The Bicycle: Evolution or Intelligent design. Part I

The chain driven bicycle was invented almost 130 years ago. (Picture left, The Rover "Safety" Bicycle 1885.)

To the layman, or the untrained eye, this bicycle is basically the same as today’s bike.

But its geometry was directly influenced by its predecessor, the High-Wheeler. And that would influence frame design for the next 60 years. Indirectly it had an influence on what we ride today.

I have been riding bikes, racing bikes, designing and building bikes, and writing articles about bikes for 65 years, which is half of the period chain driven bikes have existed.

Albert “Pop” Hodge, who was my mentor, and first introduced me to the art of framebuilding, was born in 1877, and therefore witnessed firsthand the invention and early development of the bicycle. Pop Hodge was close to 80 years old when I first met him around 1953. (Picture below right.)

From what he told me, and what I have observed, back then and since, in the 130 years the bicycle has gone through a slow evolution.

During each phase, what happened previously affected the design of the next generation of bicycles.

The title of this piece has religious overtones, because like religion, much is spoken and written about the bicycle because “It is so.”

The center of the knee shall be over the pedal. But why? Because it is written. Wise men have deemed it is so.

When I started racing in 1952, we rode bikes with a seat angle of 70 or 71 degrees. We were taught that the shin of the lower leg, should be vertical. The center of the knee was actually behind the pedal. Wise men taught us that in order to pedal fast, and efficiently, one had to sit back.

In practice I soon found this was not so. When making a maximum effort, and pedaling at maximum revs, I found myself sliding forward on the saddle, which was uncomfortable, distracting, and had the effect of the saddle being much too low.

The term “Riding the Rivet,” is still used today to describe a cyclist making a maximum effort. The term was around when I began racing in the early 1950s when saddles were leather and actually had rivets to hold the leather to the saddle frame.

To understand why seat angles were so shallow back then, one has to go all the way back to the predecessor of the chain driven bicycle, to the “Ordinary” or Penny-Farthing bicycle. (Left,)

This was the first “Enthusiasts” bike. One had to be an enthusiast, as well a young, fit and agile athlete just to mount and ride one of these.

Today’s cyclist might think it a problem to make an emergency stop with their feet clipped in. Imagine making an emergency stop on a High-wheeler, and you are sitting over five feet above the ground. One had to dismount in a hurry, or fall over.

When the chain driven bike was invented in 1885 it was not immediately accepted by the enthusiast. These enthusiasts were the hard core “Roadies” of their day. The high-wheeler or Ordinary was still much faster. It wasn’t until pneumatic tires came into being in 1888 that the chain driven bike became faster and was accepted by the enthusiast.

These enthusiasts were the experts of the day, and what they learned riding the Ordinary influenced them and carried over to the chain driven bike. The Ordinary was limited by its simplicity, as to where the rider could sit, for example.

Imagine if your handlebars were directly above your bottom bracket. There would be no other choice but to sit some considerable distance back behind the pedals. When the first “Safety” or chain driven bike came into being, it was designed so the handle bars and the saddle were positioned in relation to the pedals exactly the same as its predecessor the High-wheeler. Making a seat angle of around 69 degrees. (See picture above.)

(Above.) Two different bicycles, but the exact same rider position. Note the rider's shin is vertical, a positioning "Guide" that would last another 60 years into the 1950s.

Below is a typical racing bike of the 1950s. Louison Bobet's 1954 Tour de France bike. Its shallow seat angle can be traced back to the High Wheeler of the 1800s.

A generation of “Experts” who had learned to pedal on the High-wheeler, then taught the next generation who became the following generation’s experts, and so on for the next 60 years and into the 1950s when I came along.

There was another factor that maintained this notion that seat angles shall be shallow, and an important one. This I would learn from framebuilder Pop Hodge. Frame lugs were heavy steel castings, and they were limited in the angles that were available.

It suited lug manufacturers to make their product in a limited number of angles. In later years thinner pressed steel lugs became available and it was then possible to alter an angle slightly. But not so prior to the 1950s.

73 degrees was established as an ideal head angle sometime in the 1920s or 1930s. This is still the norm today, and in the past when I have experimented with steeper or shallower head angles, I found no improvement.

