"Lamps On All Vehicles" (1896 Newspaper Article)

1896 article about lighting for bicycles and other vehicles

The article text is as follows:

The District division of the League of American Wheelmen is still working for the interests of the bicycle rider.

In answer to a request from the Commissioners, Chief Consul Robertson yesterday mailed to them his reasons for thinking that all vehicles should carry lamps [at] night. The letter reads:

"August 29. 1896.
"Hon. Commissioners, District of Columbia.

"Gentlemen: In reply to your request that I should submit facts showing the necessity for all kinds of vehicles carrying lamps, I would respectfully submit the following reasons:

"Bicycles have been adjudged by the courts all ever the country as vehicles with equal rights on the streets and roads.

"Bicycles are required to carry lights. Private and business vehicles are not so restricted. According to this discrimination a bicycle for hire (which is a public vehicle) should be required to carry a light, but not the machine used as a private conveyance.

An electric bicycle light, shown in the article

"A number of business houses require their drivers to carry a light within or about their vehicles, more for their own safely than for that of others. This can also be said of some of the owners of private carriages. At times it is very difficult to determine the direction in which a vehicle is traveling, or on which side ot the street it happens to lie, by the noise occasioned by the horses' feet. A light would show just what part of the street it occupies. One might advance the argument that if it were approaching it would be on the left hand side of the street, and on the right hand side if going in the same direction. This would be so if everyone obeyed the rules of the road, but unfortunately, this is not so, and more wagons are on the incorrect than on the correct side, else there would be less necessity for lamps on horse-propelled vehicles.

"A carriage or wagon is often collided with by both bicycles and other vehicles. This is especially the case when drawn up alongside of a curb awaiting the owner. In this instance the horse, not being in motion, no noise is made. A vehicle in this connection occupies the same relation to the street as a pile of mortar or bricks, and should be provided with a light. It is it temporary obstruction, and one is more liable to danger than if it were known to be there, like mortar or bricks.

"A cycler generally leaves his lamp lighted when stopping before a house, because he knows his machine is in danger
of collision if he does not take this precaution.

"Therefore, I would respectfully request that all vehicle, be required to carry lamps.

"Very respectfully,
"WM. T. ROBERTSON,
"Chief Consul D. C. Div. L. A. W [League of American Wheelmen]

Fanciful Bicycle Propulsion - Sails (1896)

Article from the 1896 Washington Times describes a growing (at the time) popularity for sails fixed to bicycles.

Possible to Equip the Wheel Like a Ship - WINGS OF WHITE SILK
Connected to Bamboo Poles, the Sails Are Ran Up and Down as the Wind May Turn - They Make Wheel the Ideal Locomotion for a Sultry Day.

There is activity at the sailmakers, though this is the season when all sails should be finished and floating the blue horizon.

This unwanted activity is caused by the sudden appearance of the bicycle sail, out of which has sprung a demand for sails, unprecedented even in cup years. The bicycle sail is a little affair. It is made of duck or sailcloth, and its dimensions are a little more than a yard square.

Somewhat fanciful illustration that accompanies the article

The cost of white sails for a bicycle comes to something like $3, if you are contented with a good quality and a fairly white sail. If you want the silk finish and the dazzling white, you must pay for it fully twice as much.

This is not a perfect propulsion system, however.

HARD TO MANAGE

In rigging up a bicycle's sails there is a great deal of care necessary. A person not an expert, starting off swiftly upon a wheel rigged with sails of his own making, would undoubtedly get a fall of the most sensational description. His sails being raised too high would carry him along at a top-heavy pace and he would be unable to keep back his machine by back-pedalling, or any of the arts known to the wheelman. More than that, it would throw him forward upon his wrists in a frantic effort to keep his seat. And the result would be awkward, even if he escaped calamity.

Another trend from the 1890s that met with some success in the press, but not in reality.

NYTimes "Innovations" for Bicycle Commuting

I am a little late with this - the New York Times Sunday magazine this past weekend had an article describing three innovations to contribute to better commuting for bicycles. They are:

* Anti-theft handlebars
* No more greasy chain
* One-piece plastic and carbon fiber frames

These ideas came from someone at Seven Cycles, as the most compelling aspects of "his dream commuter bike."

I guess I'm a little disappointed - these certainly aren't the top three features that I would want for a commuter-style bike. (Which I have to come up with imaging what I would want if I wanted such a bike, which I don't. But still.) Of course, Seven Cycles is a custom bicycle builder mostly known for its frames made of titanium, so asking someone at Seven about commuting bikes is a bit like asking someone at Ferrari about econobox car features . . .

