Lawyer Lips, Cams & Skewers

For much of cycling history, a simple nut was fine for most bikes to keep the wheels on

One of the things I most appreciate about bicycles is that the basic design of the "safety bicycle" developed in the 1890s is highly efficient and has come down to today as what most people recognize as your basic bicycle. Of course, in 100-years there have been some nominal improvements, some good and some not so good. The ones that are often not so good are those that are the most significant departure from basic simplicity and elegance of design.

Which brings me to "lawyer lips," cams, and skewers. You need some kind of fastener to hold the wheel's axle to the bicycle in the "dropouts" that are a metal slot for the axle to fit into (and to "drop out" of when not tightened). For many years, as shown above, the simple design was a threaded end to the axle, a washer, and a nut that could be tightened.


The two types of skewers to hold your wheel on your bike

The problem with this, of course, is that it required carrying a tool to loosen the nut to take the wheel of to make repairs. So the "quick release" skewer was invented. Sheldon Brown has gone to the trouble to describe the two types of skewers in detail, so I will try not to duplicate his efforts, but suffice to say that the first version, the "enclosed cam" skewer (the upper one in the photo above), is considered to be superior in holding power to the "exposed cam" skewer, a later design believed to be cheaper to produce but marketed as being lighter in weight, thus ringing the bell of cyclists for whom lighter is always better.


My experience with exposed cam skewers intersects with disk brakes on this
Traitor (yeah that's a company name) Ruben bike

A few years ago, while forgetting that simple design is generally better, I decided that this Traitor Ruben would be a wonderful replacement for my long-serving REI heavy steel commuter bike for riding in bad weather. And the Avid BB-7 disk brakes do provide excellent stopping mostly (except when they don't, but that's a separate blog post) in rainy weather, which is nice. So I bought the thing.


One could argue this does not look like "simple design" - anyway, as shown the skewer is removed showing the dropout more clearly

So now we get to "lawyer lips" - as it turns out, Wikipedia even has an article on "lawyer lips", explaining that they are "tabs fitted to the fork ends on the front fork of bicycles . . . to prevent a wheel from leaving the fork if the quick release skewer comes undone." Sheldon Brown also has an entry in his glossary about "lawyer lips" that is useful for background. The "lawyer" part is that if the fork has such lips, then you probably aren't going to be able to sue the manufacturer when you have an accident after a wheel falls off, because the manufacturer can show they did everything possible to prevent that happening even when the skewer is loose.


The Traitor Ruben front fork has one "lawyer lip" - enough, I guess

Unfortunately however the disk brake on the back introduces another wrinkle. The disk brake, when applied, generates considerable torque that tries to stop the bike, but also given the way the dropout is oriented on this thing, to yank the wheel out of the dropouts. About a year ago I had this happen and I thought the problem was that a bike shop had not tightened the skewer properly. The other day it happened again and I did a little reading (thanks Internet!) and realized this is more likely a design problem. The dropout is oriented poorly, exacerbating the problem (I think), plus they could have lawyer lips for the back dropout (although that is apparently not much done, if at all) and finally they used the crummy skewers.

There isn't much I can do about the dropout orientation or the lack of lips, but I have replaced the skewer with an enclosed cam skewer. So, safe to ride?


The brake should have been put on the lower chain stay, and not the seat stay, so the torque would automatically seat the axle in the dropouts, even with a loose skewer

I now think of this bike as my "purchase in haste, repair at leisure" bike. Live and learn. . .

Bicycle Sheet Music From the 1890s

The Music Division folks at the Library of Congress have a blog with a new blog post about an 1895 musical composition (sheet music) called "The Bloomer March."


"To the Cycling Women of America" from one M. Florence in 1895

As is often the case for someone who can't read music and hum the tune, the cover art is more interesting than the music. So while this two-step march may evoke the spirit of women riding in bloomers, it has no words. Trying to locate other songs in the collection that are cycling-related is difficult because the records do not have subject headings connected to what the songs are about, leaving only keyword searching of the titles. (The words of those with lyrics are also not searchable.)

But a simple search of "bicycle" did turn up another song, The Bicycle Race", from the same year - and it turns out to focus also on women in bloomers. This time there is no cover art, but there are lyrics.


"The Bicycle Race" (1895) - a PDF of the full song with lyrics is here

Some of the lyrics:

The Bicycle girls, they had a great race.
They went out on Clannigan Street, They dressed in their blue and grey bloomer suits.
Oh my but where they a sight.
The people were saying, which one will win, the blue or the grey bloomer girls.
The blue or the grey, the blue or the grey, the blue or the grey bloomer girls.

The song does not have a happy outcome:

'Tis sad to relate, the end of the race.
Those jolly bicycle girls, they ran in the fence and things got dense.
The blue and the grey got mixed.
So they never could tell which one won the race, the blue or the grey bloomer girls.
The blue or the grey, the blue or the grey, the blue or the grey bloomer girls.

This is the only song online available from the woman who wrote the music and lyrics, Ella Herman (and who also published it).

Trying to think of a modern song related to cycling reveals mostly that I am not familiar with modern songs, because the song that eventually comes to mind is 35 years old.

OK, here is a song only a year old that is not only about bicycles, but bicycle commuting! Good . . .

Kickstarter Bike Light Opportunitie$

Kickstarter provides endless entertainment as one reviews funding proposals related to bicycles (among other things . . . ) and tries to understand why some are funded while others, alas, are not.

When you think about it, improving a bike's light or reflector system to enhance visibility and safety is an ideal Kickstarter direction - the costs to "kickstart" a new commercial product can be within Kickstarter's audience and if presented correctly, such products seem more about "fun" and being hip than simply about being safer (which is boring - and with Kickstarter, boring = no funding).

Today there are two "live" Kickstarter projects related to lighting products that I will look at . . .



As of today, this theft-resistant front light is already 225 percent funded - wow! What makes this proposal so darn attractive for Kickstarter funders?

* The video is clever, fun to watch, yet seems authoritative and the proposal's logic sensible - even unassailable.

* It addresses a real problem - theft of stuff off parked bikes. And we wouldn't want to end up like their friend, whose light was stolen and then was hit by a car.

* Even though designers and builders of a theft resistant bike light wouldn't need to be MIT engineers, these guys' bring those credentials (and wear the T-shirts to prove it).

* For $50 bucks support, they promise to send you one of the things to own, even though the "expected retail price" is $70 - so it's a deal! And note that the overwhelming support for this project is at this level. People are supporting this because they want one, and perhaps because they think they will get one cheap.


Electric lighting for bikes is this old - but even then they understood theft, as it notes the "principal object of the invention is to provide a bicycle with a detachable lamp, including a dynamo . . . "

Let me make a few critical comments . . .

* In the video, they show the critical bolt that makes this thing theft resistant. The video has been updated to state that they have, thanks to comments, changed the bolt design to make it more theft resistant. This, however, gets to the main drawback with this thing - which is that in the places where people steal lights off bikes a lot, you are operating on faith when you walk away from the bike and don't take attractive crap bolted to the bike with you, fancy bolt or no fancy bolt.

* Uh, this light just makes itself even more attractive for theft with it's "sexiness" (hipsterishness). Isn't that obvious?

