Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? - <AUTHOR> https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-bicycle <comment><USER2> >Yet it was a simple mechanical invention

As a mechanical engineer, this statement baffled me. All manufactured technology exists in the context of the manufacturing capabilities available to the designer. The manufacturing tech had to be tremendously complicated before a decent bike could be made. Hollow steel tubes aren't simple. Ball bearings aren't simple. There is a reductionist viewpoint among "theory" people that misses the trees for the forest.

<comment><USER3> Right. And one point that cannot be stressed enough.

 _Good steel, in quantity, only goes back to 1880._

Lots of things that "could have been built in antiquity" foundered on that basic fact. Before Bessemer, steel was as exotic as titanium is now.

The alternatives are not good. Cast iron? Too heavy and too brittle. Wrought iron? Maybe, but not that great. Lead? Too soft. Brass? Could work, but expensive. A king's kid might have had a brass bicycle.

If the iron workers of Cizhou, China, who had an air-blown steel making process by about 1100 AD, had made the next step to a Bessemer converter, history would have been completely different. They were close. Right idea, limited steelmaking capability, existing iron industry. Coal was available, but apparently not too easily.

The few places in the world with easy access to both coal and iron ore started the Industrial Revolution. Then came railroads, and the resources didn't have to be so close.

<comment><USER4> I often wonder as I am building/fixing something (often my bicycle as it happens) and I happen to toss an extra screw in the trash how miraculous a simple screw of this type would have been to a middle-ages craftsman. The precision of keeping all those threads perfectly spaced is one thing, but the technology to make them in such volume at these sizes (often quite tiny), and in volumes so as to make them essentially disposable is a true marvel.

We think a computer is an impressive piece of technology, but many of the things around us that we consider less than mundane are just as incredible if we look just a couple hundred years back.

<comment><USER5> Or consider how useless you would be if transported back 400 years.

You would be able to offer great advice about washing hands or the solar system generalisations. But actually create something to show people....even the simplest things would be beyond most of us.

<comment><USER6> If you could figure out how to make wire, you could make a working electric motor.

<comment><USER7> You'd also need to make magnets, know their polarisation, create bearings, and have the skill to assemble all of that as well.

<comment><USER6> None of that is necessary. I built a working electric motor in cub scouts using several feet of wire, tape, some iron nails, some sheet metal cut from tin cans, a wood board to mount it on, and a battery.

Tools required: tin snips and a hammer.

A battery can be made from a jar, lemon juice, and two electrodes.

Believe me, as an 8 year old, my skills were limited to using a hammer to mash my thumb with. :-)

Electromagnets substituted for magnets, and bearings were a dent in the sheet metal that the point of a nail sat in and turned. Simple and effective.

Once you showed this to a medieval craftsman, they could reproduce it and start improving it.

<comment><USER7> I'm both impressed and have learned something new. Thank you :)

<comment><USER6> I found a variant that uses magnets:

[https://www.bu.edu/gk12/tommy/Electric_motors.pdf](https://www.bu.edu/gk12/tommy/Electric_motors.pdf)

The version I built was far simpler, and used electromagnets instead of the magnets, but you can see the general idea.

I didn't design it, I don't know where the Den Mothers got the design from. But I found it fascinating, as you could see and feel how it worked.

I built several of them. One day, I got a little bolder and replaced the battery with an A/C cord. The motor buzzed loudly and burst into flames. I learned about alternating current that day :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _(Some commenters have suggested that it was not obvious that a two-wheeled > vehicle would balance, but I find this unconvincing given how many other > things people have learned to balance on, from dugout canoes to horses > themselves.)_

I'll be one of those commenters I guess.... What!??

Balancing in a canoe is in no way similar to a bicycle. I can jump in a canoe having never been in one, and it will balance itself. I can probably even manage a few trepidous rows of an oar (or hand, or arbitrary object) without tipping it. Without me, the canoe will stand on its own. If I fall, it will often right itself without me.

On top of that, a canoe is both an evolution on previous working designs (rafts), and analogous to nature (whether it be a fish, crocodile or a floating log).

The horse, with its four (not two!) legs is an even more ridiculous comparison.

It seems pretty clear that the development of the bicycle would've been significantly hampered by the fact that balancing on two wheels was:

(a) unintuitive as an idea with no analogue in nature or previous innovations

(b) had a marked learning curve

(c) that learning curve was separate and independent for _each_ design. Riding a modern bicycle doesn't automatically make you an adept penny farthing, unicycle, nor tandem rider. Nor any of the umpteen other technological iterations.

I wouldn't be surprised if this trumped material/manufacturing limitations as a hurdle. See this whimsical video for "evidence" of this [0]

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yJdz- kjfLk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yJdz-kjfLk)

<comment><USER9> > _The horse, with its four (not two!) legs is an even more ridiculous > comparison._

The comparison is, as I understood it, the rider balancing on the horse itself. I've only ever done this myself with saddle and stirrups, so I don't know if this is significantly more difficult without those.

I think you're being a little generous with the canoe. Boarding a canoe without a dock (that is, climbing in from the water) is tricky, and requires some thought about where your weight is. (Since the lip of the canoe, in my experience, sits well above the water line, and you're about to pull down on the edge to attempt to board, but that same motion is the motion that moves the edge closer to the water which will flood it.) I've seen plenty of people flip and subsequently flood a canoe after an unsuccessful attempt to board.

<comment><USER10> But a canoe floats, as a horse stands.

A bicycle simply does not stand up on its own.

<comment><USER11> Surely it can, it's just a case of finding the balance point? [Ignoring macroscopic effects of the Earth rotating, etc.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One possibly overlooked factor: the nature of travel has changed dramatically in the last 200 years. Right up until World War 1, my ancestors literally had no reason to ever go more than ten miles from home, and even that was rare. The entire extended family lived within a two mile radius. This was because they were all farmers, and farmers didn't need to travel often. Furthermore, if you did travel, well, you already had a horse. Which, to make a point not made in the article, didn't have to do with the cost of the horse; it had to do with the fact that you already needed to have a horse to farm. So the horse was a sunk cost.

If you did travel frequently, this was likely because you were in the business of shipping goods, ie tobacco or cotton or some other agricultural staple from where it was grown to a port, and hence speed wasn't your primary concern; inexpensive transport for bulk goods was. For all that is awesome about bicycles, bulk transports they aren't.

So: at least one factor was economic, but of an indirect sort. We had to have a critical mass of population that needed to travel regularly farther than they could conveniently walk, and for which horses were not sunk costs.

<comment><USER13> This is not entirely correct. If you are a farmer you (or a someone working with you) still need to travel for numerous reasons, including to bring your products to market, to round up your animals, to buy equipment and supplies, etc.

You say they had horses for those types of traveling, except they most likely didn't. Only a successful farmer could afford a horse. And even if they had a horse, chances were it was busy or tired for farming works to be used for transportation.

Most people walked to were they needed to go, in if the modern bicycle would have existed a farmers dream would be to have a successful crop one year so they could afford a bicycle. In fact a modern bicycle would have been a good investment for many farm as they allow farmers to bring more products to a market quicker and more efficiently, in turn allowing the transporter to be back at their farming job quicker and less tired.

This can be seen in today's poorer regions where no trains nor road runs. But the occasional farm has invested in a bicycle to help with transportation.

<comment><USER12> "...including to bring your products to market, to round up your animals, to buy equipment and supplies, etc."