So, let's look at these a little bit.

Anti-theft handlebars - the theory is that locking handlebars that make it impossible to ride (other than in the direction the handlebars are pointed) make the bicycle undesirable to steal - it's a theory, yes. But I think in most places it isn't very realistic. I think generally it makes more sense to carry your bike locking system with you and vary it according the circumstances.

No more greasy chain - the suggested replacement would be a shaft-drive system, presumably connected to a internal hub shifting system (rather than derailer). This is not a very new notion - there were shaft-drive bikes and actually, even before that.


The shaft drive, patented in 1894 - not a very new idea

Apparently (according to Mr. Seven) shaft drive bikes are getting to be more popular in China nowadays - this could be true, but that hardly means it is likely it will catch on widely here.

One-piece plastic and carbon fiber frames - this is presumably a mistake and what was meant was simply "one-piece plastic frames" (since the discussion says nothing about carbon fiber). Wikipedia has an article about the history of plastic bicycles - there doesn't seem to be much going on in this area currently (that is described in the article, at any rate).

I can sort of get the idea of a plastic bicycle for riding short distances in a city, but not for more than that, but then I'm assuming that a truly plastic bicycle frame would have a noticeable amount of flex to it that seems fairly undesirable.

I think the biggest change I am seeing and will be seeing in commuter bikes is the increase in electric powered bikes. Another bike change, although not really answering the same question, is that I see people around here are using Capital Bikeshare as part of a regular commuting pattern.

Russian Diplomats as Cyclists in 1895

Article in the Washington Times from 1895 describes the spread of cycling among foreign diplomats assigned to Washington, including the Russian minister.

Diplomats Proficient Upon the Shining Wheel

Russian and Austrian Ministers Are Expert Riders, and the Chinese Attaches, in Gay Costumes, Are Bicycle Devotees.

The bicycling craze has taken a strong hold on Washington society, and has extended into the diplomatic corps.

The foreigners have become greatly interested in the fad of the hour, and many of them are already proficient riders of the shining wheel.

The first to lend in this respect was the Russian minister, Prince Cantacuzene, who no sooner was able to keep his equilibrium upon the "bike" than he induced his daughter to become accomplished in the same manner. Every afternoon during last autumn, and almost every late afternoon during the winter, the Prince and Princess Cantacuzene might have been seen spinning over the miles of smooth asphalt in the city on their bicycles.

At first, of course, when the bicycles were brought out and placed in front of the legation they created no end of excitement in the neighborhood, and the dwellers along that particular square made a brave showing on the front porticos and at the windows to watch the mount and triumphal start.

Gradually, however, as tho novelty wore off, the prince and his young daughter, who were debarred from taking any active part in the season's gayeties on account of the fact that the Russian legation was in mourning for the death of the Czar, were allowed to depart upon their afternoon bicycling trip without this attendant notoriety.

Later in the article it is noted that at this time there was some modesty among cyclists ~

As a matter or fact, the favorite place with the members of the diplomatic corps, and society generally who ride the bicycle, is the great open space back of the President's mansion, "Executive driveway," as it is sometimes called now, since the old name of "White Lot" has been abandoned by the fashionables.

There the bicyclers congregate in large numbers all during the spring and autumn evenings directly after dark, for as yet the majority of society has no fancy for being stared at in daylight when bicycle riding.

The Czar who died in 1895 was Alexander III, the father of Nicholas II, who was overthrown by the Bolsheviks in 1917. I hadn't realized, but his heir for a time was his brother, who was killed in a bicycle accident in 1899: "The death of Grand Duke George, Czarevitch of Russia . . . the hemorrhage which caused the death of the Czarevitch was the result of a fall from his bicycle which be sustained while on an excursion in the hilly country near Abbas Tuman. The paper adds that he died near the scene of the accident." (From another newspaper article.)

It does seem Czar Nicholas II did ride bikes, as shown here and here

The most well known photo of a cyclist in Russia from today is shown below, taken by a writer for the New Yorker who lives in Moscow:

Russia's Tianamen image. twitter.com/ioffeinmoscow/…

— Julia Ioffe (@ioffeinmoscow) May 6, 2012

.

Memorial Day Bike Event (1897)

From the Los Angeles Herald, May 31 1897
At this time Memorial Day was known as Decoration Day.

SUNDAY SPORT - Decoration Day Bicycle Meet at the Park
A VERY GOOD TURN OUT LARGE FIELD OF PROFESSIONALS AND A GOOD TIME
Balsden, the San Francisco Crack, Makes a Fine Exhibition of Trick and Fancy Riding

The Decoration day race meet yesterday attracted quite a large crowd to Agricultural park, and if the attendance was any criterion by which to form an opinion as to the popularity that may attend Sunday racing, then the program as outlined ln the future may be considered assured. . .