* Well, I suppose other people are more organized and actually of late my bike tools are pretty well organized (sort of - in the sense that I can usually eventually find things) but really, do I want not one but two special allen key like things to have to keep track of?

* The design, which maximizes theft resistance, is otherwise not so great, MIT or no MIT. In particular, this is a "weight forward" design which means every time you hit a bump, the light is inclined to move down. Or up. So you then grab it and shift it back to point in the right place - but with the "tighten the metal clamp" approach used here, this isn't as easy as with the usual rubber ring holding light in place approach. I guess they figure you just tighten the clamp so tight it won't move. Maybe that will work. Make sure you have the special wrench with you.

The main issue I guess I have is that these characters say they see cycling in cities as a "battle" which is made clear in the first part of their video (which is in daylight and has nothing to do with lighting) that shows typical urban carefree youth riding in traffic illegally and idiotically. Motorists care about one thing - getting there faster. When you ride like a fool, they worry you might cause an accident that will delay their arrival wherever it is they are going and it makes them suspicious of all cyclists. Is this really helpful for the cycling community? Because like it or not, the motorists aren't going to perceive two cycling communities - the fool one and the other one. (/end of rant) Anyway, I don't think a mildly theft resistant light really helps with the urban bicycle "battle."

These urban warriors are learning as they go. Not only have the updated their anti-theft bolt design, someone pointed out that their understanding of guns wasn't very accurate. In their FAQ, they originally had this:

4. Why does it look like the barrel of a revolver?

As you know, city biking can be a battle. We captured the struggle of the urban cyclist in our design.

Someone must have written in that the thing doesn't look like a gun barrel, but the revolving chamber where the bullets go. So now it reads:

4. Why does it look like the cylinder of a revolver?

As you know, city biking can be a battle. We captured the struggle of the urban cyclist in our design.

Hopefully that isn't supposed to suggest we carry while riding. And forgive me if I somehow doubt the urban battle credentials of someone who doesn't know the difference between a gun barrel and a revolver bullet chamber.

But wait - there is another Kickstarter bike light project underway, and unfortunately I actually have a twitchy impulse to back this one. Ack!



Oh, I hate to admit it, but for me unlike the gun-based project first discussed, this is sexy sexy sexy. Up to a point . . .

For someone who rides back and forth to work every day, particular during the season just ending (when it is dark either in one direction or for a while, both) an annoyance is the need to rely on batteries for lighting. It doesn't feel very green. (Yes, there are hub dynamos and so-called bottle dynamos but no thank you.) I have rechargable batteries but still, it isn't great.

This thing is like free power! A single unit that magically (actually it uses "eddy currents") pulls power from the rim of a spinning wheel without making contact, then drives LED lights facing either front or back that are in the same compact unit. Couldn't be simpler! (It does take away some of the power you would otherwise be using to propel the bike, but much less than a dynamo hub, apparently.)

And people like this idea - although as of this minute he has yet to reach half the $50,000 he is seeking, three more backers have joined just while I was composing this blog post. So I think he'll get to his $ target.

Again, this is a project where most of the backers are planning on acquiring the device (or devices - separate price if you want a front version and a back one). The pitch is that the price here is a good one (or at I think that is what is meant by "We will never produce it again in this form, so you get a unique fascinating high tech product much sooner than anybody else at a price considerably lower than the normal market price (if we succeed to jump on the market).")

So, where do I see problems with this? Well, like most simple generator set-ups that provide direct power to the light, when you stop, the light goes out. In order to have continuous light you have complicate things with chargers and batteries, which in this case would eliminate the elegance of the "all in one small unit" design here.

For myself, I'm doubtful that having a light that hangs off the side of the brake boss (as he describes it) would be a very durable location. For whatever reason, I would expect to break the one off the rear brake in about a day (by accident). And it wouldn't work with a bike with any sort of rack on the back, which for commuters is fairly common.

For some people, the less elegant approach of a generator unit that would have to be connected by wires to the lights would probably be better. The developer suggests that might be part of a future version. As clever and elegant as this is, I don't think I'll be signing away $199 today.


This Assistant Secretary of State didn't have to worry about theft or power for his lighting system in 1914, I suspect

Cyclopedia: It's All About the Bike (Book Review)

Cyclopedia: It's All About the Bike by William Fotheringham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fotheringham is a British author who has written books about British and and Italian cycling plus several books of "sporting trivia." This one-volume cycling "encyclopedia" (in name, anyway) was first published in the U.K. but has (it says) been "substantially revised" for this U.S. version. The preface makes clear that notwithstanding the title and the alphabetized article arrangement that it is intended more as an introduction to cycling with the encyclopedic arrangement as a means, not an end.

While the apparent intent is to provide a fairly global introduction to all aspects of cycling, the focus is more heavily on racing and on the U.K. and Europe than on other cycling topics. Articles range from 4-5 pages (for "gears") to short paragraph entries for a few topics - most are at least a page or more. There are occasional sidebars with amusing facts, timelines, and maps. One major weakness (that presumably kept the production cost down) is that there are no photos at all. There are some silhouette drawings but that's it.

Some of the people and subjects not given entries are surprising. No entry for Andy Hampsten, for example, but he is mentioned in an article. Yet there is an entry for Jonathan Boyer - they seem of equal interest to me. No entry for "randonneuring" but it is mentioned in the article about the Paris-Brest-Paris race. Apparently rather than having more entries, most of the entries are longer - but then this isn't really intended as a reference work, so that's probably OK. And entries are written in an appealing light style - it's a fun book to read.

One of the most useful (for me) sections is a seven page annotated list of books about cycling, including fiction, memoirs, and travel books. Very good!

This can be had for about $17 on Amazon.com, so despite the lack of photos and notwithstanding the somewhat Euro/Anglo-centric coverage, it seems worth having.


There is no photo of Bob Roll in this book, but then there are no photos period - but no "Roll, Bob" entry, either

View my reviews and list of cycling books in Goodreads

Urban Bikers' Tricks & Tips (Book Review)

Urban Bikers' Tricks & Tips by Dave Glowacz

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm not going to pretend this is an unbiased book review - after I got annoyed by some of what the author said on certain subjects, I realized I could nitpick the thing here there and everywhere - in a box, with a fox, and so on. So, off we go!


My main complaint about this book is that it is chock full of really dumb so-called advice. Self-styled as "Mr Bike" the author says he is a certified instructor for the League of American Bicyclists - presumably for LAB courses he teaches he sticks to their instructional materials because I doubt they would support his more dubious and often outright illegal suggestions.

Mr Bike's view is that one can be a "sly biker" who "knows how to read traffic well" and therefore can "beat traffic without scaring peds or making motorists hit their brakes." That all sounds pretty good, but his specific strategies can be questionable - with yellow lights, he advocates "maintain your speed" when looking at an oncoming car waiting to turn left, but "be ready to go round the car, stop, or make an emergency turn." Slow down? No, that would "make yourself a target."