Building frames with a head angle of 73 degrees, and a seat angle 2 or 3 degrees shallower, suited the framebuilder. With the head tube steeper and the seat tube leaning back away from that angle, as the framebuilder built a taller, or larger frame the top tube automatically became longer, which made the framebuilder’s job easier, and suited the taller rider.

This article is based on a talk I recently gave at the Philly Bike Expo, and will have to be written in two parts. In the next piece I will explain what happened after the 1950s. How the 73 degree paralell frame, still a popular design today, came about. The reason may surprise you. 

Two main factors determine frame design, throughout history and even to this day. Experts who simply re-cycle information that was written by previous generations of experts. And framebuilders and manufacturers doing what is easiest and most profitable for them.

Read Part II.

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Kirkpatrick McMillan

Growing up in England and going to school there I was taught that a Scottish blacksmith named Kirkpatrick McMillan (1812 – 1878) invented the first pedal driven bicycle in 1839.

The story goes that McMillan (Right.) saw a Hobby Horse being ridden near his home in Dumfries, Scotland; he decided to build himself one.

On completion he realized it would be an improvement if the machine had a means of propulsion so it could be ridden without putting his feet to the ground.

Cranks were attached to the rear wheel; movement was by connecting rods attached to pedals worked in a reciprocating motion by the rider’s feet. The exact same principle can be seen on a child’s pedal car to this day.

Today there are doubts cast on the claim that Kirkpatrick McMillan was the first to build a pedal driven bicycle. The problem was that McMillan never patented his invention, and it appears never even exploited the idea for profit.

Another Scottish blacksmith, Gavin Dalzell from Lesmahagow, copied the idea in 1846 and produced so many that for almost 50 years he was thought to be the inventor.

Then in the 1890s a wealthy corn trader named James Johnston, who just happened to be the nephew of Kirkpatrick McMillan, decided to throw a lot of money into proving that his uncle, now deceased, was indeed the inventor.

He unearthed all manner of neat stories, including one where in 1842 his uncle rode his bicycle 68 miles from Dumfries to Glasgow. While in the Gorbals District of Glasgow, McMillan colided with a young girl after she ran in front of his bicycle, injuring her slightly. He was fined five shillings.

A story was said to appear in a Glasgow newspaper reporting “An anonymous gentleman on a velocipede was fined five shillings.” Johnston claimed this was his uncle. However, there are doubts today that this incident actually happened or that the newspaper article even exists.

This is the problem; James Johnston said a lot of things but never backed it up with documentation.

He even had a blacksmith named Thomas McCall build a replica of his uncle’s machine for the 1896 Stanly Show.

Today this same replica can be seen in the Bicycle Museum at Drumlanrig Castle. (Above left.)

Thomas McCall had himself been building these machines since 1869.

The McMillan replica in the museum looks an awful lot like those attributed to Thomas McCall. (Picture right.)

Right down to the horses head carved on the front.

So is this a true replica of McMillan's original, or did McCall take Johnston’s money and then sell him one of his old stock models?

These would have been obsolete by the late 1800s, and McCall would have been more than happy to unload one of his old machines. Especially as he was 62 years old by then, maybe retired and could use the cash.

James Johnston may have been fully aware of this and knew that the Thomas McCall bicycle was not a true McMillan replica. This is only speculation on my part, but it was these attempts by Johnston to prove McMillan was the first by any means, or at any cost that now tends to cast doubt on the claim.

Was history re-written; dates fudged? It was certainly accepted as fact in Great Britian during the first half of the 20th. Century, and is still stated as such in many books and articles.

I like to keep an open mind. The point is even if it can’t be proved McMillan was the first, it probably can’t be disproved either. Kirkpatrick McMillan it seems was a modest man who never sought fame and fortune from his idea.

In spite of this his name will continue to have a place in history, along with the other names associated with the building of this type of machine; the ones I have mentioned here like Gavin Dalzell and Thomas McCall. Rightly so, because these men were all early pioneers of bicycle building.
 

                         

The Cambio Corsa: Campagnolo's Early Masterpiece

Necessity is the mother of invention, is the way the saying goes.

When Tulio Campagnolo stood on a cold mountain top, and couldn’t unscrew the wing nuts on the rear wheel of his bike because his fingers were frozen, he soon after invented the quick release hub.