No... Farmers didn't bring their products to market unless they were running a plantation, ie they were very large operators, which were few and far between and would certainly nit having been riding a bicycle - those guys would be going in a nice two horse cart. The small guys sold to a local buyer who handled the shipping. Part of the reason for this is that the products you produced for sale were very bulky. A tobacco bale could be over half a ton; similar for cotton. Bulk grains and beans weren't as likely to be sold to distant buyers, but they too are too bulky to carry by bicycle.

I round up animals on a daily basis. A bicycle is worse than useless for this purpose. Which is why farmers don't use them for rounding up animals today.

Shopping was done at most a few times a year. You rode your horse (or mule or donkey - see below) to the general store. Often, salesman came to you, specifically because you weren't going to town much. So you'd have traveling brush salesmen - or pots and pans salesmen, traveling patent medicine salesmen, tinkers and ferriers.

When you went to town, the kinds of things you were buying were usually too bulky to carry by bike. You didn't go to town to buy a shirt or two. You went to buy a plow, or if you had a good year some china. Popping in to town on a nike would have been a very niche use case.

Also, you weren't buying very much equipment. What you couldn't make yourself you had the local blacksmith make for you. There's very little on an 1850s American farm that wasn't locally produced.

"Only a successful farmer could afford a horse."

Err... no... Not in the US anyway. In order to farm you had to plow and in order to plow you had to have a draft animal. That wasn't always a horse, in some cases it was a mule or donkey, or sometimes in the west an ox. And all of those animals were also used for transport. Granted nobody rode oxen but they often pulled wagons, hence the term "oxcart".

There was a term used coined after the Civil War: "40 acres and a mule". It comes from field orders issued by Union General William "Tecumseh" Sherman with the approval of Abraham Lincoln, and it redistributed white property to newly freed slaves. The idea was that the slaves needed at minimum those two things to be self supporting.

But in any case, you've got the order wrong. You didn't buy a horse (or a mule) once you became a successful farmer. You bought a horse _in order_ to become a successful farmer, in much the same way that the successful programmer today will own a (or will have an employer-provided) computer. It was an essential piece of equipment.

<comment><USER13> We might both be guilty of over generalizing. Farming practices differ very widely across cultures and time. Farming in post colonial America was often done on big areas of land that was often handed out for free (or very cheap) and the markets were far away. This is in contrast to farming where land was scarce and small and a the markets relatively close (2 hours walking).

In the latter case bringing a freshly slaughtered goat, a couple of basket worth of grain, or textiles, to town three days a week, and sell in a public market is not uncommon. In the former case it is unthinkable.

In the case of rounding up animals I can see bicycle being quite useful if you have a small stock that you grace in large swaths of shared uninhabited lands. At the start of the gracing season you might not use the bicycle, but during the gracing season you might need to move them from one area to another, then it is definitely handy to be able to bike to the first area, herd them to the next one, walk back, and bike home.

Note that neither of my examples were ever common in post colonial America, but quite common throughout Europe and are still common in sub Saharan Africa.

<comment><USER12> I fully concede that conditions were very different depending on time and place, and I was talking specifically about the US (mostly the eastern US, where I'm from) in the period after independence up to World War I.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a side-side note, ever asked someone (friends, family, etc.) to draw a bycicle by heart?

This guy did:

[http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html](http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html)

<comment><USER15> This is cool. Except it's driving me nuts that I can't figure out what's wrong with the first picture, or at least why it would immediately break.

<comment><USER16> It's missing the chainstays, which are the tubes from the bottom bracket (where the pedals attach) to the rear axle.

The seatstays (the tubes from under the seat to the rear axle) are only connected to the seat tube with a small weld. When you pedal, you're using the top part of the chain to pull the rear axle toward the pedals. This force is going to break the weld connecting the seatstays to the seat tube.

Note that a chain can't push, only pull, so the bottom part of the chain cannot counterbalance this force.

<comment><USER17> I think the fact that the crossbar is not connected directly to the headtube (part where the fork & handlebar assemblies pivot) would also cause a problem!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Same can be said, perhaps more accurately, about the wheelbarrow. From [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/312366/the- knowledge...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/312366/the-knowledge-by- lewis-dartnell/9780143127048/excerpt) :

> The wheelbarrow, for instance, could have occurred centuries before it > actually did—if only someone had thought of it. This may seem like a trivial > example, combining the operating principles of the wheel and the lever, but > it represents an enormous labor saver, and it didn't appear in Europe until > millennia after the wheel (the first depiction of a wheelbarrow appears in > an English manuscript written about 1250 AD).

<comment><USER19> And the European wheelbarrow is vastly inferior to the Chinese one (see [https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese- wheelbar...](https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese- wheelbarrow.html))

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Many of these kinds of industrial-history questions can be answered along a few different angles:

* Trade and access to raw materials. This is often one that limits development and diffusion even if the concept is known, and for the bicycle, it's one of the biggest immediate factors. Trade _deprivation_ can often be a factor in historical innovations as the market starts searching for substitutes.

* Education and basic research. The 19th century saw a second "printing revolution" because paper was getting cheaper, enabling the likes of dime novels and penny dreadfuls, but also making literacy a widespread phenomenon, with public schools appearing throughout the industrial world and academia gaining larger libraries and greater capability to specialize on logical-positivist STEM topics, rather than the classical education of nobility and clergy. Less reinvention means more effort towards innovation.

* Market readiness. You can't sell software if nobody has computers; and for manufactured goods the development of an urban lifestyle has to take place. None of the early bicycles do well on unpaved roads. Bicycle adoption trailed automobile adoption, since the latter gave the motivation to pave every street. In the late 19th century, systematic city sanitation policy was still a new innovation and large cities suffered from stinking rivers, open sewerage, and disposal methods that consisted of emptying a bucket out of a window. People were dressing for this reality in heavy suits or dresses and boots, while bicycle usage relies on being less encumbered(and that is still a factor even today).

Today the hype for rental e-scooters can be followed througn a similar series of developments: while scooters as toys have been around for about as long as bicycles, the early 70's saw polyurethane wheels introduced, and this made skating(on boards and in shoes) almost a new sport, since they were inexpensive and could reliably compress and keep rolling without stopping or shattering like clay or metal wheels; scooter wheels are bigger, but also benefited from this change. A few decades passed and Razor introduced the folding kick scooter concept to mass markets, making the scooter as easy to carry as a skateboard. With the last two decades we got better battery power density and smartphone diffusion, making the "dockless" rental scooter commercially viable, along with electric-powered versions of shoes, skateboards, bikes, etc. But there is somewhat of a market readiness issue, since while the potential is obvious, it's hard to use these devices safely on current streets, and there is no established etiquette to their use.

</comment><comment><USER21> Same for steam engines: it turns out Watt spent most of his effort on getting components manufactured and having the associated manufacturing processes developed. The basic idea of the steam engine had been around for a long time prior. You can ask the same question of Romans and electricity. They had all the necessary tech: glass for insulators, acid for batteries, metallurgy for wire etc.

<comment><USER22> Reminds me of John Salvatier's point about the "surprising level of detail" in reality, i.e. yes, the idea that "steam can drive a wheel" is simple enough, but you have to get a lot of small details right that don't make it into textbooks like reliable manufacturing tolerances.

HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16184255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16184255)

<comment><USER23> I'm regularly imagining what I would actually be able to accomplish if I went back in time 200-2000 years. Details are always the problem. It reminds you how little you know, but also helps you to form a background interest in engineering, metallurgy, geology, chemistry, etc.