Much of the "sly biker" advice is situational and detailed and I think kind of absurd. There are six pages of left turn scenarios! This advice typically assumes that you, the reader, have little ability to think through such things on your own, that instead you will remember Mr Bike's book and that on page 86 he covered this very type of thing and you should . . . no, that ain't gonna happen. Of course since Mr Bike seems to have little of what I consider common sense there is no particular reason for him to think you have any, either.

The bike does have bike selection and mechanical troubleshooting sections, but they aren't as detailed as the left turn information. I don't know what to do with a book that says that for a rubbing derailleur, for example, that the solution is "have a mechanic clean and adjust the derailleur."

At various places Mr Bike admits some of his advice isn't legal, but I can't really see why a LAB instructor should be advocating under "what to do about conflicts [with motorists]: fight back" that you can "grab the antenna and bend it as you go by." A helpful sidebar does opine that "in most fights between cyclists and motorists, cyclists lose." But to try to even the odds, Mr Bike notes that a U-lock is potential weapon and there is a section on acquiring and using pepper spray.


This illustration of bicyclist self-defense from 111 years ago is better than what I observed in Mr Bike's book

Mr Bike contradicts himself. Much of his advice advocates the sort of cyclist behavior that motorists do in fact notice and that increaes the present motorist-cyclist friction - but in places he shows an awareness that it would be good if folks thought better of cyclists - "when biking in crosswalks or on sidewalks, slow down and always yield to people walking. That way peds will think well of bikers." Until the peds get back into their cars and meet you on the road, anyway, if you follow this book's advice.

Mr Bike's use of statistics to make some points is peculiar - for example, in a sidebar advocating cycling on roads, he notes "you've already taken bigger risks - more bike crashes happen on off-street paths than in traffic. Why? On paths, people bike next to walkers, runners, skaters." Well, yes - if by "bigger risk" he means risk of a crash, that's true, but the risk of a serious crash as far as consequences to the cyclist are higher when you are out with the cars.

Under "special techniques" he advocates drafting behind motor vehicles - vans are good if you can see through their windows, now there is a helpful hint - and "skitching" (grabbing onto a vehicle) and hitching a ride. One is just dumb and the other is both dumb and illegal.

My daughter commented, "maybe he is just kidding?" I wish.

In addition to all that, there is a "do it on the cheap" advice that I think isn't very good. For example, there is a complex explanation of how to build a "do it yourself" headlight system for less than 100 bucks, but even when the most recent edition of this book was published you could buy over 100 lumens of LED headlight for under $100 - now you can get 150 lumens for say $65. No urban biker needs more than that.

The title page lists 11 illustrators and two photographers whose efforts contribute to an extremely random and often busy graphic look for most pages. (Just thought I'd add that while I'm complaining.)

On the plus side, the photographs of how to load a bike onto a transit bus bike rack were taken in Seattle and are so old, the buses are ones that I drove when I lived there more than twenty years ago. (No, I don't recognize individual buses, just the series numbers.) Seattle no longer uses bus bike racks like the one shown in the book, but most cities do, I think. Mr Bike makes loading a bike into such a rack into an 11 step process that looks pretty complicated.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

I think there is more useful good advice in this 1896 Washington Times article I blogged about earlier that includes such common sense suggestions as "Many of the accidents we read of every day could be avoided if the riders would regulate their pace according to their skill in managing the wheel under difficulties" and "Do not ride in the middle of a path or driveway. You are liable to meet with an accident, and cannot recover for damages to your wheel unless you observe the rules or the road." Or my favorite - "Always preserve your dignity and pay no attention to small boys or dogs, both of which are perfectly harmless to the average wheelman."

I'm not sure "dignity" is in Mr Bike's vocabulary.

View my list of cycling books and reviews in Goodreads.

To the Gold Rush! Chilkoot Pass Bike Track (1897)

An article from the St. Paul Globe, "Wheelman's Route to Klondike" included the fanciful illustration, below, of a bicycle track following the Chilkoot trail to the Yukon.


A depiction of a proposed "bicycle track" to ease access to Yukon gold

The article's text is sufficiently amusing to reproduce fully, below. Note that the developer expects both wheelmen and wheelwomen to use the track, as shown in the illustration.

"Charles H. Brinkerhoff Jr. Will Build a Bicycle Track to the Yukon."

Since the yellow serpent of the Klondike reared his head and fascinated the people of two hemispheres by the golden glitter of its eyes, there have been many plans devised for getting safely past the barrier of frozen mountains that guard the coveted prize. Some have had the earmarks of lunacy, and some have been of the variety that impels people to say, "Why didn't we think of that before?" A plan that has provoked more criticism and caused more comment than any was born in the brain of Charles H. Brinkerhoff Jr., of this city, after severe travail of soul and many sleepless nights. Mr. Brinkerhoff proposes to build a bicycle track to the Klondike, provided he can secure the necessary capital to carry out the scheme.

"There is nothing visionary about the plan," said Mr. Brinkerhoff, when asked to give publicity to his ideas on the subject of a Klondike bicycle track. "On the contrary, it is the only correct solution of the problem of how to bring the gold of the Yukon within the reach of all. It isn't every one who can afford to pay the price of a passage to the Klondike by the expensive routes at present in use, but nearly everyone owns a bicycle nowadays, and when my track is completed the trip to the gold district will be brought down to two or three weeks from the nearest American city.

"To go into details, I may say that the plan provides for a roadway, lightly constructed of steel, clamped to the sides of the mountains where it is not possible to arrange for a roadbed on a flat surface, and put together in the strongest manner known to modern builders. The roadway will be fashioned according to mathematical principles, so as to make tha journey as easy for the bicyclists as is compatible with such a rough mountain trip. When it is possible, steep up-grades will be avoided, and tbe entire road so arranged that the mountain climbing will be done almost without the bicyclist being aware of any uphill work. When the nature of the ground renders it impossible to avoid a steep ascent, I shall compensate the climber for his toil by providing a down-grade run, so that he can recover his strength by coasting. The structure will be absolutely safe, for it will rest on steel supports cemented into the solid rock and capable of bearing a strain of ten times as great as that it will be subject to as a bicycle track. The erection of the track will be an easy matter, for I hope to have the route carefully surveyed, and the girders, supports, etc., made to fit, so that the only thing necessary when the work ls ready to begin will be for the workmen to fit the sections together, bolt the girders and supports firmly and attach them securely to the rocky foundation.

"So much for the general construction of the roadway. Now as to the various novel features that I hope to introduce to render safe the trip to the Klondike by way of my bicycle track, and to brighten the burden of the journey so that it will be as enjoyable as a pleasure trip. I assume that my bicycle track will be utilized by women, for where the wheel takes men nowadays it usually takes women also. Even athletic women are grateful for the comforts of life, and, so far as a trip to the Klondike can be made comfortable, my bicycle track will insure it. Every twenty-five miles of the journey there will be a station, lighted and heated by electricity and provided with seats and tables and a restaurant so that pilgrims to the gold district can rest and refresh themselves. I propose to place the stations as near together as twenty-five miles because I realize that in the inhospitable Klondike region storms are of occasional occurrence, and I wish to have a place of refuge whither the wheelmen, and especially the wheelwomen, can flee for safety when the elements behave badly. I want to take every precaution to guard against a tragedy. There has been enough of that already in the senseless rush for the Yukon.