This was back in 1930 and lead to the forming of the company that still bears his name today.

In 1940 Campagnolo invented the Cambio Corsa derailleur, which utilized the same quick release mechanism.

The now famous picture above shows Gino Bartali shifting gear with the Cambio Corsa on a steep mountain pass during his winning ride in the 1948 Tour de France.

For its time, the Cambio Corsa was a masterpiece of engineering, yet so simple in the way it worked.

There were no jockey pulleys to take up the slack in the chain as it moved between large and small sprockets.

Instead chain tension was achieved by the rear wheel actually moving back and forth in the rear dropouts.

Below are Tulio Campagnolo’s original drawings.

The standard sprocket width of that era was 1/8 inch, and there was no narrower chain available. This meant, at that time the maximum number of sprockets mechanically possible on a freewheel, was four.

Gear teeth were machined into the rear wheel axel, (Picture above.) these engaged in a rack consisting of teeth machined into the upper part of the frame’s extra long rear drop outs. (Picture below.) 

This allowed the rear axel (When released.) to roll back and forth along the dropout rack, keeping the axel square with the frame. The wheel, although moving back and forth, stayed central within the chainstays.

The derailleur was operated by two levers on the right side of the bike’s rear seatstays, just below the rear brake. The top lever released the rear wheel, a lever below it operated a simple guide that moved the chain from one sprocket to the next.

Because this chain shifter was on the top portion of the chain, above the chainstay, it was necessary to back pedal to actually shift. The pull of the chain as it climbed over the teeth of the sprockets, moved the wheel forward. Once the shift was made, the rider’s weight automatically moved the wheel back and re-tensioned the chain.

Sound complicated? Actually it wasn’t as these videos below show the Cambio Corsa shifting down,  

 and shifting up.

 

The gear shift in the hands of an experienced rider is so quick, you will have to view these videos more than once to actually notice the rear wheel moving back and forth.

The videos are from Aldo Ross and can be viewed here.

Here is a link to the page showing how the camera was rigged to get these videos. People like Aldo Ross do a great service to cycling. Many will never see a Cambio Corsa derailleur, and even fewer would get to see one actually working were it not for these videos.

There are more pictures here, and more history here 

                     

Old bike designs die hard

In my previous post I wrote how the High-wheeler or Ordinary bike influenced riding habits well into the next century. It also influenced frame design into the 1950s and 1960s.

If you look at the top picture you can see, due to the simplistic design of these old bikes, there was a limitation where the rider could be placed. I have drawn in red the three points of contact; the saddle, pedals, and handlebars.

With the steering almost vertical, the handlebars are directly above the pedals. If you can imagine on a modern bike if the handlebars were directly above the bottom bracket, they would be about where the nose of your saddle is.

So you can appreciate that if this were the situation, the rider would have to sit much further back. This was the case on the old ordinary bikes the riders were sitting much further back than we do today.

People do not like change, and as I mentioned in my last piece the cycling enthusiast did not take to the new fangled “Safety” bicycle immediately. It was necessary for those designing the new machine to place the rider in a position he was familiar with.

In the next picture I have drawn a safety bicycle superimposed on the ordinary. I left the saddle, pedals, and handlebars exactly where they were on the high-wheeler. By placing a front and rear wheels in the only logical place, and connecting all the dots, you can see we have a close approximation of a early safety bicycle.

This theory is confirmed by the photos below, showing two riders in almost identical positions; one on an ordinary and one on a “Rover,” the first safety bike.

The next picture below is of Ottavio Bottecchia's bike; an Automoto that he rode to victory in the 1925 Tour de France. In 25 or 30 years the handlebars have been moved forward and lowered, but the saddle position in relation to the pedals has remained as it was on the ordinary. The seat angle is about 68 degrees.

The picture below is of Louison Bobet’s French made Stella that he rode to his 1954 Tour de France win. The angles have become slightly steeper and the fork rake is shortened. However, look at where the nose of the saddle is in relation to the bottom bracket.

This was the way bikes were designed when I started racing in 1952. I was always told by my elders that I had to sit back in order to pedal efficiently. In time I questioned this because I am somewhat short in stature, and found when making maximum effort, I would slide forward and end up sitting on the nose of the saddle.

