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 their efforts on 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 and seat-posts, multiple gearing, and many other ideas that originated in that era had to wait for modern manufacturing and metallurgy to become practical and reliable products.
Take a gander 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 and a chain-and-sprockets drivetrain—much like the bikes designed and built in 1874 by an Englishman named H.J. Lawson.
True, old H.J.'s “safety” bike weighed somewhere in the 40-pound neighbourhood and rode on iron wheels cushioned by a mere strip of rubber. But the basic configuration was such a sound concept that 125 years later, H.J.'s bike and the bikes ridden by today's racing heroes are easily recognizable as being of the same genus. Is there any other machine that has undergone such refinement, development, and distillation while still keeping its essence?
Developing the Bicycle