"I take it that fifty miles a day on a smooth roadway, such as that I propose to construct, will be fairly good going. At the end of a fifty-mile run, cumbered with baggage, pick and shovel, the bicyclists will welcome a place where they can camp for the night. To provide this, I shall arrange to have houses erected at fifty-mile intervals along the route. The houses will be built of the same material as the roadway, and will contain every requisite for making the travelers comfortable.

They will be in reality cozy hotels where food and shelter can be obtained at moderate prices, and the wheelmen will be sure of a welcome and a warm room after their fifty-mile ride. If fifty miles a day is too much for some of the women, they can find a comfortable halting place in the twenty-five-mile stations, where an attendant will minister to their wants, and good meals will be served at low rates.

"This is, of course, the plan in embryo. I have to work out many difficult problems, but capitalists to whom I have submitted the idea are so much impressed with its feasibility that this much is certain — the road will be built. When finished, it will be the greatest bicycle roadway in the world, and I claim that it will not only bring the Yukon within the reach of all who own a wheel, but will be the means of lowering the death rate in Alaska by providing a route to the gold district that will be safe from the terrible hardships under which so many have succumbed in the past."

Mr. Brinkerhoff is a young man of considerable mechanical genius, brimful of energy and plugk, and there is no doubt that he has the greatest confidence in his plan for reaching Alaska by wheel. Practical engineers to whom the idea has been submitted declare that it is by no means an idle dream, but has all the elements of a thoroughly feasible proposition.

Perhaps telling is that the "dateline" for this article, published in Minnesota, was Newark, New Jersey, where Mr. Brinkerhoff was attempting to "secure the necessary capital to carry out the scheme" (as the article puts it) - and not a bit closer to the action, in Alaska.


From a book of advice on going to the Klondike

A chapter towards the end of "Klondike : the Chicago record's book for gold seekers." published in 1897 offers some insights into some of the more outlandish schemes to support nascent gold miners, including a suggestion to use a large hot air balloon and another bicycle proposal:

The bicycle man is not going to permit the balloon man to get ahead of him on any proposition. So that old stand-by, "a syndicate of wealthy New Yorkers," proposes to establish trading posts and stations along the route from somewhere to the Klondike. This route is to be a bicycle path, and the bicycle, of course, is one of the specially designed kind, made only for this particular purpose. A picture of the bicycle indicates that it has a kind of an out-rigger attachment at the end of which is another bicycle wheel, but whether that wheel is intended to hold up the bicycle on a mountain side or to get over an air-hole on an ice-patch is not disclosed.

The bicycle syndicate also announces that it will "purchase all promising' claims on the market," and will have nothing whatever to do with the "common methods of transportation, such as railroads, boats, pack horses, dogsleds and Indians."

As it turns out, the most significant technological development at the Chilkoot Pass did not involve bicycles, but rather the use of aerial tramways to haul the large amount of freight required by the Canadians to allow entry from the United States to the gold fields. The use of these aerial trams for freight was superseded by a narrow gauge railway across the longer, but less difficult, White Pass route, shown in this short movie clip by Edison's production company from 1901.

Starting a Search for Bikes in a Trove

A week or so ago I posted some information about some places I go to in order to find information about the history of cycling, including photographs, newspaper articles, and books in the public domain (that is, not under copyright).

Another good starting point for bicycle history research is "Trove", a search system from the National Library of Australia. Trove has several positive aspects for beginning research - one is that their search includes many types of collection materials, including photographs and manuscripts as well as books (and others). Also, for some of the materials, in particular photographs, they have "ingested" metadata for collections outside of the National Library of Australia and even outside of Australia. The metadata has to be available to them in an appropriate format so they can do this but as a "one-stop" starting place it's great.


Bobby Walthour racing in France, a 1908 photograph found in "Trove" - Walthour is below on the track, just being passed

I recently read (and enjoyed) a biography about the famous American cycle racer Bobby Walthour (that I also reviewed). I wasn't terribly happy with the one photograph of Walthour I found at the Library of Congress. Searching for "Walthour" in Trove turns up photographs, newspaper articles, and books (and some stuff that isn't the right Walthour, but it isn't very much and I can ignore that). The newspaper search in Trove is one area where the search is limited to Australian "content" but unlike the U.S. Chronicling America, it extends to 1954 rather than 1923. It says something about Walthour's international racing reputation that there were articles in Australian newspapers about his racing achievements, mostly winning races in Europe in the early 1900s. His retirement from racing was also reported in Australia. (Arguably Walthour and Major Taylor set the stage for Lance Armstrong's achievements, but the gap of ninety or so years erased any popular awareness of them.)

There are 23 photos (now) in Trove with "my" Walthour, including several that are far more interesting than any I had found earlier. As it turns out, almost all the photos in Trove are from Gallica at the Bibliotheque nationale de France (BnF), part of a collection of press agency photographs, Agence Rol. Agence photographique.


Walthour riding (probably warming up) in France (1909) - note incredible size of front chain ring and "negative rake" of the fork

To display results from other institutions' collections, Trove transfers you to the other institution's website - so to see BnF materials you end up using Gallica. So having been led there by Trove, I turn my attention to Gallica. And as it turns out, when I search Gallica directly for "Walthour," I find some Walthour photographs that haven't reached Trove - six additional photos from Agence Meurisse.


Walthour portrait from Gallica, Agence Meurisse, 1909

So while Trove is a good place to start a search, perhaps its greatest benefit is introducing you to other search systems that you can search further, such as Gallica. Each of these systems has its own pecularities - Gallica, for example, seems to offer only low resolution images as its "high res downloadable" versions, which while adequate for web display such as in this blog would be poor choices for any printed usage.

Sometimes one wants newer material. One good resource to keep in mind is the image search in Google for their Life magazine archive - a search for "bicycle" turns up a wide variety of items from the 20th century. I was surprised to find that six-day races were being run as late as 1948, as shown in this photograph. Apparently this image search retrieves using an exact match, so a search on "bicycle" doesn't find items where the description would have only included "bike" or "cycling" - but the related item information is smarter, and from previous six-day race photo, I found this rather astonishing six-day race photo of "Bicyclist William Anderson reading a letter while biking during a six day bike race." Is it really possible to ride this way?? And we worry about talking on a phone while riding! But then I suppose he isn't out in traffic with cars . . .

Fire Fighting Bikes in Germany (1910)

In an earlier post, I looked at an article in the Scientific American from 1896 about a four-seat bicycle that carried a pump to fight fires - a cycle-borne fire engine, in Germany.


Line-drawing illustration from Scientific American article

Looking for articles about six-day races at Madison Square Garden in the early 1900s, I bumped into an article in the New York "Sun" of 1910 titled, "Fire Fighters of Europe" that looked at the kind of equipment used and compared it to what was used in New York City. Five different photographs show unusual approaches, such as a boat-as-fire-engine in Venice, plus a photo showing the bicycle-fire engine in a small German town.


A photograph of a similar unusual bicycle

It is a little difficult to see the details in this image (which was produced from microfilm of the newspaper) but it appears that this cycle is not the same as the 1896 model - the pump unit seems to be near the front, and it looks like there are three riders on each side and not two, so this looks like a six-seat bicycle.