<comment><USER24> You have to make the machine to make the machine that allows you to make your final product.

You would still have the advantage of being able to beeline past technological dead ends, but you still have to build up the industrial base. Even then you run into problems with chemicals simply not being available on an industrial scale because previously there was no need for them. The world is a massively complex interconnected system.

<comment><USER22> Related quote from the computer game Alpha Centauri:

"Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a [computer chip]. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken."

[https://www.quotes.net/mquote/2325](https://www.quotes.net/mquote/2325)

<comment><USER25> The people who authored quotes for Alpha Centauri deserve some sort of award. It's probably the most quoted game I've seen, and those quotes are all pretty insightful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if the 19th-century emergence of mass urbanism wasn't a factor. If you're a farmer living in the countryside you already have the space and supplies necessary to keep animals, so keeping a horse along with all the others isn't a problem. But if you're an industrial worker living in a city where space is at a premium, keeping a horse becomes complicated and expensive -- you have to maintain a place to stable it, have to find a way to keep it fed and watered, etc.

Even if you could afford all that it's still a pain to deal with, and outside the aristocratic class I doubt most people could afford it. So urbanization meant there was a steadily growing market for some non-horse alternative that fit the facts of urban life better.

</comment><comment><USER27> A lot of the discussion here is about materials and manufacturing, which certainly wasn't available until the late 19th century to make and produce bicycles.

But the real title of the article should have been, and the real unanswered question, is "Why did we wait so long for the draisine?" An all-wood two- wheeled single-track vehicle that was just kicked along like a scooter. This was invented in 1817, and the article postulates that cultural reasons kept it from being invented in the classical or medieval times, and even in the Renaissance where ideas for human-powered carriages were floated, no one came up with a draisine because of cultural reasons.

That's an insufficient explanation, I think. What other reasons could have kept the draisine from being invented in classical Greece, or medieval Germany, or any other time and place before the 19th century? Technological arguments fall flat as the original draisine didn't use any tech that hadn't existed for millennia.

</comment><comment><USER28> Roads were a necessety for the invention of bicycles. And by roads I mean roads with a certain standard.

Another necessety was a certain type of middle class which would actually desire individual transport. If you are a worker why would you prefer a bicycle over a wagon that transports all tools? If you are an aristocrat, why prefering a bicycle over some comfortable carriage, especially when you don't even know the way?

It is no accident, that the bike was invented by a certain type of rich middle class in cities with good infrastructure. More as a toy first (basically a horizontal bar with two wheels and you had to push with the feet), but more serious later

<comment><USER29> > Roads were a necessety for the invention of bicycles. And by roads I mean > roads with a certain standard.

The chicken and egg actually went in the other direction. Bicycles became popular and bicyclists lobbied for better roads.

<comment><USER30> This is true! A good article about this:

[https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bicycles-bad-roads- det...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/bicycles-bad-roads-detroit)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > City roads at the time were paved with cobblestones, which were good for > horses but too bumpy for bicycles.

This is one of the draws for the Paris-Roubaix spring classic race, a +200 mile, single day race with dozens of sections of rural cobble stones. Though, generally well maintained, the roads are narrow and brutal on modern road racing carbon-fiber bikes on 23mm wide tires. Lots of attrition from accidents. Typically pretty wet weather for the (spring) race and the cobbles are slippery and also get muddy. Riders tend to ride on the dirt shoulderer when they can, because it's smoother, but this can lead to tire punctures. The sections of cobbles are also narrow, so getting around 200 riders through is harrowing by itself. Smallest mistake by one rider compounds quickly.

Also mechanicals such as punctured tires and tossed chains are common. Rough corners/edges on the stones and gaps between cobbles easily puncture tires. The bikes have no suspension, so the chains bounce quite a bit, easily being tossed and in extreme cases, can be bent or broken if they jump a chain ring, requiring a replacement.

For their efforts, the trophy? A cobble stone with adornment.

The race is a spectacle. Probably one of the greatest one day spring classics of the UCSI Pro Tour. 6 hours or more of grueling, punishing cycling in crappy weather while being vibrated like crazy from the cobbles (the whole race isnt cobbles, but significant sections are, usually +20 sections, ranging in length of around a few kilometers each).

<comment><USER32> > Typically pretty wet weather for the (spring) race

Paris–Roubaix is certainly memorable when it's wet and muddy, but the last time it happened was in 2002! Early spring is the driest part of the year in north-eastern France, and so the usual conditions for the race are dry and dusty. See the Inner Ring: [https://inrng.com/2016/04/rain-for- roubaix/](https://inrng.com/2016/04/rain-for-roubaix/)

<comment><USER31> Sadly, I've not been able to see the race in quite a while. At least in my region, NBC sports doesn't seem to carry it anymore. Previously, Universal sports did, which I somehow lost after comcast aquired them.

One of my favorite images of the race is Bob Roll literally riding in the ditch, covered in mud [0]. Think it epitomizes the race.

[0] [https://images.app.goo.gl/K8CHHQMGA245iZt48](https://images.app.goo.gl/K8CHHQMGA245iZt48)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In 100 years will we wonder why recumbent bicycles took so long to catch on? MIT's David Gordon Wilson, the writer of the excellent book Bicycling Science, had been advocating for recumbents as a more efficient design to replace traditional modern bicycles for decades.

[http://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-designer-inventor-author- bike-b...](http://news.mit.edu/2017/mit-designer-inventor-author-bike-bible- david-gordon-wilson-on-bicycles-0725) and [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/bicycling-science-third- editi...](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/bicycling-science-third-edition)

<comment><USER34> I've ridden many different types of bicycle from fixed gears, single speed mountain bikes and more traditional mountain bikes and racing bikes. Recumbent is horrible to ride in traffic (you are below the height of most traffic) and the handling is atrocious.

Yes they are maybe more efficient but they are not pleasant to ride.

TBH the current design is efficient enough, is well understood both in terms of the technology. Almost all improvements now are iterative.

Also more modern materials (carbon fibre, aluminium) are either expensive, brittle (carbon fibre is easily damaged in a crash) or both. A lot of riders (especially the fixed crowd) have a saying of "Steel is Real", frames are normally cheap, easy to come by and even after crashes easily repaired (you can just bend it back most of the time).

The same can be said about many of the more modern gearing systems. Anything past 2 up front, 8 speed at the back is again typically more expensive to fix, parts are less easy to come by and is prone to failure.

Shimano's hub gears need regular maintenance where traditional derailleur setup will go on for thousands of miles with only basic maintenance. Maintenance on a derailleur system is typically cleaning (fairy liquid is fine) and using cheap lubrication that can be bought for a few pounds/dollars will suffice in most cases.

<comment><USER35> > Recumbent is horrible to ride in traffic (you are below the height of most > traffic)

Depends on the recumbent. Mine (an Azub Six) isn't - I commute through London on it every day. And cities are (slowly) getting better at keeping traffic out of the way.

> and the handling is atrocious.

How so? You have to take a different line through corners, but you turn later (front wheel is further back) so it's if anything easier to go through the kind of right-angle turns that are expected in cities.

> Yes they are maybe more efficient but they are not pleasant to ride.

That's the opposite of my experience - upright bikes put so much weight on the wrists and, uh, taint, that they simply can't be pleasant for any length of time (particularly for those of us of an, ah, less athletic physique). A certain proportion of the population is able to sit comfortably on a traditional bike saddle, but many people aren't. As scooters and e-bikes open up more of an on-ramp into cycling for a wider demographic, I'd expect more and more people to find that saddles aren't working for them.

