History of the Bicycle
During the late nineteenth century, the bicycle represented the
cutting edge of technology. Many of the most gifted engineers of the time spent there time
developing and refining bicycles and bicycle products. It was a prolific time in bicycle innovation. Many of today’s concepts that are perceived as new inventions
were first tried over a hundred years ago. Suspension forks, suspension frames,
seat-posts, multiple gearing, and many other ideas that originated in that era had to waot for modern manufacturing and metallurgy to become reliable products.
Take a look at a modern road bike, and you’ll find a cycling machine with two
equal-sized wheels that will likely have a classic diamond frame, chain and sprockets, drivetrain much like the bikes designed and built in 1874 by the Englshman H.J.Lawson.
True, old H.J.Lawson’s “safety” bike weighed somewhere in the 4O-pound region
and rode on iron wheels cushioned by a mere strip of rubber. But teh basic configuration
configuration was such a sound concept that 125 years later, H.J Lawsons bike and the bikes used today all around the world are easily recognisable coming from the same root.
Is there any other machine that has undergone such refinement, development and distillation while still keeping its essence?
Developing the Bicycle
The development of the modem-day bicycle didn’t begin with H.J.Lawson.
Rather, much like the designers of today, H.J. Lawson built his ideas upon ideas before him.
those before him. Just where and when the first bicycle was designed is the
subject of endless debate. There’s the well-known, yet often disputed sketch
attributed to Leonardo da Vinci (since it was crudely drawn and out of scale, expets summarise it was
experts surmise it was the work of a da Vinci pupil).
Bicycle like devices are also depicted in ancient Babylonian
sculpture where people are shown astride long poles with wheels at either side and bearing somehwat of a resemblance to a bicycle.