Illustration that accompanied the article

John D. Rockefeller and His Shaft Drive Bicycle

A fellow who supplied oil for the automobile society with an exotic bicycle

Title: [John D. Rockefeller, full-length portrait, standing with a bicycle]
Date Created/Published: 1913.
Medium: 1 photographic print.
Library of Congress
Link to full record

An amusing photo from the Library of Congress - John D. Rockefeller with a bicycle. And not just any bicycle, but a shaft drive bike. Yet another example of a shaft drive bike, an early attempt to provide a superior alternative to using a bicycle chain. The shaft drive approach has the advantage of a clean design look to it, but the mechanical efficiency is lower than a traditional chain and the cost is higher, so the shaft drive approach has never caught on. (I have looked at the subject of shaft drive bikes before, here and here for example.)

Mr. Rockefeller does not have the most expensive model "chainless" bicycle available. This is pretty clearly the Columbia basic shaft drive bike, looking at the Columbia 1912 catalog.



This is the basic Columbia "chainless" bike for 1912

The basic Columbia shaft drive bike was only 75 dollars, having come down from $100 in 1900. You can see the "headbadge" (the company logo, under the handlebars on the headset of the bike) shown in the catalog matches what is shown in the photograph of Rockefeller.


By 1912, this bike was available in this two-speed model and a "spring fork"

The price of this more deluxe model that includes "hygenic cushion frame" (whatever that means) was $100.

Just Ride - Book Review

Just Ride: A Radically Practical Guide to Riding Your Bike by Grant Petersen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Typically a non-fiction book review looks at the intended audience for a book, assesses the author's credentials, and describes what the book set out to do and how well it accomplished that, among other things. However I am feeling lazy and would prefer to just nitpick. My overall reaction to this book? I was disappointed.

* Grant has an introduction where he explains a little about who he is, but the impression I have is that he assumes that if you are reading his book that you know who he is. In certain circles, sure, he's well known, but this is a small circle of people I tend to think among those who are interested in steel frame road or touring bikes - and who probably already know his views (some of them, anyway) and agree with them. His goal, however, is to dispel some widely held views about road cycling that he feels come from the professional cycle racing world and I don't think most of the people of that ilk have heard of Rivendell Bicycle Works or Grant Petersen. (I believe since I have been riding bikes around the DC area for the last dozen years or so I have seen all of three Rivendells.) Anyway, the book would probably work better for many readers if there was more context by providing more of Grant's story and that of his company.

* The "radical" part of this "radically practical guide to riding your bike" is that he disagrees with many commonly held views, but he is then fairly insistent that his views are correct, which in some cases seems a little silly. Really, there is a right view on what to wear when riding a bike? A truly radical view, in my thinking, would be that whatever seems to work for you and your common sense would likely be OK. Occasionally that is Grant's advice, but not often enough.

* Certain statements are repeated several times, but repetition does not equal truth. The suggestion is that carbon fiber forks are dangerous, that they fail precipitously, and anyone other than a professional road bike racer who would own a bike with a carbon fiber fork instead of a steel one is sacrificing safety for trendiness. A single scratch could result in failure, after all! I don't doubt that Grant has seen some amazing failures and in fact I have seen photos of such things on the Internet but this country is covered with tort lawyers and I'm thinking if this was that serious a problem, we'd hear more about it.

* Uh, who was this book intended for? This was not published by Velo Press but by Workman, hardly a cycling specialist publisher, so presumably they were hoping to have reasonably broad sales, not just hard core cyclists. My own public library system, for example, bought six copies, so apparently the review version got good write ups in review tools that public library types use to assess what to acquire. Really though, this book would not be very useful for most public library patrons or other entry-level cyclists; it is more for those who think (actually, are sure) they know something and Grant is going to fix their misapprehensions. In other words, this is not a comprehensive introduction "practical guide to riding your bike" but rather the corrections to that sort of book - which means it can clock in at 200 pages and not 400-plus.

* Gee, it's kind of choppy - I mean, 90 "chapters"? (The 89 chapters are grouped into eight subject-orients parts, such as "upkeep" and "velosophy.") Well, this turns out to be because he cribbed them from himself, from Rivendell's web site (http://www.rivbike.com/kb_results.asp... has some examples) and from their in-house publication known as the Rivendell Reader, some of which is available online, such as this (https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bzeh...). One oddity is that the Rivendell Reader versions (of the same thing) usually have better illustrations than the book - overall the illustrations in "Just Ride" are not numerous or particularly helpful - the illustration that goes with "frame arithmetic" for example is too small and has an error - bottom bracket height is not distinguished from bottom bracket drop; also, what is shown as "chain stay" should be labeled "chain stay length." (Of course, if you already know all this stuff, the illustration is fine, but again - who is the book for?)