> Shimano's hub gears need regular maintenance where traditional derailleur > setup will go on for thousands of miles with only basic maintenance. > Maintenance on a derailleur system is typically cleaning (fairy liquid is > fine) and using cheap lubrication that can be bought for a few > pounds/dollars will suffice in most cases.

Ordinary consumers aren't up to even basic maintenance - cars went through the very same progression, in the '50s or '60s it was normal for a car to require basic maintenance by its owner. Low-maintenance hub gears will continue to get cheaper (an expensive model like the Rohloff already goes for thousands of kms without maintenance) and commuter bikes are increasingly switching. I'm sure that racing bikes for enthusiasts will use derailleurs for many years to come, but for commuters who just want to get to work the hub gears are already taking over.

<comment><USER34> > Depends on the recumbent. Mine (an Azub Six) isn't - I commute through > London on it every day. And cities are (slowly) getting better at keeping > traffic out of the way.

I cycle through through and around traffic. I don't keep myself out of traffic I am part of it.

I personally hate being in a cycle lane, because I know that many other cyclists normally aren't paying attention, don't know how to ride (they never check over the shoulder, poor handling skills etc). Also separating cars from cyclists just make car drivers less aware that cyclists exist. Not everywhere has cycle lanes.

Then again I don't live in London which has to be now the worst city in the UK.

> How so? You have to take a different line through corners, but you turn > later (front wheel is further back) so it's if anything easier to go through > the kind of right-angle turns that are expected in cities.

Handling isn't just about going round corners. I can track stand at lights, ride down stairs and going round a 90 degree bend is easy. I can almost turn in the bicycles own circle on my old mountain bike. If I need to bail of the bike, I can just drop the bike and roll off.

> That's the opposite of my experience - upright bikes put so much weight on > the wrists and, uh, taint, that they simply can't be pleasant for any length > of time (particularly for those of us of an, ah, less athletic physique). A > certain proportion of the population is able to sit comfortably on a > traditional bike saddle, but many people aren't. As scooters and e-bikes > open up more of an on-ramp into cycling for a wider demographic, I'd expect > more and more people to find that saddles aren't working for them.

You need to get the right saddle and yeh if you try riding 60 odd miles on a new saddle and you don't cycle regularly you are going to have a bad time. It would be like trying to run a marathon in a pair of new trainers, not a good idea. As for cycling putting pressure on wrists or too much weight on your arse then the bike probably isn't the right size.

As for the wider demographic. I don care what they do. There was a fad in the late 90s early 2000s for mountain bikes, mountain bikes are rubbish on road unless you kit them out with touring tyres, there is simply too much road drag. Also suspension looks flashy but is pointless on a tarmac road.

A lot of people follow fads. I don't.

> Ordinary consumers aren't up to even basic maintenance - cars went through > the very same progression, in the '50s or '60s it was normal for a car to > require basic maintenance by its owner. Low-maintenance hub gears will > continue to get cheaper (an expensive model like the Rohloff already goes > for thousands of kms without maintenance) and commuter bikes are > increasingly switching. I'm sure that racing bikes for enthusiasts will use > derailleurs for many years to come, but for commuters who just want to get > to work the hub gears are already taking over.

It is still simpler to repair derailleur setup than any hub. Any bike ship can fix your derailleur gears (unless it is a BMX shop). I doubt the same is true about hubs. Also derailleur gears will work still without maintenance, almost none for years on end. Modern 8 or 9 speed chain is very reliable.

Hubs normally require specialised tooling parts and are always more prone to failure due to the nature of a hub. The only hubs that do work well are the really old sturmy archer hubs because they are again much more mechanically simple than anything else.

<comment><USER36> _There was a fad in the late 90s early 2000s for mountain bikes, mountain bikes are rubbish on road unless you kit them out with touring tyres, there is simply too much road drag. Also suspension looks flashy but is pointless on a tarmac road._

A rear suspension is stupid on any road better than cobblestone, but the shocked front fork on a hardtail is nice in many situations. If the commute is less than five miles or so, wider tires won't hurt anyone. I agree that I don't want knobby tires on the road, but it's easy to change tires. (All mountain bikes have easier-to-change tires than several road bikes I've serviced.)

<comment><USER34> On even gravel tracks having wider tyres will help you more than a front shock. Cobblestone or similar is easy to ride on a racing bike, a shock is totally unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "The quality of roads is relevant, but not really the answer. Bicycles can be ridden on dirt roads or sidewalks"

Bicycles can only be ridden safely on rough surfaces with good pneumatic tyres. As for the sidewalks, 1) their quality was also very variable, 2) they didn't offer a continuous path anywhere unless you only wanted to cycle around a single block (often not even then), 3) they were full of pedestrians trying to avoid the rough, filthy road surface, 4) hopping on and off kerbs is not a good idea without pneumatic tyres and a lightweight frame (early bicycles were ponderous and heavy).

The description of the technical progression needed to make the bicycle practical is fine, but the author seems to need to dismiss all previous thought on bicycles simply to justify their argument. Firstly, that's not a motivation I admire, secondly the dismissal of those obstacles and the other cited disincentives is just wrong: those obstacles were definitely there, something technical and social progress had to address before a bicycle was a reasonable and useful idea.

</comment><comment><USER38> That's an interesting piece, which reminded me of another interesting article on the wheelbarrow that surfaced on HN as well some time ago:

[https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese- wheelbar...](https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese- wheelbarrow.html)

</comment><comment><USER39> I think the article misses:

1) Those 'hypotheses' seem like a perfectly good starting point for a very long list of cumulative reasons as to "Why not to get a bike".

2) It doesn't separate bicycle 'the tool' from bicycle 'the toy'. All those original machines were fashionable playthings for the wealthy. Bicycles the tool took off they were demonstrably better than walking (which is then the combination of improved tech and reduced cost overtook walking and alternative transports)

</comment><comment><USER40> So it looks like there were attempts but they had fatal design flaws and technology (metallurgy) was immature.

One question raised is why didn't we see a trike come about before the bike?

It's more stable and propulsion via direct front pedal isn't as awkward as the front pedal bike.

<comment><USER41> While it's maybe surprising, have you ever tried riding something with a 1:1 drive ratio? There's a reason even bikes with a fixed gear still have gears...

Pedals connected directly to the front wheel would be truly awful for virtually all adult bicycle use cases.

<comment><USER42> Well, the obvious contender for that is the penny farthing. It's not _dreadful_ (it was good enough to be commercialised with vague success at least), but it's inconvenienced by the necessary size of the front wheel to make any progress, and the fact that you can't have a front-wheel brake as you just rotate over the top of the bicycle when applied.

<comment><USER41> Have you seen a human ride a penny farthing? I don't think dreadful is overstating it. Sure it made the most of available technology at the time, but one doesn't need to be expert in bikes to see why this design died.

Just getting on a Penny Farthing can be problematic, given it tries to compensate for 1:1 drive by using an enormous front wheel.

<comment><USER42> Yep, there's a bunch of late-Victorian enthusiasts who ride them around London every year: [https://pennyfarthingclub.com/](https://pennyfarthingclub.com/)

They have obvious faults of course, but they were around for 15-20 years, were better than their predecessors, and didn't kill off the concept of the bicycle in general to stop future development. That's enough to give them some credit at least!

