicycles for women wearing long dresses would include a "net" over the fender to the center of the rear wheel that would keep clothing out of the wheel, which is missing here.

Title: Woman in a room with a bicycle saying to a man and child, "Sew on your own buttons, I'm going for a ride"
Date Created/Published: c1899.
Medium: 1 photographic print on stereo card : stereograph.
Library of Congress
Full record