Perhaps most interesting to me is that Grant seems to suggest that he really thinks inexpensive cycling solutions are a great thing - for example, using some duct tape to make an impromptu mud-flap for a bike fender. If you look at RivBike.com, however, you soon discover that most of his customers are living in a different universe, since most of what he sells is pretty pricey - good stuff? Yes, but not inexpensive. In the section on bike weight, he reveals further where he is coming from when he characterizes a "more useful, and more all-around durable steel bike costing between $2,500 and $4,500" as having a "typical, early-twenty-first-century price" for an "'enthusiast level' bicycle." Really, the entry point for an enthusiast steel bike is two-and-half thousand dollars? Yes, at Rivendell Bicycle Works. On the other hand, in the book he says a $50 dollar bottom bracket is perfectly fine and his own store has one for $40.

* My suggestion is to just skip part 4, on "health and fitness."



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DC Area Folding Bike Inventor Dies

Obituary in the Washington Post for Harry Montague who designed full size folding bicycles, patented various processes, and created a company to sell them.




Perhaps the best known Montague achievement, a model sold to the U.S. military

The Montague "Paratrooper" shown above is a full size hardtail mountain bike with the added feature that it folds quickly and easily. The same bike can be purchased for "civilian use." Another version of his military bike, not available for civilian purchase (as far as I can tell) was the TENS, or "Tactical Electric No Signature" (as in radar signature) mountain bike, that had an electric power unit in the oversize rear hub.

Because a Montague does not have a "down tube" (the frame tube that runs from where the pedals are up to where the front wheel is) they are distinctive looking. I have seen a few on the bike trail. The Montague fills a niche for everyday users (not the military) but probably is limited in potential popularity even if they are cleverly designed and well executed. Certainly in terms of "breakdown" speed they are way ahead of using S&S couplers for a full size bike (that require messing, literally, with the chain and so on). But you still have close to 30 pounds of steel and rubber in two pieces (the front wheel is the second piece) that would need to be stuffed in a large bag and carried. Not necessarily easy for carrying along into an office building or on public transit in the way a Dahon or a Brompton would be (among others).

The guy I talked to who owned one said it solved a particular problem he had - he wanted a mountain bike he could take easily on his boat on an occasional basis. So for him, carrying a heavy-ish big sack isn't an issue. And the idea of having something that goes into a car trunk more easily than a standard bike rather than using a bike rack certainly has it's own appeal, even to me.


