the young and aspiring Ritchey, and the products he was designing. Brandt, a mechanical engineer at Hewlett Packard, always called into question Tom's new ideas—scrutinizing every detail of his designs. Ritchey, who sought to design and produce components that were light and fast, was often countered by Brandt who demanded components be durable and strong enough to endure the back country epic rides Jobst liked to do. Ritchey's foundational design principles emerged from these dueling philosophies. Among the first of Ritchey's designs to be brought to use was his "Logic" steel frame tubing. With the new era of fillet brazing he pioneered, and the new uprising of TIG welded frame production, Ritchey knew that condensed, force-direction butted tubing would produce steel frames that would be lighter and stronger than common butted tubes previously manufactured. Initially Ritchey sought tubes from Italian company Columbus however they didn't meet Ritchey's specifications, so Tange of Japan was the final supplier. Their success lead to the birth of Logic Tubing. This tubing changed the way tubing manufacturers thought about butting profiles, allowing the manufacture of lighter, yet extremely durable larger diameter steel tubing bikes. He later took his same shortened butt concept to spoke manufacturer DT Swiss to produce spokes to build lighter, stronger wheels. Below is a list of a few innovations and firsts Ritchey produced: 1974 - Twin-plated crown forks 1979 - New "MountainBikes" frame 1980 - 130mm mountain bike specific rear hub 1980 - 120mm bottom bracket spindle to account for wider chain stays that accommodate a wider rear tire 1980 - The Bullmoose integrated mountain bike specific handlebar and stem 1983 - Standard unicrown tapered fork 1984 - Logic butted tubing 1984 - Developed new MTB specific tread design with IRC, Japan. Applied road tire technology to MTB tires, introducing a folding bead and 120tpi. In 1988, applied vector force analysis (VFA) tread designs to develop mountain bike tires featuring front & rear specific and rotation direction tires. 1985 - Vantage rim, the first welded mountain bike specific rim produced by Ukai; a wider, 25mm rim developed to better handle a wider knobby tire 1989 - Logic Condensed double butted spokes produced by DT Swiss 1989 - Developed alloy 3D net shape forging, for stems that led the way to a new generation of lighter, stiffer and stronger stems that did away with welding. 1992 - First to succeed in off