<comment><USER43> I mean, people ride unicycles too. But there's a reason most don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The unicycle was invented shortly afterwards. Here's a patent from 1869, for an over-complicated unicycle with a treadle mechanism instead of pedals on cranks. [https://patents.google.com/patent/US87355](https://patents.google.com/patent/US87355)

Many of the objections about how complicated the bicycle is don't apply to the unicycle. The Romans could have made a perfectly good one out of wood with brass cranks. But maybe it was even less obvious than the bicycle that it was possible to ride.

<comment><USER36> If unicycles had come first, would bicycles have ever surpassed them?

<comment><USER45> I don't think so. I use both and there are use cases for both, but the bicycle is generally safer and faster.

<comment><USER46> What is the use case for a Unicycle?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The author briefly outlined the incredibly tortuous path of inventors adding every possible technology together over centuries to create a human-powered- vehicle that was even marginally safe and useful on the roads of their time, and then once they finally crack it, the author chalks it up to cultural and social factors. Trust me, as someone who tried to build a ride sharing service before the smartphone, it only seems "cultural and social" in hindsight. Its not. There are a million tiny technological barriers that nobody remembers.

</comment><comment><USER48> Bicycle was useless without paved roads. Horse was much more convenient. I have personal anecdote about these issues. As a kid in 1967 I made 250 km bicycle trip in two days. My father was amazed: "How this is possible? I made exactly the same trip in 1929 also in two days, but I had a very good horse galloping half the time." We were both camping at the same forest at halfway point too..

<comment><USER49> I think it's less about the road quality and more about pneumatic tires. Same for cars. Would you rather drive a car on a dirt road with modern tires, or on a highway, directly on metal rims? The answer seems obvious to me...

<comment><USER48> You do not understand. These was no road perse in 1929, just two deep grooves for carriages and cars. It was impossible to bike on that. The first coast-to- coast american biked on railroad tracks. They were bumpy obviously but evidently much better than any roads.

<comment><USER50> This is ridiculous. Bicycles were near 50 years old by 1930. There was a ton of riding done before nicely paved roads were everywhere. The Tour De France is happening right now, it was first run in 1903 and covered 1500 miles, with riders doing up to 250 miles in one day.

Bicycles do fine on dirt roads & trails, pavement is absolutely not required. Bicycles have adapted to better roads over time but they never required glass smooth modern paved roads.

<comment><USER48> Horse-and-carriage type roads were very particular. The middle was very soft and the grooves were quite narrow. You just cannot see them anywhere nowadays. I bicycled from Finland to Yugoslavia in 1971 often trying to ride on those kind of roads. Occasionally I used old Roman Empire roads. They were "paved" but made of big slippery plates and even more difficult to ride on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> The arguments given all seem reasonably convincing.

The interesting thing is the kind of argument this blog and some here engage in. That is, one looks at argument X, decides it's not convincing and then pushes argument Y.

It's sort of a single-cause fallacy. Maybe bad roads weren't enough but they contributed. Maybe technological limitations weren't enough but they contributed, etc.

The problem is that combining factors are hard to see and hard to argue for. A factor here (a meta-factor, haha), modeling how all the different factors came together or didn't come together is hard. You'd need a historical look at how the bicycle was invented and a look at how at how could have been invented earlier but wasn't. This goes into how people think, how people design machines, how people allocate resources, etc. Which is to say we'll likely never know how the associated factor contributed and how much.

But we can tell that the vagueness of the situation doesn't stop people arguing.

</comment><comment><USER52> > I don't think horses explain it either. A bicycle, from what I've read, was > cheaper to buy than a horse, and it was certainly cheaper to maintain (if > nothing else, you don't have to feed a bicycle).

I don't think this is so simple. A horse can haul a lot more than a human can. How much human bicycle power is equal to one horse power?

<comment><USER53> An average human can peak above 1HP for short amounts of time (think sprinting). They definitely cannot maintain that. I think the Horse Power was defined at a sustainable rate for the horse.

1 HP = 746 watts and most people on a bike would cruise in 100-250 watts range. The top cyclists can maintain more like 400 watts

[https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/blog/2018/06/how-does- your-...](https://www.cyclinganalytics.com/blog/2018/06/how-does-your-cycling- power-output-compare)

<comment><USER54> A horse peaks around 15+ horsepower depending on age and breed they can significantly exceed it. They also generally average above 1HP for long stretches.

1hp is at best one measure of the average consistent power output of an average horse doing a full day of work every day for months. Or about the equivalent of a person doing 0.05 to 0.1 hp.

<comment><USER55> It all comes from Watt trying to calculate how to sell his machines to the owners of the mines, who depended before on ponies:

[http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/103_fall2003.web.dir/Chris_Peter...](http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/103_fall2003.web.dir/Chris_Peterson/horsepowerandtorque.htm)

"Watt was working with ponies lifting coal at a coal mine, and he wanted a way to talk about the power available from one of these animals. He found that, on average, a mine pony could do 22,000 foot-pounds of work in a minute. He then increased that number by 50 percent and pegged the measurement of horsepower at 33,000 foot-pounds of work in one minute."

"A horse exerting 1 horsepower can raise 330 pounds of coal 100 feet in a minute"

[https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a26074/hors...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/animals/a26074/horsepower- explainer/)

"his business partner Matthew Boulton standardized the figure at 33,000.

The number wasn't quite scientific: Watt looked for horses at peak performance, and for his purposes, it didn't truly matter how accurate his measurement of a horse's power was as long as it was close enough to be believable. Much like his engine, the metric struck."

<comment><USER54> Yea, it was a ballpark estimate not really a major study.

[https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1466&...](https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1466&context=bulletin)

Shows several other HP estimates for horses at up to 1.5 HP per hours and even one at 125lb * 3mph over 6 hours = 1 hp. Also includes a peak from a contest at 14.88 HP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Innovation takes an unreasonably twisty path. An even more stark example: suitcases with wheels. If you have the technology to build a siege engine or a crossbow, then surely you can build a suitcase with wheels. And yet they post- date the Saturn V rocket. How reasonable is that?

<comment><USER57> Why would you need a suitcase with wheels when you have a porter who carries your cases for you? Remember that if you could afford to fly in the sixties, you could easily afford it to have someone else deal with your luggage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> If you are building a startup, knowing how answer to the "Why now?" question is quite important, this article might be a good inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER59> Why did we wait so long for the elevator? Circular dependency and incentive. Combining a ratchet with a pulley is incredibly simple and both have been around since the ancient Greeks. But with a few exceptions, it didn't make sense to build buildings big enough to need elevators. I mean, how would you get up and down the buildings? Answer: an elevator... but it didn't exist yet... hence, nobody could imagine how to get up and down tall buildings efficiently. That, and steel-framed buildings that could support themselves over 10 or so floors didn't come into vogue until after the renaissance.

<comment><USER60> There's about five centuries in there between the renaissance and steel-framed buildings!

But of course cranes existed (on building sites, and in factories) since approximately the day after we invented the rope. But an elevator safe and reliable enough to make rich people buy an apartment above the 2nd floor? And cities dense enough that they were tempted to do so? Those took longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I think the post downplays the value of a horse. Horses are incredible. Not only do they provide transport that is even better than bicycle (you don't have to pedal, and they can go over almost any terrain) but they also provide labor. Indeed, horses actually generate a net surplus of labor above the labor required to grow food to feed them. That is, a farmer with a horse can grow far more food than a farmer without a horse, even after all the food the horse eats.

If I could safely and legally keep a horse in front of my house and office I would totally get rid of my bike.