They are good looking bikes. Clever fellow. Also, David Byrne of the Talking Heads who traveled in recent years with a bicycle used a Montague.

~~~~~~~~~

This is an old post. Someone complained that I used a photo without permission, so I took the photo out and reposted. There may be some way of resetting the date to that of the original post so this doesn't look like a new post but I don't know what it is.

Enlightened Cyclist - Book Review

The Enlightened Cyclist: Commuter Angst, Dangerous Drivers, and Other Obstacles on the Path to Two-Wheeled Trancendence by BikeSnobNYC

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Bikesnob's first book was better - much better.

The shtick for Bikesnob's blog entries that are good is that he will write somewhat crudely but amusingly about several different cycling related incidents, perhaps one serious (but not seriously presented), and perhaps two or so others that are not serious at all (like something about some goofy pro cyclist thing that happened) and then tie it up cleverly at the end. His first book was engaging and even if it was really an assembly of small bits and pieces it read smoothly enough. The second book reads like the kid who was told to produce a homework essay of 10 pages but really had no more than five pages to say - but manages to drag it out to 10 pages anyway. I swear that in one place there were two long paragraphs one after another that said the same thing, just worded differently.

One can deduce that Mr Snob didn't expect his first book to sell, so he tried hard - god help us, it even included "bikesnobnyc" stickers in it! (Was I supposed to put those on my bike? Crazy.) This time he seems to have assumed he is now an author so he didn't try much at all - with the results that one gets in such situations.



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Blessing of the Bicycles ~ May 12, 2012

In a previous post I talked about the relationship between churches and the popularity of cycling in the 1890s - cycling was viewed by some as bad for morality, giving too much independence to women, and also provided an (unwelcome) alternative to Sunday church worship. This was before you got to aggressive rider behavior!


A view of how the bicycle could be a means to get to church
chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024442/1896-08-09/ed-...

The church that I attend (when I'm not out riding my bike ~) is having a "blessing of the bicycles" on May 12, this Saturday, in the Washington DC area.

Concerned for the safety of bicyclists, Dumbarton United Methodist Church will hold a “blessing of the bicycles” for all riders on May 12, from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. at Fletcher’s Cove, where two bike paths intersect (a spot along both the C&O Canal and the Capital Crescent bike trail). Pedalers on a Saturday morning outing will be able to take their bikes to a quiet setting of
trees and grass near Fletcher’s Boat House and receive a brief blessing from the church pastor, Rev. Mary Kay Totty.

More details are available here.

Tweed Ride - 1896

The other day, I mentioned to someone that I had a blog where I discussed cycling history from the 1890s - he immediately replied, "oh, do you go on tweed rides? I can't say the idea hasn't occurred to me, but I haven't.


A "tweed ride" from the 1890s

(This is a new derivative JPG I produced from the TIFF that is better than the 90KB one available online at the moment.)

Title: [Tourists riding bicycles] / A.B. Frost.
Creator(s): Frost, A. B. (Arthur Burdett), 1851-1928, artist
Date Created/Published: [1896?]
Medium: 1 drawing : wash.
Library of Congress
www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010715930/

The post-2000 period tweed ride phenomena seems to have been a coming together of a retro fashion interest with a retro cycling interest in fixed-gear cycling. Over time, however, the fixed-gear aspect seems to have fallen away.


A tweed ride rider in Washington, DC, 2011

One obvious difference from the 1890s experience emulated is that the modern tweed ride is far more urban. Nevertheless, a good opportunity to build good karma for cycling.


More DC tweed ride 2011 photos

Getting On a Bike, 1899-Style

Dr. Neesen's Book on Wheeling published in 1899 has this guidance:

In learning to mount, head your wheel for the down grade, place your left foot on the little projection on the rear axle, shove off with the right foot, raise up on your left foot, and balance that way until the right pedal rises to its height, then place the right foot on it, glide into the saddle and seek the left pedal with the left foot. Experts are in the habit of mounting directly from the pedal as a horse is mounted. This requires considerable skill. Dismounting, however, is done from the pedal. Just as the pedal reaches it lowest level, and is about to rise, stand up on it and fling the other leg over the saddle. Mounting from the pedal is done in the same manner.

Of course, this mounting from a peg on the left of the rear wheel is quite different than what is generally done today. One may wonder why they felt that "considerable skill" was required to mount the bicycle as we typically do today, and the answer would be that this is a fixed gear arrangement so that whenever the bike moves, the pedals spin - there is no coasting possible - and this would make getting on a moving bike with the left foot on the left (spinning) pedal more difficult, assuming you try to get moving and get on at the same time (which apparently was the thinking).

I noticed an image at work that needed to have its "title construct" (a made-up title that describes what the cataloger sees in the image) updated.


"Man on bicycle pushing to follow bicycling man in distance" - the original title given

In fact, this is a man getting on his bicycle, perhaps to give chase to the other cyclist. You can tell by where the left pedal would be compared to the right and where his left foot must be - he has his foot on the "peg" and is getting ready to swing himself up onto the seat.