Studying photos of other riders I could see many had the same problem, this is what started me experimenting with frame design. Initially I was just looking to improve my own performance.

The problem has always been that in general, people who race bikes do not build them, and people who build bikes do not race them. And no one ever questions why certain aspects of design are the way they are.

James Starley: Father of the Bicycle Industry

James Starley (1830 - 1881) is considered to be the "Father of the Bicycle Industry." Born in Albourne, Sussex in the South of England, James Starley (Above.) left home at eighteen years old and took a job as a gardener.

Starley was a mechanical genius who gained a reputation for mending clocks and inventing useful gadgets. It is interesting how chance meetings in a person’s life can not only change the course of that individual’s life, but in this case change the course of history.

Starley’s employer, John Penn, bought an expensive sewing machine for his wife, which broke down. James of course fixed the problem and, what is more, envisioned improvements to the mechanism.

Penn knew Josiah Turner, one of the partners of the makers of the sewing machine, and in due course Starley was taken on as an employee at the London sewing machine factory.

His talent was such that Turner and Starley started their own sewing machine company around 1861. The pair moved to Coventry, in the West Midlands of England, because of the abundance of skilled machinists there. Coventry had previously been known for its clock making industry.


Once again a chance happening steered the company in a new direction. Turner's nephew brought a French Velocipede, (Above.) commonly known as a boneshaker to the factory in 1868, Starley again saw room for improvement and the company soon started making bicycles.


They built a bicycle called the “Ariel,” meaning “Spirit of the Air.” (Picture above.) The machine was lighter than the old Velocipede with a tubular steel frame and wire-spoke wheels that were far lighter than the old solid compression spoke wheels. James Starley later invented tangent or cross spoke wheels that were patented in 1874. Tangent spokes are still used today.

The Ariel evolved into the Ordinary or Penney Farthing bicycle, as the front wheel became larger in a quest for speed. James Starley would later partner with William Hillman to produce the Ordinary bicycle and also tricycles.

Steering problems, while riding a side-by-side tricycle tandem, caused by the unequal power input of the ageing James on one side and his stronger son on the other that prompted James Starley to invent the differential drive in 1877. This also solved the problem of the different speed of the inside and outside wheels when cornering. The differential was ready and waiting when the motor car needed the device.

Also brought into the bicycle manufacturing business was James Starley's nephew John Kemp Starley who would later start his own company in partnership with William Sutton. The early tricycles that John Starley worked on with his uncle were lever driven; later models were chain driven.


This chain drive would feature in John Kemp Starley’s “Rover” (Above.) safety bicycle first built in 1884. The Rover had 26 inch wheels that are still a standard size today, and although the frame did not have a seat tube, the diamond shape is basically the same as bicycles built today.

The name Rover had been previously used on a James Starley tricycle, (Left.) however, the name really suited the new bicycle as it freed the people to “rove” all over the countryside.

Others had experimented with chain-driven "safety bicycles" but the Rover was really the first practical model. It made its mark to the extent that "Rover" means "bike" in some countries such as Poland.

In due course, motor-driven bicycles became motorcycles and were followed by motor cars. John Kemp Starley experimented with an electric tri-car around 1888 but the petrol-driven Rover 8 h.p. car was released in 1904, two years after his death.

The Rover car company still exists. (Although throughout the years, it has been under different ownership.) Today they produce the Land-Rover.


William Hillman who partnered with James Starley to build bicycles, also went on to produce cars and for many years Hillman was a famous British name in automobiles.

And the first bicycle Starley produced, the “Ariel” became a famous British motorcycle.

Motorcycle enthusiasts will remember the Ariel 1000 Square Four from the late 1940s, early 1950s. (Pictured left.)

John Kemp Starley’s Rover set the standard design for the bicycle that has remained basically the same since. However, it was his uncle James Starley who paved the way for the “Safety Bicycle” with his use of chain drive. This, along with his other inventions and production methods, makes him the Father of the Bicycle Industry.

Assorted Starley bicycles can be seen in Coventry’s excellent Transport Museum. The City of Coventry is well worth a visit for this museum and for the beautiful cathedral.