<comment><USER62> Then I hope you would clean up it's poo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Great article, but I would like to point out a common misconception regarding mechanical advantage that featured in the article. Mechanical advantage is not completely determined by the gear ratio. You also have to take into account crank length and the wheel size. Total mechanical advantage is determined by these three factors together. See [https://sheldonbrown.com/gain.html](https://sheldonbrown.com/gain.html)

</comment><comment><USER64> Great article. Yes is amazing how humans are often blind to obvious (with hindsight) and relatively simple innovative ideas. Another good example of this is the - wheeled suitcase - not invented till 1970!! [http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/10/04/wheeled.luggage.ann...](http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/10/04/wheeled.luggage.anniversary/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER65> There was still active research into why bicycles are stable as recently as 2011. Here's a talk about that research: [https://youtu.be/YdtE3aIUhbU](https://youtu.be/YdtE3aIUhbU)

If the bicycle was some sort of "obvious" machine, people wouldn't still be studying the basic stability mechanics 200 years later. Very few things are as simple as they seem. Even levers can get a bit complicated.

</comment><comment><USER66> > Yet it was a simple mechanical invention. It would seem to require no > brilliant inventive insight, and certainly no scientific background.

That's a seriously weak premise. A bicycle is more than a metal rod with wheels; it needs a good steering mechanism and driving mechanism, not to mention ergonomic seating mechanism. Humans have certainly had a lot of things in their blind spot which makes us wonder why it took so long, but bicycle isn't one of them. Eraser-butt-pencil, may be. Bicycle, certainly not.

Also, the sheer number of crazy models that happened in its evolution is a testament to the fact that a bicycle is anything but intuitive. Remember, it was an age where mechanical devices was a rage. It was sort of like the AI-ML of that era. There was a lot of activity by people of varying levels of expertise - from tinkerers to people who knew what they were doing to people who thought they knew what they were doing. Despite this it took that long.

So its absurd to start off with the said premise.

Points like material and manufacturing process are red herring IMO. This argument is backwards. What needed to be made was a prototype. The things mentioned would follow naturally. No one had to invent a "professional grade" machine at the word go. An example from software: HLL were not invented first and then OS were written in it, but OS were written first, and in the process people realized HLL would be more productive, and OS were rewritten in them.

The conclusion about cultural and economic factors also seems unconvincing. The only plausible reason could be the clout of horse carriage mafia or something like that which influenced the powers that be and stifled rival technologies.

</comment><comment><USER67> If you don't already have good roads, then you need a very rugged and durable bike, which wasn't possible at a reasonable price with the materials and tools available at the time. Even with today's technology, a cheap "mountain bike" from Walmart would be unrideable after just a day or two of true off-road use.

</comment><comment><USER68> Prague museum of technology has a huge collection of early bicycles. Side by siders, rod drive, front wheel drive, bamboo...

</comment><comment><USER69> By the way, push bikes (i.e. the hobby horse) are very common among toddler and preschool age children in my circles. I don't see why a wooden version of this couldn't have been common much earlier than 1817. Wood is sufficient for its construction, although I do suppose a metal bearing would be superior.

<comment><USER36> At the very least it would be a fun way to descend steep hills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> >In light of this, I think the deepest explanation is in general economic and cultural factors.

Indeed, with enough people with enough spare wealth, you can have significant progress even when technology remains flat.

There is an immense difference between the Greek dark age and classical Athens, but not technologically. And intellectually curious people can figure out how to fly just using paper.[1]

Apparently, the first iteration of the bike in the early 1800s was a briefly popular toy: the very epitome of unguided discovery is play. Only later was it made practical by inventors working from that exiting idea.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgolfier_brothers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgolfier_brothers)

</comment><comment><USER71> _> In light of this, I think the deepest explanation is in general economic and cultural factors. Regarding economic factors, it seems that there needs to be a certain level of surplus to support the culture-wide research and development effort that creates inventions. _

A related concept is the _" adjacent possible"_ coined by Steven Johnson:

[https://www.google.com/search?q="adjacent+possible"+steven+j...](https://www.google.com/search?q="adjacent+possible"+steven+johnson)

(Linked a google search query because many "adjacent possible" articles are behind a paywall and can't tell which will be visible to you.)

</comment><comment><USER72> If i had to point to a specific _technical_ factor, it's pneumatic tires.

<comment><USER73> I've, in some past article linked on (I think) HN read the answer to this very question as advanced, efficient bearings (so, the ability to produce finely accurate small metal objects).

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I'd say horses are the most important factor here, as why would anyone bother with bad roads and easy to break (due to the lack of tech) machine when horses and donkeys were so much superior way of transportation

</comment><comment><USER75> When the materials and manufacturing options (MMO) are dodgy and limited, you have to come up with almost a perfect design to take advantage of what's available. There's less room for error.

When MMO got better, you could get a lot "wrong" and still have a useful device.

In other words, early on you have _two_ obstacles: MMO and finding a good enough design. As time goes on and MMO improves you only have one obstacle: design, meaning progress is faster or at least shows enough promise to motivate further experiments.

</comment><comment><USER76> "Bicycles can be ridden on dirt roads or sidewalks (although the latter led to run-ins with pedestrians and made bicycles unpopular among the public at first)."

Little has changed.

</comment><comment><USER77> I really enjoyed the markup/css styling on this piece. While the content is certainly up for debate, it was presented in a very visually clear and informative manner.

<comment><USER78> Thank you! I have actually spent a good amount of time getting the image layout just right

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I think the author is trying too hard to think outside the box here. Sometimes the answer is the obvious answer, inside the box, whether you want it or not.

</comment><comment><USER80> This seems to assume that the current bicycle design is obvious and inevitable, but that is not true. The bicycle went through a lot of different designs before we got the "safety bicycle" in the 1880s. Here is a small video showing some previous designs [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI6lgUlEUFU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI6lgUlEUFU)

</comment><comment><USER81> Its a lovely article, I much enjoyed reading it. I now think of it as part of a long list of scattered around publications that tried to describe the same process. Each with their own flower bed of opinions I don´t agree with and soiled with technical misconceptions.

Having red a good number of patents and an interest in the innovation process I had to giggle a bit how the 100 year old design was described as THE bicycle. As if we've reached the final destination. Iḿ sure they thought the same about the bone breaker and the face smasher designs long after better ones were made.

We use to have a local bicycle shop ran by a guy who financially really didn't need to, it was his passion (and rumor had it it that he did it to get away from his wife.) I went there one day to ask him why he only sold normal bikes, you have a huge store but all the bikes are pretty much the same? He explained that he use to have 1 or 2 special designs but that people looking to buy a bicycle changed their behavior from circling the shop 2 or 3 times then buying something to making half a lap then standing there gazing at that "weird" bike for a minute... and then they just left! He apparently put a good bit of thought into it since the loss of sales didn't bother him. His eventual decision was that he didn't want to disrupt peoples train of thought. They are here to look for a new bike, I should facilitate that to the best of my abilities.

Most bicycle mods or improvements are not useful but they are all weird to people. I invented 2 myself that increase efficiency and the quality of the work out by a truly unbelievable amount. The process was wonderful, I made rusty old clunkers that felt like high end bikes. While there was some encouragement from cycling enthusiasts I didn't care much for other peoples opinions, the manufacturing and marketing was already boring to me but the moaning was truly something else. The funniest part was when I left a rusty old test bike parked among hundreds of other bikes, something I never did, then someone let the air out of both tires. It was poetry to me, I wasn't even mad. How dare I have something weird on my bike.

more on the normality enforcement: [https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/59406/why- are-r...](https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/59406/why-are- recumbent-bicycles-and-velomobiles-illegal-in-uci-bicycle-racing)

<comment> j-conn Would love to hear more about your mods! Have any photos? Just curious as a layman who rides one nearly every day.