The article's author suggest that, "It is a swift and effective method, but is not likely to be imitated in this country."

Bicycles: Vintage People on Photo Postcards (Book Review)

Bicycles: Vintage People on Photo Postcards by Tom Phillips

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book presents color 3/4 size copies of 200 selected black and white postcards taken of people with bicycles in the United Kingdom from the 1890s through 1950. (The color reproductions show the sepia tone better than a black and while reproduction.) The postcards are presented two to a page, organized so that several postcards with children are together, of women in groups, and so on.

There is a brief introduction and then about six pages by Tom Phillips who selected the post cards. He cites the numbers of different photos in the book as examples, so to see them a certain amount of paging back and forth is required. At first I found this a little annoying, but I got used to it. Some of the photos also have notes at the end, but most don't. Most do not have a year given for when they were taken - it's an interesting exercise to try to sort out when some were taken. As noted in the introduction, the style of dress changed more than the basic bicycles did.

View my list of cycling books and reviews

The Evolution of the Racing Bicycle in 1908

From The Evening World, December 1908

Perspective from an article written before a six-day race in New York on the progress from high-wheel bicycles to the modern safety bicycle.

Old-timers on High Wheels were Endurance Champions

Modern Cycle Is an Airship Compared with the Pneumatic Vehicle of Other Days.

During the running of the six-day bicycle race in the Garden next week, the question more likely to be heard than any other is whether those among the fifteen teams who can stand the gruelling pace in the test of the final days when stamina counts are not greater endurance than those who first brought ths six-day record to America. The answer is furnished by a member of The Evening World's sporting staff who has witnessed nearly all the great six-day events in America from March 13 1886 when Albert Schock in Minneapolis hung up the worlds record of 1,008 miles for seventy-two hours-twelve hours a day-down to 1899 when Walter Miller and Dutch Waller set up a mark of 2,733 miles 4 laps in Madison Square Garden.

Conditions are vastly different to-day from those of 20 years ago. The modern bicycle, pneumatic tired and weighing only 22 pounds, is an air ship compared to the 50 pound high-wheeled boneshaker with Its hard rubber tires and 57-Inch wheel. Then there is the difference of the scientifically banked track and the unbanked turns of twenty years ago, when a "header" meant almost certain death. Training methods have also changed, the six-day rider of today training almost exclusively for speed and under the team arrangement being relieved on the track at any time, while the old record holders were trained for endurance.

Old Timers Had Endurance

Speed has a deteriorating effect similar to the long steady grind, but when I think that Schlock never once left the tract in the first three day except to change wheels, and that his entire resting time was 40 mlnutes in the 72 hours it seems to be the most marvelous test of endurance I have ever seen-unless it be that of Mlle. Louise Armaindo, who beat Jack Prince in a 24-hour race because she never quit riding in the whole time. In the match race between Prince and Schock in Minneapolis, March 1886, when Prince set up a new world's record of 1,040 miles, neither man was off his wheel more than ten minutes for the entire 72 hours. This race, by the way, was for $1,000 a side, the largest side bet ever made in a similar contest in America.

Where Does "Content" About Early Cycling History Come From?

I sometimes blog about cycling history, particularly from the 1890s and early 1900s.


Montage image including Major Taylor (in the center) found in an online historic newspaper, an issue of The Daily World, from December 1908

How and where do I find photos and articles? As a librarian, I have some experience helping users find what they need, but I confess that with the amount of "content" that has been digitized in various formats, I can do most of my research sitting at home - although digging around can take some time.

Here are some of the places I look:

Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC): I have found many public domain photographs online in PPOC, such as the one below (that is one my favorites).


Bicycle messenger from 1913 Isaac Boyett, "I'm de whole show." The twelve year old proprietor, manager and messenger of the Club Messenger Service, 402 Austin Street, Waco. The photo shows him in the heart of the Red Light district where he was delivering messages as he does several times a day. Said he knows the houses and some of the inmates. Has been doing this for one year, working until 9:30 P.M. Saturdays. Not so late on other nights. Makes from six to ten dollars a week. Location: Waco, Texas

While most can be found searching simply on "bicycle" that is a subject term that has been assigned or appears in the item's title, alas this is not true for all. The record (that is the basis for searching) for the photograph below from the Library of Congress' Harris & Ewing collection does not have the word "bicycle" in it anywhere - I found it by looking at page after page of thumbnails of the collection to see if there were any bicycles hiding in the collection - and there were!


Photo of a senior State Dept Official commuting by bike, 1914

Full text and images of books and magazines: Many books and magazines about cycling that are in the public domain have been digitized, although not nearly enough (in my view). Good places to search are Google books, "Texts" (mostly books) in the Internet Archive, and Hathitrust, either their online catalog or the full text (of the materials) search.

The Hathitrust materials have the fullest records associated with them - a simple search on "bicycle" for items that have a "full view" (that is, are available fully online) brings up more than 160 items. Most are books published before 1923 (for which copyright has expired) but others are government documents or otherwise in the public domain, such as a 1974 book, "Bicycling for Everyone" where I found a nugget about cycling in the 1890s:

"The discovery and progressive improvement of the bicycle," editorialized the New York Tribune in 1895, "is of more importance to mankind than all the victories and defeats of Napoleon, with the First and Second Punic Wars . . . thrown in."

Well - it's a point of view.

Most of the books that I have found I have then done screen captures of interesting illustrations and posted them in Flickr set that as of today has 172 "photos". (I put copies of PPOC photos here, too.) It is easy to embed images from Flickr in the blog.


From "Bicycling for ladies with hints as to the art of wheeling, advice to beginners, dress, care of the bicycle, mechanics, training, exercise, etc., etc." by Maria E. Ward, published in 1896 - the photographs are by by Alice Austen who tried to create real action shots but with the technology of the time, used a posed approach for this and other photos in the book

Some books are located in other places and I root them out. For example, below is an image from a book digitized by the Library of Congress that isn't available through the systems mentioned above,


"The bicycle: its selection, riding, and care" by L.F. Korns, published in 1892 - a full PDF is available and a page-by-page view - the images in the page viewer are better

Public domain newspapers: The Library of Congress Chronicling America program has searchable newspapers published before 1923 from many (but not all) states. The image at the top of this post was found by searching on the bicycle racer Bobby Walthour's last name - the text of the newspapers has been OCR'ed with OK accuracy, but a lot of browsing of search results is required to find interesting stuff.

When I post these screen captures of public domain published materials that are fully available on the Internet, I include links to the full presentation on the original system as well as a link to other sized versions in my Flickr set. That way anyone reading my blog post can follow up with further reading/examination of the original book, or article, or whatever it was.

Since these items are in the public domain, anyone can reuse what I present without my permission, of course - and one other blogger that I know of has. A fellow in England blogs about this same period using the same sorts of resources that I do, and when he wanted some Christmas-y images last December for a blogpost he made use of an image from an issue of "Cycling Life" of Santa Claus that I had blogged about a year earlier.