Following my advice, the title was changed to this: "Man in foreground mounting bicycle to follow bicycling man in distance."

French Chainless Bike, 1890s Poster

My terrible effort pasting together two halves of a scanned poster

Another follow-up on the shaft drive bike-share bikes in Los Angeles - they have been around forever, so if there was something so great about shaft-drive bikes, we'd have a few more being made today.

This poster is for a French bike from the late 1890s and pushes the chainless aspect - it isn't so much pro-shaft drive as anti-chain.

Title: Acatène Velleda / / L. Baylac, Biarritz '98.
Creator(s): Baylac, Lucien, 1851-1913, artist
Date Created/Published: Paris : Imp. Kossuth & Cie., 1898.
Medium: 1 print (poster) : lithograph, color ; 156 x 118 cm.
Summary: Advertising poster for the chainless Acatène Metropole bicycle with G&J tires showing the Germanic priestess, Velleda, a legendary leader of the Batavian uprising against the Romans, with a bird of prey carrying chains and the Latin motto "Vae Catenis," or "Woe to Chains," above its head.
From the Library of Congress
Persistent link to full record

In the good old days of digitization, a large-ish poster like this was scanned in two pieces and the two parts offered up separately, leaving it to others to piece them together. The images are skewed and I could have probably done this better if I fiddled with it, but this is a lot better than what you see here.

The LA shaft-drive bikes have a chain stay (well, what else do you call it, even if it is a chainless bike??) plus the shaft drive, but this older bike follows the more "elegant" design of replacing the right side chain stay with the shaft drive shaft. So, you have to give the old time bike designers credit for that.

30 Year Old Bottom Bracket - Replaced

My 1982 Bridgestone Sirius - while it had its original 1982 bottom bracket still installed

When I acquired this Bridgestone frame and fork and started riding it, about a year ago, it still had the original bottom bracket installed. The spindle spun nicely and since it was a cartridge type (not loose bearings) I didn't attempt to lubricate it. Probably that was a mistake.

At this point, last year, the original bottom bracket seemed fine

After probably 1,000 miles or so, the spindle suddenly became quite crunchy in its travel. However I was not able to get the bottom bracket out of the bike, even after I bought what I thought was the necessary tool. I took it to my local bike shop and they couldn't get it out, either - the mechanic recommended I try using a torch to heat up the bracket and (hopefully) get it loose. This might well wreck the paint, which seemed too bad, so I put the bike aside for a while to think it over.

Eventually I got the torch and the bike together. Apparently the bike thought better of its attitude once it saw the torch, because when I gave one last try to get the bracket to break free, it came loose immediately. After that, it was back to the local bike store to let them replace the bottom bracket with a new one. I could have done it myself, but they have been pretty helpful lately and not charged me anything, so about time to let them actually do something (AND charge me for it).

30 year old SunTour bottom bracket, now a souvenir

LA Gets the Shaft (Drive Bikeshare Bikes)

The LA Times has an article about a new bikeshare program in Los Angeles: "Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will unveil a $16-million bike-share program Sunday that aims to put thousands of bicycles at hundreds of rental kiosks across the city."

Much of how the LA bikeshare program will be structured is like Capital Bikeshare (which isn't particularly surprising) however the bikes themselves are fairly different. I don't really get how the company, Bike Nation, makes money at this - they pick up the entire capital investment cost (the sixteen million bucks). Here is another description of the business aspects - the comments are fairly interesting.


It appears this patent is for the Bike Nation bikeshare bike, with airless tires, shaft drive, and absurd basket (but not with final design's step through frame)

To me the technical aspects of the Bike Nation bikeshare bike are the most interesting. The LA Times article notes that, "The bicycles are made without a chain and have special tires to reduce the possibility that they will get a flat or break down during their trip."

Opinionated as I may be (for someone who doesn't really know that much), I do not have strong feelings about the airless tire business. Sheldon Brown, some years ago, didn't express much enthusiasm, noting that, "Airless tires have been obsolete for over a century, but crackpot 'inventors' keep trying to bring them back. They are heavy, slow and give a harsh ride. They are also likely to cause wheel damage, due to their poor cushioning ability. A pneumatic tire uses all of the air in the whole tube as a shock absorber, while foam-type 'airless' tires/tubes only use the air in the immediate area of impact." However it doesn't seem impossible that someone clever could come up with a design that could do a decent job with shock absorbing and not add much weight or performance problems. It does appear that most airless tires to date are not very easy to get on or on the wheel rim, but for a bikeshare bike that would be a mechanic's problem.

I have much less enthusiasm for the shaft drive idea.

The Bike Nation bike doesn't use a traditional chain but rather a shaft drive. Shaft drives have been around since the 1890s but never really caught on since they are (a) more expensive, and (b) less efficient. Also, taking a rear wheel off a bike with a shaft drive is going to be more annoying to repair a flat than a standard chain bike (but of course not a problem there with airless tires!).


Shaft drive bikes have been around . . . practically forever

Shaft drive intuitively seemed to some like a great idea compared to "dirty" traditional chains, but they never became popular. For motorcycles somewhat, for bicycles no. That doesn't mean that various bike companies haven't tried to bring it back from time to time . . .

