Bicycle Technology and Patents

On April 22 1884 a young reporter from England named Thomas Stevens left San Francisco and headed east on a Pope “Columbia” ordinary bicycle.  This was a high wheel type bike, and had a 50 inch front wheel.

A few weeks into his trip he shot a moutain lion, and 103 days and 3700 miles of wagon roads after starting, he was in Boston.  After wintering in New York, he took a steam ship to Liverpool, and rode through England.  He took a ferry to Paris, and rode through Germany, Austria, Hungary and was in Bulgaria by June 24 1885.  A month later he was in Istanbul, and spent 6 months in Persia.  He was arrested in Afganistan and returned to Persia.  By August 1886 he was in India, and two months later he was in Canton China.  He cycled in Japan and headed for San Francisco by steamer and arrived December 24, 1886.  Steven’s wrote a series of letters during his journey which were published in Harper’s magazine.  The letters were collected into a book, Around the World on a Bicycle and is available in reprint and in digital form in the Gutenburg Project.

What is the big deal about front wheel drive recumbents?  Here is one that is really cool, from 1950.  It has an internally geared hub, and a very stylish body.  This would be a cool bike!

The Wright brothers’ Van Cleve mark lives on in a modern namesake, the Van Cleve bike built by Cycles Gaansari of Springboro Ohio.  Here is what Gary Boulanger of Cycles Gaansari adds:

Much is known about the Wright Brothers’ aviation results, but little has been told about how the men designed and tested their theories, and how big a role bicycle technology played in their research and development. Like most self-sufficient and frugal bicyclists, the brothers scrounged discarded bike components to make something useful out of something lying around the shop. In this case, it wasn’t a fixed gear or townie bike, but the airplane that was created, born from Wilbur’s vision for flight in the 1890s.

Cycles Gaansari was born from the need to provide reliable service, durable goods, and exciting products to the Greater Dayton cycling community. We’re housed in a former livery stable/barn built in Springboro in the 1850s, just three miles south of the Wright Brothers Airport, and across the street from the Jonathan Wright House, now a popular bed & breakfast, built by the founder of Springboro in 1815.

To many, the bicycle is a tool for transportation, adventure, freedom, and recreation. Little did the inventors of the bicycle know what impact they’d have on millions of people. Then again, little did two bicycle manufacturers from Dayton, Ohio realize where their dream of manned flight would catapult both them and the fruit of their labor.

Here is a rear suspension bike from 1891 which used springs in a tube to give some give to the rear wheel.

James Starley’s Rover of 1885 was the first successful bike in which pedals and a crank drove the rear wheel with a chain, but he was not the first with that design.  In 1879 Englishman Harry Lawson  designed and patented a version of a large front wheeled bike with a smaller rear wheel driven by cranks and a chain.   Lawson’s bike was not very well received, and he went on to design bikes using levers for power transmission.  The Bicyclette was a commercial failure, but he had hit upon a superior design feature.

This artwork of the Bicyclette is a version featured on cigarette cards.  This and other bicycle art is found at bicyclegifts.com.  Framed versions of these beautiful cigarette cards, posters , cards, and other bicycle art  recognize that brilliant design is art.

Here is another candidate for the first rear suspension bicycle design, from 1891. Its modern counterpart is shown below.

Here is a very early version of front suspension on a bike.  In this patent from 1891 there is a spring in the headset, and the fork assembly can move back and forth to absorb road shock.

This front suspension seems to be the precursor to early springer motorcycle forks. The beefy springs allowed the front wheel and forks to move upward and absorb some road shocks.

Those old bike designers tried a lot of ways to cushion the ride of the safety bike on the rough roads found at the end of the 19th century.  Here is a different way to employ springs on the front forks to cushion the ride. 

Even after bikes were built using chains, other power transmission modes were tried in early years and continue to be tried today. The chain is just so efficient its hard to beat. An early alternative to the chain and gears utilized a drive shaft. Some added gears to the drive shaft to form a transmission like the early cars were using. This one from 1897 even had a shift lever and a real transmission and a drive shaft that operated with bevel gears to the rear wheel. Having machinery and machinists capable of making bevel gears and transmissions such as this made the transmission to automobiles much smoother and faster.