This image, lost for more than 100 years, has now appeared in two blogs

In this post he reused material I had presented in a more recent post, including my corrected and properly formatted version of the (ironic) poem, "The Introspective Scorcher." Again, all in the public domain, so available for the taking. (In fact, in my Scorcher post I reused some material from some of my own earlier posts . . .)

Of course if someone makes use (re-use?) of some public domain "content" that they found with my help, like any librarian, I am glad to be acknowledged.

Life in the Slipstream: The Legend of Bobby Walthour Sr. (Book Review)

Life in the Slipstream: The Legend of Bobby Walthour Sr. by Andrew M. Homan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I thought this was a very well executed and readable biography of Bobby Walthour Sr., who was an amazingly successful bicycle racer in the early 1900s. Considering that the research seems to have come almost entirely from newspaper and magazine articles, the level of detail is remarkable. The focus is on his racing but there is a fair amount about his life otherwise - more than one might expect from someone who kept no diary and didn't have correspondence to mine.


Bobby Walthour riding in 1909, from the Library of Congress

Walthour did two kinds of racing for the most part, both extremely well. He participated in six day races (that were two member team events - the riders didn't ride 24 hours a day) on an annual basis at Madison Square Garden and then he did paced racing behind motorcycles. the paced cycle races were incredible dangerous, performed on banked tracks with little enough space for both the riders on the bikes and the motorcycles they were closely following. From 1900 to 1910 more than a dozen of the best riders from around the world or the drivers of the pacing motorcycles died in accidents - despite being one of the busiest and most successful riders, Walthour survived. He did, however, accumulate a long list of broken bones and other injuries.


An example of a cyclist racing behind a tandem motorpace motorcycle, from Australia - Walthour prefered riding behind smaller motorcycles with just a driver

Walthour earned for the time a phenomenal amount of money racing. The author supplies modern day equivalents for the dollar figures representing his income but it is more useful that he provides the context of what earnings were for different professions and various typical costs such as housing.

The sustained speeds achieved by cyclists who were being motor-paced could be quite incredible - more than fifty miles per hour for more than an hour. The description of the events in this book conveys the drama of the racing well.


From "The World", December 1901, showing the Madison Square Garden for a six day race - click on photo to see details. In the Center is Walthour's wife, who famously attended such races with her children.

I gave this five stars but I'm a cycling enthusiast. I think this should appeal to a broader audience but probably not at the five-star level.

Walthour was from Atlanta, Georgia, and always returned home there, even after long stays in other areas (including several years in Germany) to be closer to lucrative racing opportunities. He is thought to be the first athlete to endorse Coca-Cola in an advertisement.

View all my cycling book references in Goodreads.

Flat Tire Blues?

Really, though, it wasn't so bad . . . or anyway it could have been worse.

Lately I have been commuting every day on my 30 year old Bridgestone. Two weeks ago, I got ready to go and when I put air in the rear tire, it started coming out faster than I could put it in! The edge of the hole in the wheel that the stem passes through had a rough edge that had made a hole in the rubber of the tire that extends a small way up the stem creating a leak. This was not a "puncture" flat of the usual sort but still, flat tires tend to come in "threes" so I guess I wasn't surprised when yesterday I had a flat tire on the way to work.


My nice 1982 Bridgestone Sirius, with air in the tires

Before 7 am these days, it is dark out. Plus the weather yesterday was strange - the temperature this early was close to 60 degrees - but rain was threatening so I was pretty sure that stopping to fix a tire was going to increase my chances of getting wet. As it turned out, I was just at where the Four Mile Run trail passes under Route 1 and the GW Parkway near the south end of the airport, so I pulled over between two lights and at least could see what I was doing.

I like to imagine I can fix a flat in ten minutes or less, but it is always more like 15. Off comes the tire and I pull out the tube and mark the tube with my Sharpie as to which side of the tube was which - if I don't do that, then when I find out where the hole is it is just that much more work figuring out if the sharp thing that came through the tire is still there or not. (I never like putting in a fresh tube not knowing what caused a whole in the previous one.) I put some air in the tube and easily found the hole, marked it, then matched it up with the tire and quickly found a very stiff bit of fine wire, say 3/8 inch long, going right through the tire that had punctured the tube. It was nice that there was no damage to the tire at least. Even with Kevlar belts this kind of thing is going to happen, although how this wire had been sitting there on the trail, standing on end waiting for a bike tire to poke into, is hard to imagine. Out comes the wire from the tire, take new tube from tool bag, put wheel back together, fill with air and off I go.


I guess I should have put on some rubber gloves

Nine riders went by while I worked on my tire - none of the fair weather bike commuters out on a day like this! I was a little disappointed that of the nine, five rode by in silence (like I wasn't there) and only four offered to help with the usual "got what you need?" or similar. Of course, to stop on a day like this would be to increase the chances of getting caught in the rain. Not that we are going to melt . . .

Having fixed my flat about three miles into my ten mile ride, I then took off - I found that the wind was from the south (which is unusual at this time of day) and I made good time, although I didn't make up for the 15 minute "break" in my ride! Still, it was exhilarating. As I crossed the 14th St Bridge, I could see rain off to the north, but I got to work without getting caught in the rain. On the way to my office, after parking my bike in the garage, I looked out a window and was surprised to see water sluicing down the windows from a downpour. I don't mind riding in the rain, but not so much downpours, so even with my stop I managed to avoid that. Good!

Almost immediately after broad adoption of pneumatic tires for bicycles in the late 1880s, people began trying to figure out a way to avoid flat tires and yet have the obvious benefits of that kind of tire (as compared to solid rubber or other sold tires).


An example of an 1896 proposed alternative to the pneumatic tire

So far, however, nothing like to replace the pneumatic tire (and inevitable flat tires) has been developed that is widely used.

Bicycling Magazine's Confused View of the 1890s

A recent blog post, titled "19th Century Ride Etiquette for Women" on the Bicycling Magazine site looks at a list of Don'ts for Women Riders published in a Newark newspaper in 1895. Most peculiarly, the blog post leads with a photo of a group of young men with "ordinary" bicycles, otherwise known as "penny farthings". The photo is captioned in this way - "Were the early years of organized cycling a boys club?" (No credit is given for where the photo was found, which is kind of rude but oh well.)


Eight young men with Penny-Farthing bicycles, from the State Library and Archives of Florida

As a number of the comments with the blog post note, these sorts of bicycles weren't much in use by the time of the 1895 article that is the subject of the blog post - the "safety" or "diamond" [frame] bicycle had displaced it completely in sales and almost completely in use. Certainly women did not start cycling in any significant numbers until the safety became popular. So apparently the Bicycling blogger searched Google images for "penny farthing" as a way to find a suitable "old" image, because a search on "group bicycles penny farthing" will include this image in the first page of hits. Now, it may have been confusing that the Florida librarian who cataloged this indicated, "Photographed in Tallahassee, Florida between 1885 and 1910" but the cataloger wasn't a specialist in bicycle history and presumably based that date range on the known period of time when the particular photographer was active - without better information than that, there isn't much choice. One would think, however, that someone working for Bicycling magazine might know (or be able to find out) what bicycles were common in 1895 and find a corresponding image.