<comment><USER81> If I ever chose to do something commercial it will be a race against the replicators. Ideally they only take notice when a concept takes off. You could even get the patents?

Not to offend you at all but its an interesting cultural phenomenon to just ask for the fruits of ones labor when it comes to innovation. If you would bring a large bag of money to the conversation I would still be reluctant to share. I'm not at all sure what role I could play in manufacturing.

It sort of reveals what happens with most inventions from raw to polished. I probably wont produce or share anything. There must be millions of iterations of this formula ranging from not very good to stuff that blows the mind. All taken to the grave.

I suppose the inventor catch 22 joke is that one could potentially make a lot of money with ideas if one had the funds to gamble. Inventors are of course dreamers so don't expect anything to happen. We are all missing out on much more than we could possibly imagine.

In all fairness, if you look at what is out there my ideas do not make for a much better vehicle. If you simply add an aerodynamic body to a recumbent bicycle then put some electrical assist on it there is very little need for further efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> > First, the correct design was not obvious. For centuries, progress was > stalled because inventors were all trying to create multi-person four- > wheeled carriages, rather than single-person two-wheeled vehicles. It's > unclear why this was.

In the 1800, most people were poor, and any transportation should be aimed for people with some level of wealth, who would not like to labor to drive themselves around.

</comment><comment><USER83> It takes a while to convince oneself that a bicycle actually works, i.e. is stable and does not fall over. Perhaps that is the reason.

</comment><comment><USER84> My answer to this question these days is: "What good is a bycicle if there is nothing you can ride it on?" Sure bycicles may be hard to engineer, but the environment in which a bycicle could be useful only existed in a select few places on earth.

I think the author is to quick to dismiss road quality as a primary issue.

</comment><comment><USER85> It's funny that what I expected this article to be is to explain the seemingly rising interested in bicycle as an urban transport _today_

I don't have any data, but I definitely feel a trend for moving to more compact and energy efficient personal vehicles and I really wish it gathers more and more momentum.

</comment><comment> a0-prw I think he underestimates the horse. If you live in a mostly horse and human powered society where the infrastructure to support your means of transport is ubiquitous (ie, stables, smiths, feed supply, etc), there would be zero reason to consider a clumsy first iteration of the bicycle as promising.

</comment><comment><USER86> I don't think the modern two wheeled in-line design is an obvious starting point or design iteration. It's not obviously user friendly either. Proof: 90% of the people reading this thread probably had to be "taught" how to ride a two wheeled bicycle.

<comment><USER36> This might be a function of age and development? I couldn't learn to bicycle at the "proper" age. (7? 9? I don't know exactly when it was but I could tell my parents were frustrated.) I just couldn't do it. Later as a teenager I tried it and it was easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER87> Another interesting invention we had to wait so long is ski/snowboard.

Modern ski tools were commercially available after 1970s and some of them aren't affordable until late 1990s: Steel edge, binding with release system, polyethylene sole, fluorine wax and curving ski.

</comment><comment><USER88> Anyone interested in the evolution of bicycle technology who is also in the bay area should visit the Marin Museum of Bicycling and Mountain Biking Hall of Fame: [https://mmbhof.org/](https://mmbhof.org/)

</comment><comment><USER89> In the frame of my PhD defense talk I once created a

        Rough timeline for the development of the bicycle:

[https://img42.com/sAN_u](https://img42.com/sAN_u)

</comment><comment><USER29> Bicycle chains are really complicated and have tons of moving parts.

<comment><USER90> Bicycle chains are pretty complicated, but steam powered devices (mills, saws, etc) were using flat leather belts for decades, and rope drive existed as well. Many modern bicycles come with belt drives. Also periodically people produce shaft drive bicycles which require a bit more machining, but have few moving parts and are quite reliable.

<comment><USER27> Leather belt drives were used for early motorcycles (1890s-1910s) even while the roller-chain was already in wide use for bicycles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> the Ancient Greeks and Romans could have attached paddles to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile) and basically get something like that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddle_steamer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paddle_steamer)

That is why i wondering what should i attach to what to get a [preferably cold] fusion :)

</comment><comment><USER92> I'd probably ask the same about self-balancing electric transportation.

If the original Segway was more like a Uniscoot Hovercycle[1] I could see it selling quite a lot more.

</comment><comment><USER93> Not really: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zHHPCAao4k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zHHPCAao4k)

<comment><USER94> could there be any simpler explanations like a modern renovation of the temple where this was added?

are there other recorded appearances of this modern-looking but very-early bicycle in the region? why was there a gap in its existence until it was re- introduced in the 20th century?

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Because asphalt/concrete roads have only been around since 1920s. Biking on dirt or gravel isn't fun, horses do better on such surfaces.

</comment><comment><USER96> Bicycles were one of the first items that an individual acquired through disposable income.

</comment><comment><USER97> Another good question in similar Spirit, why did we wait so long for wheels on suitcases?

</comment><comment><USER98> The appropriate metal and quality of roads seem like the biggest factors to me.

</comment><comment><USER99> Why are we waiting so long for cheap and everywhere electric bikes?

</comment><comment><USER100> Because without an 18 speed bike you might as well be walking.

</comment><comment><USER101> while the premise of this entire article makes no sense, it is full of interesting history of the bicycle

</comment><comment><USER102> It's always obvious after the fact

</comment><comment><USER49> Pneumatic rubber tires

</comment><comment><USER103> I'm pretty sure this author is trolling the reader.

</comment><comment><USER104> 1\. Wheel technology: Hard tires instead of pneumatic tires are absolutely horrendous, especially on any vehicle without suspension. Wheel technology of the time usually consisted of solid wood or wood spoked tire with an iron/steel rim, it is heavy as balls and you have garbage traction.

2\. Gearing: You need a reliable chain and reliable gears to get reasonable speeds out of anything with a wheel under a 4 foot diameter. While such technology did exist, it was similarly heavy, required constant maintenance and lubrication, and is prone to jumping a tooth and falling off. Without being able to change gears you got a single gear ratio which makes anything but flat terrain garbage. Also like a fixy you can't stop pedaling.

3\. Material science: Available materials where much shittier and far more expensive which not only made the bikes easier to damage and more prone to flexing and warping, but it also made a bike even heavier than it already was. The labor costs of making tube steel is also pretty damn high as it required skilled labor and additional tools and modern welding didn't exist to attach two pieces of pipe together without weaker flat brackets at rivets or pins.

4\. Storage and hauling capabilities: Bikes, especially really heavy bikes and fixys, can't hold a whole lot, due to both space and weight limitations. Throw an extra 50 pounds on your bike and go up some of the same hills as usual and you will be whipped. People didn't just travel 20+ miles to have a cup of tea on a whim, if you are going that far or farther you are going to be bringing supplies or goods, and if you are carrying more than just a few pounds it would be easier to walk.

5\. Maintenance: Without ball bearings you need to constantly oil your bearings, which also means bringing oil with you. Drive chains are not standard and have to be built, repaired, and fitted on a custom basis and thanks to substandard materials and a flexible bike it would be prone to damage. Tires require a wheelwright to build and repair custom wheels fairly often for a luxury vehicle.