Eventually Bike Nation will supply more info about "What’s so special about the Bike Nation bicycle?" but for now, the link for "more info here" doesn't work. (Perhaps they are still doing research.)


A bikeshare program bike in Paris, with a chain and air-filled tires - but what do the French know about cycling

Also, the French bikeshare bike has a deep basket, while the LA bikeshare bike has a flat shallow basket. I guess with bungee cords stuff could be made to stay in the basket.

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

Book Review: Wide-Eyed and Legless

Wide-Eyed and Legless: Inside the Tour de France by Jeff Connor

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The blurb on the cover says, "The No. 1 Cycling Book of All Time" (according to Cycle Sport magazine). Well, that is a little extreme - it is certainly high up on the list for readable books about the Tour de France or professional bicycle racing, but it also has certain technical drawbacks . . .


ANC-Halfords Race Team in 1986, the year before the book describes

This book was originally published in 1988 and described the Tour race of 1987 - the author was a journalist and the British race team, ANC-Halfords, agreed to let him be with the team full time to cover the race. This was ANC-Halfords first (and last) participation in the Tour de France and they weren't really ready for the race - they didn't have good enough riders and they didn't have good enough financial (and therefore technical) support. The team ended up letting Connor drive some of their vehicles because they ran out of people to do so - his perspective is more like that of a technical support person than a journalist.

And in fact, his being so much a part of an unsuccessful team is the main drawback of the book, if one is looking for a description of how a team works to win or compete in the Tour. ANC-Halfords lost three riders not too far into the race (and only four riders finished out of nine) so they rarely had anything like strategy or tactics - they didn't have the riders.

On the other hand, the writing if good and it can be amusing to read an account of a failed effort, too, if it is done right, and this mostly is.

Apparently since there is greater interest in the Tour de France, in particular British riders, a publisher in the UK decided to republish a new edition in 2011. There is a short new foreward but otherwise it is the same as the 1988 edition.

View my list of cycling books and reviews

Cowboys on Bikes? A View in 1897

The other day I was looking for this in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog and found something else. But after some more browsing of search results I eventually found (again) this rather fanciful depiction of a cowboy of the 1890s with a faithful bicycle rather than a utilitarian horse.


As far as I know, this has no connection with western reality at all

Title: Golden Gate, sunset in the Yellowstone Park
Creator(s): Knapp Co. Lith.,
Date Created/Published: c1897.
Medium: 1 print : chromolithograph.
Summary: Print shows a man, with a bicycle to which a rifle is fastened, standing on a mountain path, watching a stagecoach on a lower trail; waterfalls in background.
Full record

On the rock it says (somewhat obscured): The Recollection of Quality Remains Long After the Price Has Been Forgotten.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Update: A reader (another Mike) sent an email (since he couldn't get the comments to work) providing a possible explanation: I am wondering if the "cowboy" in the 1897 Yellowstone lithograph you posted on your blog might be associated with the Spaulding Company. In 1896, an Army lieutenant named Moss and eight soldiers, all part of the 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps rode their bicycles in the Park as part of an experiment for the Army. They rode donated Spaulding wheels and Moss wrote a booklet about the trip that was published by Spaulding. The inscription on the rock makes me think the lithograph was an ad. You might enjoy a blog I've created about Moss and the riders. It can be reached at www.bicyclecorps.blogspot.com.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The one depiction of western cowboy-type characters of this period with a bicycle would be the "bicycle scene" with Paul Newman and Catherine Ross in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which depicts this time exactly, the late 1890s. However the bicycle in that scene is a diversion, for entertainment, and not part a means of serious transport. (Just the opposite, it is an opportunity for lighthearted amusement.)


Bicycle scene from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"

The bicycle does look like a bicycle from this period would have (or could have) appeared - in fact, the basic bicycle is much the same as the one with the cowboy, above, except for the rifle and the sleeping roll. Well, and the cowboy's bike has a brake for the front wheel.

The one likely inaccuracy is that Butch's bike would have likely either had a fixed gear (that is, when the rear wheel turns, the pedals turn and vice-versa) or if it had a freewheel hub of some kind and could coast, there would be a hand actuated brake such as is shown with the cowboy, who has a "spoon brake" that uses a rod to drive a "spoon" shaped bit of metal against the tire to brake. It would have been a bit much for Mr. Newman to ride a bike with a fixed gear system, and anyway when this movie was made it would have been difficult to find such a thing, other than a track bike. And this is pretty much a detail.

At any rate, Butch and Etta had fun with their bike, which seems to have been much of what they were used for in the 1890s . . . fun.

Cycles Clément, Paris, Poster (1898)

As presented in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog this item was scanned in two parts and it presented as two images - it isn't so easy to appreciate.


