Showing posts with label cycling for health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cycling for health. Show all posts

Monday, September 2, 2013

What to Avoid in Cycling - 1895 Article

An 1895 article concludes regular cyclists may suffer from a general vibratory condition which is mischievous and may develop an intoxication of movement among other problems. . .

The usually fee-based JSTOR has articles that are in the public domain loaded in the Internet Archive text section which is nice but they aren't particularly searchable, other than minimal metadata such as journal title, article title and author.

For example, I bumped into the article "What to avoid in cycling" from the North American Review, published in 1895. For whatever reason, the Internet Archive only gives the volume number (161) that tells you this was published in the 161st year that this journal was published, but not what year that was - then I realized you can go to the same article in JSTOR where there is better metadata.

The author Richardson is a medical doctor but his observations are a little broader than what one might expect. He also uses a somewhat extreme version of the kind of prose you meet if you read much from this time period.
From the first my impressions have been always in favor of cycling, and, to some extent, the expression of that favor on certain public occasions has, I think, helped to popularize the movement. I believe the exercise has been of the greatest service to large numbers of people. It has made them use their limbs; it has called out good mental qualities, and it has taken away from close rooms, courts and streets, hundreds of thousands of persons who would otherwise never have had the opportunity of getting into the fresh air and seeing the verdant fields and woods, the lakes and rivers, and the splendid scenery that adorn our land.
So far so good, assuming one can live with this sort of writing style. He soon transitions from positive comments about cycling, however . . .
There are dangers from cycling. The first is the danger of teaching the practice to subjects who are too young. Properly, cycling should not be carried on with any ardor while the body is undergoing its development — while the skeleton, that is to say, is as yet imperfectly developed. The skeleton is not completely matured until twenty-one years of life have been given to it.
. . . . .
We see these errors particularly well marked in the young, now that the cross-bar system of the cycle has come so generally into use. The tendency in riding is for the body to bend forward so as to bring itself almost into the curve of the front wheel, and in this position many riders hold themselves for hours, and the spine more or less permanently assumes the bent position. In plain words, the column becomes distorted, and through the whole life affects the movements of the body.

Female "scorcher"
This rider from the 1890s looks like she could be exposing herself to health risks of various kinds, according to Dr. Richardson

But wait! It gets better - I particularly like this . . .
There is often developed in the cyclist a general vibratory condition of the body which is mischievous and is shown in various acts of movement and thought. There are certain unconscious or semi-unconscious movements of the body which become sensible to the subject himself at particular moments when great steadiness is called for, as, for instance, when sitting for a photograph. There is also shown an over desire for rapidity of motion, as if it were necessary at every moment to overcome time and curtail distance by labor of an extreme degree. Lastly, there is developed a kind of intoxication of movement which grows on the mind by what it feeds on and keeps the heart under the impression that it is always requiring the stimulation of the exercise.







Friday, April 6, 2012

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.



DSCN2151
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.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

1899 "Book on Wheeling" & Tandem Photographs

Neesen Title Page
Title page of Dr. Neesen's Book on Wheeling

Dr. Neesen's Book on Wheeling is a rather extreme (and late, since the cycling craze was ending by this time) example of the "physician as guide to all-things-cycling" approach to cycling advice. Note his particular qualifications as a specialist in women's medicine:
Assistant to the Chair of Gynecology, Long Island College
Hospital ; Member Women's Hospital Society ; Kings Co. Medical Society, Long Island Medical Society, Kings Co. Medical Association ; Lately House Surgeon at the Woman's Hospital in the State of New York ; Recently House Surgeon at Prof. Martin's Privat-Anstalt in Berlin ; Member Physical Education Society of New York.
He includes some interesting photographs of men and women cyclists in his book - here are those of tandems and riders. I have included the original captions, which in keeping with his rather directive sort of advice, usually find some fault with the models' posture.

Diamond Frame Tandem

Above is the only photograph in the book of this particular tandem - although the front rider is a woman, the frame has a continuous top tube rather than a step-through portion for the woman rider, which could be either the front section or the rear. (This author takes the slightly radical position that women, properly attired, should be fine riding a "diamond frame wheel.")

"Combination" Tandem

Above is the first of two photos of this tandem that has a step-through frame section in front. Note that this tandem (and the preceding) have the ability for the back cyclist to steer also - how this worked in practice, one can only wonder. It certainly negated some of the advantage in the normal tandem arrangement, where the "stoker" in the rear can focus all if his (or her) energy on pedaling. Presumably the assumption was that the man could easily see over the woman in front, but it doesn't look that way here. Many tandems at the time had the step-through portion in the rear, in which case the rear rider could not steer (at least not in examples I've seen). There was an apparent tension between the version that was more socially acceptable (woman in front) versus what was easier to engineer (man in front).

Women on Tandem

To ride a "diamond frame wheel" Dr. Neesen advises wearing a short divided skirt, but apparently this is too short.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Diplomats Need Cycling Exercise (1912)

Article in the Washington Herald from 1912 describes cycling tour in France of socialites, accompanied by an assistant secretary of state, Alvey Adee, who was noted for his cycling and cycling tours in Europe.

US Diplomat on Cycle Tour
From the society page of the paper

Gen. Thackary believes that the whole consular corps should take a holiday on wheels for the improvement of the diplomatic service. For it would counteract the bad results of a life necessarily sedentary.

Alvey Adee of Dept of State & Bicycle
Alvey Adee at age 72 and his bike in Washington, 1914
Photo from the Library of Congress


More information about Adee.

Alvey Adee of Dept of State riding Bicycle
Adee riding in Washington
Photo from the Library of Congress


Description of Adee's diplomatic career in "Washington close-ups" By Edward George Lowery, 1921.