To me even worse than using an image of the wrong sort of bikes is that it would have been easy enough to find an image of women with bikes from the 1890s - a Google image search on women bicycles 1890s brings up images of groups of just women and groups of men and women (and with the right sort of bikes).


This is an image (although not a photograph) found by searching Google - women and bicycles in 1895

I also think that casting the newspaper article as "etiquette" isn't particularly accurate - it is far more all encompassing than that, covering virtually every aspect of cycling. One comment suggests that this over-the-top approach surely must have been intended as a joke, but there were plenty of similarly detailed instructional articles and even books written for cyclists in those days. Based on what I have seen, it wasn't even odd to cast an entire body of advice as "don'ts."

The list is pretty long, and for today's reader, many are amusing:

DON'TS FOR WOMEN RIDERS

Don't be a fright.
Don't faint on the road.
Don't wear a man's cap.
Don't wear tight garters.
Don't forget your toolbag
Don't attempt a "century."
Don't coast. It is dangerous.
Don't boast of your long rides.
Don't criticize people's "legs."
Don't wear loud hued leggings.
Don't cultivate a "bicycle face."
Don't refuse assistance up a hill.
Don't wear clothes that don't fit.
Don't neglect a "light's out" cry.
Don't wear jewelry while on a tour.
Don't race. Leave that to the scorchers.
Don't wear laced boots. They are tiresome.
Don't imagine everybody is looking at you.
Don't go to church in your bicycle costume.
Don't wear a garden party hat with bloomers.
Don't contest the right of way with cable cars.
Don't chew gum. Exercise your jaws in private.
Don't wear white kid gloves. Silk is the thing.
Don't ask, "What do you think of my bloomers?"
Don't use bicycle slang. Leave that to the boys.
Don't go out after dark without a male escort.
Don't without a needle, thread and thimble.
Don't try to have every article of your attire "match."
Don't let your golden hair be hanging down your back.
Don't allow dear little Fido to accompany you
Don't scratch a match on the seat of your bloomers.
Don't discuss bloomers with every man you know.
Don't appear in public until you have learned to ride well.
Don't overdo things. Let cycling be a recreation, not a labor.
Don't ignore the laws of the road because you are a woman.
Don't try to ride in your brother's clothes "to see how it feels."
Don't scream if you meet a cow. If she sees you first, she will run.
Don't cultivate everything that is up to date because you ride a wheel.
Don't emulate your brother's attitude if he rides parallel with the ground.
Don't undertake a long ride if you are not confident of performing it easily.
Don't appear to be up on "records" and "record smashing." That is sporty.

Of course this was doubtlessly a list prepared by some man, who was obviously far more concerned with what a woman should not do (in his view) than what a woman should do. Bicycling for Ladies, written by Maria Ward and published in 1896, has a much more positive tone.


She is probably breaking at least ten "don'ts"

Winter Cycling 2012 - Moscow & Seattle

A fellow living on Phinney Ridge in Seattle has posted the video above showing a ride in their recent heavy snow. It is in real time and his camera is bolted to his handlebars; the video is pretty bumpy. It demonstrates that as long as you don't have ice but just slush or snow that isn't too deep, a person can get around by bike. However I know from experience it's pretty tiring and ideally you maintain some speed/momentum in order to push through the stuff.

I used to live in this part of Seattle - at about 1 minute 20 seconds an apartment building appears on the right that we lived in. Beyond the stop light that can be seen at that point is the Woodlawn Park Zoo.



This video is more fun to watch than the Seattle snow video - it is not in real time but sped up four times, also he says he used some feature of YouTube to "stabilize" the images (so not so bumpy). He rides from Krasnye Vorota, somewhat northeast of the Kremlin, to Novokuznetskaia, which looks to be somewhere between four and five kilometers. Unlike Seattle, there are plenty of cars and pedestrians that he shares the road (and the sidewalks) with. Of course part of it is that it is not in real time, but he's got more courage than I have. At about 2 minutes 30 seconds he crosses a bridge over the Moscow river - he rides (as he does most, but not all the time) in road and not on the bridge pedestrian area, which seems pretty risky.

Even with fenders (and the bike isn't shown, so who knows) you would get filthy riding in these conditions - Moscow is famous for the chemical mix used on the streets in winter which contributes a dirty brown "oatmeal" consistency slush. People must be astonished to see someone riding in Moscow in winter.

Kickstarter Bicycle Trailer Example

I have to wonder who decides and on what basis to accept the Kickstarter projects that are trying to get some bicycle-related product "kickstarted." Because a lot of them don't seem to be very compelling . . .



The BOB trailer hitch used for this project is part of a bike trailer product line - I assume that our Kickstarter proposal submitter is getting that part of his product from the BOB people and didn't just borrow the design.


A real BOB trailer, waiting patiently to be needed

The innovative aspect of this Kickstarter proposal is that the cargo area for this particular trailer is in a lockable aluminum box that fits onto the trailer frame. The box can be removed from the frame and the frame can be disassembled and the pieces can travel in the box, which is clever. In Seattle and such places a nice sealed box would be good to protect whatever you want to carry from the weather, but of course one could easily attach a box like this to a standard BOB trailer if one wants.

The proposal is a little disingenuous - you can get a basic BOB trailer for $300 (not the 380 he compares it to), or half the cost of this trailer. So he wants an additional $300 for the box, more or less. It's a nicely made German box, but $300 is kind of steep for what is, after all, an aluminum box.

However the pricing of his product isn't as much of an issue for me as the typical "I need $x,xxx to make this a reality" line with no further explanation of what the funds are needed for. The absurd Bicycle Contrail project proposal that I looked at least had a sorta budget:

Here's where the money will go:
$5,700 A down payment on the tooling to make the housing and the gears.
$2,800 To pay for the first 2000 pieces, half of which will be donated to non-profits.
$1,000 To visit the factory in order to ensure that everything is built to our standards.
$1,500 To help coordinate and promote our first non-profit partnership event.

Here though the statement that $9,000 is needed to built his first 15 copies and get the business started is to be taken as sufficient. (Yeah, I get that $9,000 divided by 15 units is the $600 he quotes for each unit, but for one thing, he doesn't get the entire $9,000 raised.)

I guess I'm being too picky, but I don't see how building 15 of these gets him any further down the road than having built the one prototype as far as having a sustainable manufacturing system on the one hand and someone to sell them for him or a way for him to sell them himself on the other.

The video is curious - it is over nine minutes long, which is pretty long for such a simple product. Turns out to be one-third product explanation and then six minutes of ground-level footage of the trailer bouncing around Seattle streets.

There is also a peculiar factual error in one statement - he says the trailer tracks directly behind the bike. Of course I may not correctly understand what he meant by that, but I take that statement to mean that the trailer tire would be on the same track as the rear tire of the bike, and that isn't possible - if you make a turn, the trailer wheel will track somewhat inside the line followed by the rear bicycle tire. Because the distance between the two wheels is slight, the amount we are talking about here is pretty small, but still, why say that when it isn't correct?

We'll see if he gets funding - the most similar previous Kickstarter project was looking for $35,000 for what was a rather larger scale bike trailer and did get commitments for more than $5,000 but fell quite short of its target.