I have stitched together images of the top and bottom half of the poster

Descriptive record ~
Title: Cycles Clément, Paris; Pneu Dunlop / / PAL.
Creator(s): Paleologue, Jean de, b. 1855, artist
Date Created/Published: Paris : Caby & Chardin, Imprimeurs, [1898]
Medium: 1 print (poster) : lithograph, color ; 152 x 107 cm.
Summary: Advertising poster for bicycles showing a woman wearing a Gallic rooster on her head and carrying a laurel wreath in one hand and a bicycle her other hand and wearing winged sandals on her feet.
Full record

There is a Wikipedia article about Clément-Bayard that describes his bicycle company briefly - over time he manufactured "bicycles, pneumatic tyres, motorcycles, automobiles, aeroplanes and airships." Apparently he had an agreement to make Dunlop pneumatic tires under license, which is included in the poster as "pneu Dunlop."

I understand that the "Gallic rooster" is a symbol of France, but it seems unusual to have him perched on the woman's head.

Cyclist vs Man on Horse

As sometimes happens, while searching for something I saw in passing earlier in the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog I am unable to find what I had in mind but instead find something else.

From time to time one reads about "bike vs horse" races - this French poster advertises such a race between Samuel Franklin Cody (who took Wild Bill Cody's surname but was not related, it seems) and a French bicycle racer in 1893. This Cody was quite a character - at any rate, Wikipedia notes that, "While touring Europe in the mid-1890s, Cody capitalized on the bicycle craze by staging a series of horse vs. bicycle races against famous cyclists. Cycling organizations quickly frowned on this practice, which drew accusations of fixed results." So he moved on to other types of spectacles (that didn't involve bicycles).


Bottom of poster, scanned in two parts

Description from the Library of Congress:
Title: Hippodrome du Trotting Club Levallois - grand match en 12 heures: S. F. Cody Jr., le gd. tireur, célèbre cowboy du wild west, contre Meyer, le entraîneur terront, St. Petersbourg à Paris.
Date Created/Published: Paris : Émile Lévy & Cie., 1893.
Medium: 1 print (poster) : lithograph, color ; 194 x 93 cm.
Summary: Advertising poster for a race between S. F. Cody on horseback and French cycling champion, Meyer of Dieppe, on bicycle.
Full record

For some reason it was scanned in two parts. Also, the images were skewed so I straightened them (more or less) and cropped the targets out.


The top of the poster

Apparently this tradition continues - as recently as August of last year, Thomas Voeckler (who had placed fourth in the Tour de France) raced a trotter (a horse pulling a rider on a sulky) in three heats, losing two of them. According to a French source, "duels between professional cyclists and horses are not rare and generally turn to the advantage of the quadrupeds." Maybe in France . . .

The Urban Biking Handbook (Book Review)

The Urban Biking Handbook: The DIY Guide to Building, Rebuilding, Tinkering with, and Repairing Your Bicycle for City Living by Charles Haine

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Urban biker" can be considered to be like "cycling hipster," thus the intended audience for this book are younger urban types who would be interested in getting in this growing kind of cycling. (Perhaps it isn't growing - that's just my assumption.)


The book isn't about this kind of bike fashonista but more the grungy sort of cycling urban type o'person

The lengthy sub-title of this book is "the DIY guide to building, rebuilding, tinkering with, and repairing your bicycle for city living." As is often the case with comprehensive guides that are only several hundred pages (and which have lots of photos) this is more like "here are some issues to know about and some reading to start with" to give a flavor of all the what's what, then you can go to the Internet and search for more detailed information as may be needed (or talk to a cycling friend). A book that spends one quarter of its length simply introducing the basic parts of a bicycle obviously isn't going to have much detail on "building, rebuilding and tinkering with" a bike - only a few problems are presented fairly clearly and fully. Many bicycle owners would end up in a "but my bike isn't like that" situation. There is quite a bit of detail on fixie conversion, including a table for teeth in the cog and the ring to achieve a particular gear ratio, but this is the sort of thing where I'm doubtful anyone would be relying on this book alone - but it can't hurt.

Unlike Urban Bikers' Tricks & Tips that I read recently, this presents a much more sensible approach towards motorist-cyclist relations and doesn't advocate idiotic behavior - this book recommends, "know the law, and follow it" and says, "your first job as a cyclist is to keep yourself alive and do no harm to the image of cyclists." Good! (Bizarrely my local public library in Arlington Va has eight copies of the hideous "Urban Bikers' Tricks & Tips" and only three copies of this title. But at Amazon.com, you can get the first title for five bucks new and the good one costs three times as much, all of $15. You get what you pay for?)


The "Tricks & Tips" book reminds me of this video - at about 5:40 in the video there are examples labeled "never do this," some of which are recommended in the book!

Anyway - back to the book Urban Biking Handbook - it has a lot of color photography - some is to provide flavor (of urban cycling) but most of the photographs are to illustrate something in the text. Some of the examples aren't ones I would choose and somehow the photo of a caliper brake is labeled as center pull brake and on the previous page one finds a photo of a center pull brake that is labeled caliper brake - but both photos are too close in to properly show the differences well in any event. So while the photography is pretty, it isn't always as helpful as one might hope.

View my list of cycling books and reviews