As compelling as a heavy-lift bike trailer might be, it wasn't funded


Bicycle trailers are hardly a new idea, with or without a German box

Peddling Bicycles to America - Book Review

Peddling Bicycles to America: The Rise of an Industry by Bruce D. Epperson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This seems to be one of those rare cases where the author's eagerness to include much of what he learned in his book diminishes the result. The author obviously knows an incredible amount about the subject - he documents this both in the preface and in the notes and bibliography, but what story is he trying to tell? Based on very last sentence, apparently his main point was to fit bicycle manufacturing history into its proper place between arms manufacturing and automobile mass production. If that's the case, then why did we need so many details about all the members of Albert Pope's extended family?

My review is just as bad as the book in this regard - it assumes you know who Albert Pope is. This in fact is probably the greatest weakness of this book, which is that it is really intended for a specialist audience which seems too bad, since there is so little written on this topic for a more general audience. I think it would have been possible to have the book serve both audiences reasonably well, but that isn't this book.

Epperson debunks various commonly held (in small circles) assumptions or understandings about bicycle production from the 1890s, such as the number of bicycles built and sold by the big companies - it wasn't so many, basically. This seems to be one of his big goals, to correct the record. The book is put forth as a technical and economic history, but I don't quite see how an economic history can spend so little time describing the customers' interests and the market for bicycles generally during this period. Again, it is the "book for specialists" problem. (If this is a problem.)

This is a very interesting book for someone who has already read about this period and knows some of the history but it isn't a very good book for anyone else. Alas.

View my GoodReads list of cycling books and review.

Unprecedented Kickstarter Bicycle Project?

Yeah, this isn't a current Kickstarter proposal but something from a bit over a year ago - but for some reason, I am only noticing it in my search results now. I love perusing Kickstarter projects involving bikes and trying to figure if or why they will or did get funded.



Here's what the project is about ~

We want to encourage people to ride bicycles in their everyday lives, so we invented Contrail.

Contrail turns your bicycle into a paintbrush leaving a temporary mark of your bicycle's path.

You attach it to your bike and as you ride, it leaves a colorful line behind you. When many people ride with Contrail, the result is a colorful path which illustrates where bicycles are riding. We envision artists, non-profits and community organizations using our product to create art, promote their events and celebrate shared spaces.

Contrail uses washable, non-toxic chalking fluid made from eco-friendly pigments. Like a jet's contrail, the lines on the road will fade with time and rain.

So, what they meant wasn't really "community tool" but rather a "community building tool" - by seeing that other bicycles have been out there with their contrails, we would feel community. The benefits are listed (in order or priority, presumably) as "create public art; make biking safer; and, encourage more bicyclists." I don't see how it does anything about the second one and as to the third, it seems more like it encourages existing cyclists, not new ones.

My impression from looking at Kickstarter proposals for bike-related projects is that the video has to make a compelling case and usually "fun" bike projects do better than ones heavily focused on safety. This is certainly a fun project but I am surprised that as many people found the video persuasive - the little chalk lines are hardly noticeable unless you have had 20+ bikes ride by with these units, and is that really going to happen? But the young presenters seem very likable and earnest.

Anyway, how did this work out once they got their money? Apparently it didn't. With Kickstarter, if your proposal is funded, Kickstarter gets the money from the supporters and then takes their cut and the proposal originators get the rest (something over 90 percent). The accountability to do whatever they proposed is apparently pretty minimal. In the comments a year after the funding was achieved, several people write wondering what ever happened, as one put it, "Wow no updates since November 2010?!!!! Did you enjoy the holiday we funded or what?"

They have their own separate web site that does not appear to have been touched since October 2010 when they got their funding.

At any rate, what I meant by "unprecedented" is that there aren't very many truly new ideas related to cycling - one can often find patent applications from over 100 years ago similar to what is supposed to be a new idea today. This does seem to have that going for it - it is a novel idea. Didn't seem to get done, however.

What is a Scorcher (of the 1890s)?

The question came up on another blog as to "what is a scorcher?" in reference to an 1896 pledge by a cyclist not to be one. A cyclist who was a scorcher was commonly understood to ride aggressively at high speeds outside of controlled races risking crashes with other riders, pedestrians, and others. The scorcher was also commonly criticized for his (or her) less than upright seat on the bicycle. (This posture, however, was perfectly OK during a race . . . ) Since the bicycles of the day either had no brakes at all or generally poor ones compared to what we are used to today, the potential for mayhem was that much greater.


A "scorcher" in costume in an 1896 parade in Washington DC

The phrase "scorcher" was well enough known that someone dressed as a devil riding a bike would be understood to be spoofing the idea of being one. This scorcher, however, is sitting up nicely. From the Washington DC Morning Times of July 15, 1896.



A woman could also be a scorcher

Note her aggressive position on the bicycle, not to mention her mannish attire, as portrayed in Dr. Neesen's Book on Wheeling.

And we have this poem from an 1896 issue of the L.A.W Bulletin and Good Roads.

THE INTROSPECTIVE SCORCHER.

I am the scorcher!
Please observe
The curve
That appertains unto my spine!
With head ducked low
I go
O'er man and beast, and woe
Unto the thing
That fails to scamper when I ting-a-ling!
Let people jaw
And go to law
To try to check my gate.
If that's their game!
I hate
To kill folks, but I'll do it just the same,
I guess,
Unless
They clear the track for me;
Because, you see,
I am the scorcher, full of zeal,
And just the thing I look like on the wheel!

The problem with this fellow is his less than upright posture

A rider's "incorrect position" as shown in The Bicycle: Its Selection, Riding and Care from 1892.

Yes, as much as anything, the problem with scorchers seems to have been their aggressive posture, although why it was OK for the race track but not OK on city streets is a mystery.

If You Ride the Wheel, You Have to Fix the Wheel

Title (apparently given to its by photographer) is "Paying for his fun"

Another photo (that seems to be the only other one digitized) by the mysterious 1890s photographer, F.T. Harmon, who took the two in yesterday's blog entry. I like his sleeve protectors keeping his shirt clean as he polishes up his spokes.

You can see the rear cog in on the wheel - chains were different at this time and there were only half as many teeth on a cog because the chain had a space for a tooth only between every other link.

From the Library of Congress.

1897 Photos Tell a Story

Something about these photos looks staged to me. Pretty surprising to have a fork stem break. Anyway, although probably posed, there he is with his broken bike.


From the Library of Congress

Now comes along this other fellow, but how he is supposed to help repair a problem like this is difficult to say.


From the Library of Congress

Taken by one F.T. Harmon in 1897.

Good Looking Classic

PerformanceBike has a nice looking all-weather traditional looking sort of steel frame road bike for only $999. The CroMo Tange steel frame is made in Taiwan and sold by the British company Charge Bikes. For $1,000 the component selection is excellent and it supposedly weights less (just) than 22 pounds with fenders. That's excellent.



A 2010 version of the same bike (with fenders removed)

Here's a typically laudatory review from the British cycling press.


Features good Shimano 105 and other components

About the only thing I don't find so attractive is that it isn't a lugged frame but that probably reduces the weight over my Bridgestone which in many respects is quite similar.

This is a more interesting bike than a lot of the stuff PerformanceBike carries.