5: Fitness: People of those times weren't just a bunch of lard asses so walking 20 miles isn't a daunting or, in numerous cases these days, an impossibility. People might even run most of it at the time and get a faster average speed than a fixy bike anyways. If you can't walk, you definitely aren't biking that far.

6\. Terrain: While modern mountain bikers can go offroad, a fixy heavy bike with no tread/traction and hard wheels would not make it half way through a mud puddle and going down any incline offroad with one is a quick way to crashing and dieing. You would be forced to forge new paths for your bike since existing roads are mostly rutted dirt and mud over uneven ground and are also already occupying the most convenient paths.

The only places a bike in the past would be useful is a well maintained and paved stone or wooden road, however any place with flat wooden or stone roads is also going to have everything you would want within walking distance. And if you both lived in a place with such roads and also wanted to go a significant distance, there would be plenty of wagon traffic that you could simply ride on and stay relatively clean and rested rather than getting yourself covered with horse shit flying off your wheels or slipping in some horse shit and crashing your bike and ruining your extremely expensive clothes.

So basically, it is expensive as hell for an inferior product with marginal benefits in extreme edge case uses. Image having to pay $8,000 for a walmart bike, not gunna find many takers.

</comment><comment><USER105> Bad quality article.

There's a simple answer: ball bearings are relatively high tech that requires lots of innovation to come together at the same time.

<comment><USER22> Relatedly, my favorite example of "why didn't this get invented before" is wheeled luggage which (from what I've read) wasn't sold until 1989, even though the wheelbarrow (the same basic idea) has been around since prehistoric times.

IIRC, the reason it didn't appear sooner was a combination of a) getting reliable castors[1] for wheels that small is a non-trivial problem, and b) there wasn't much demand for it until the 80s.

[1] These things: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caster)

<comment><USER39> I got fascinated by this when I saw mention of this elsewhere. I'll agree that getting sturdy casters at a reasonable price was definitely part of the problem. As the linked wikipedia article reminded me, 20-odd years ago you'd still come across wonky casters on very expensive supermarket trolleys.

I think like the bicycle, it was just combination of factors preventing adoption - and once these had all moved, it was an obvious improvement.

e.g. The luggage you put the wheel on. My distant memories of family suitcases weren't rigid. Deformable cloth over a flexible outer band of some type. First ones with wheels I saw just had them on one bottom corner and a drag handle on the opposite top corner. Where f'in vile to use, as the whole thing would flex as you pulled (Toppling and attempting to break your wrist). They only really became 'good' when we got rigid luggage (carry on bag with extendable handle or rigid-shell case like Samsonite).

But another reason is that previously "You didn't have to move it yourself" In 'the golden age' a porter would put your trunk/case on a wheelbarrow for you. Then these transformed into 'rows of luggage carts in the airport'. Then as the decline continued 'rent-able luggage carts, you didn't have local-change for'... and at this point lack of service for your bag, crossed our ability to make wheeled luggage - and we all bought it.

<comment><USER60> But early wheeled luggage didn't have casters, just straight wheels. And those wheeled carts that you see old people dragging home from the supermarket (in some cities) existed long before -- metal frame, sagging canvas bag, works great.

There are lots of other factors though. One was buildings with lots of smooth floors & no stairs, which IIRC was partly about designing to be wheelchair- friendly, and partly about luggage carts.

Another as you say was flying becoming less of an elite thing -- the private jet people today sure as hell don't muscle their own luggage anywhere, so theirs just has to look good in the hotel room.

Another was just savvy marketing: again IIRC, the breakthrough came from marketing them heavily to pilots first, cool people in smart uniforms (who did not have porters) breezing along with smart leather bags. Precisely to break the image of old people dragging their potatoes home.

<comment><USER39> I agree with every single one of those points.

Other thing I'd meant to mention, was that the territory of "wheeled luggage" has expanded. Previously maybe at an airport you'd haul your luggage to a car at the kerb that will take you to your destination.

Modern airport usually has some public transport that takes you into town, and from there you get further transport to where you wish to go. i.e. Having your luggage be less of a burden opens up your choices.

I live in a university town with a lot of foreign students. It's now entirely normal for me to see one 'herding' (for want of a better word) a flock of cases quite successfully down the pavement infront of me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> Why did we wait so long after the modern bicycle to see it as transportation rather than recreation? Awareness of climate change maybe? It seems that a) bicycles were not primary transportation even before cars, and b) the push to replace cars with bikes could have happened at any point, even before cars took off. So why now?

<comment><USER73> Bicycles seem really expensive to me, relative to cars, considering how much simpler they are and how much less total material's involved. Plus they're a whole lot easier to ship. Not TCO, sure, but sheer cost of the manufactured object at retail. And on the cheaper end they often barely work correctly at all anyway, and all of them seem to require a lot more maintenance than a car, per hour of use or (especially, by long shot) per KM travelled. I assume these are economy of scale issues that may be sorted out if bicycle use grows significantly—though I'm not sure about the reliability.

<comment><USER107> i think this is off base. Don't forget the cost to own a car with depreciation, insurance, fuel, maintenance etc etc. Not even mentioning the cost of infrastructure required to drive said car.

I don't recommend it, but you can buy a bike from Walmart for $78.

<comment><USER73> I'm from the middle of the US so all my experience is with $200 and cheaper bicycles (maybe $300 adjusted for inflation) since I'm not in the racing "scene" and bike commuting's infeasible outside very small areas (though I was able to, and did, do it for a while), but bikes never seem to quite work right—one set of brakes keeps slipping no matter how many times you fix it, a couple gears that you just _cannot_ get to hold, tires lose enough air every 48 hours you have to add more to ride yet don't seem to actually have a leak and anyway you changed them once (and god is _that_ a pain) and they still do it, chain keeps getting loose, that kind of thing. The best bicycle I've used I'd have raised hell and tried to return it under lemon laws if it were a car and had that many little problems. Meanwhile $300 is still, what, 1/50th the cost of an entry level new car? That's why it seems high. It seems like you should be able to get 50 _very good and reliable_ bicycles for the same cost as a car. Not 50 that suck. There seem to be improved bits of hardware that fix some of the problems but then you're talking more like 1/20 of an entry level car, which, yikes.

<comment><USER107> I'm fortunate to have a bicycle Co-op in my city. It's a do it yourself workshop to fix your bike and upgrade parts when the time comes. The staff are volunteers and the bikes they sell are all donated. Great tuned up second hand bikes can be purchased for $50. I enjoy using top of the line 1990s technology in my commuter bikes which can be had for a fraction for the price of new bikes.

We are also lucky to have youtube with lots of tutorials which I wish I had when I was first learning.

I agree the relative maintenance of cars is much lower, but I equate the time it takes to clean my chain to be the same as stopping to get fuel for my car.

I'm not against cars, I just feel the cost of ownership is underestimated.

<comment><USER108> Cost of ownership is nuts. My car basically just sits, but I have to pay $1000 a year just to keep it legal. My bike was $50. And that was it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: HN Showcase v2 - browse "Show HN" posts visually - <AUTHOR> http://www.hnshowcase.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Last summer, I wrote HN Showcase to help the community browse "Show HN" posts. Over the past few months I've received a lot of awesome feedback. I spent the past few days polishing the project and added new features. Here are the big changes in v2: more polished look, infinite scrolling instead of paging, search, share individual projects, and performance improvements. Feedback welcome!

<comment><USER2> Awesome! But I think I like the old layout better due to the darker contrast between the information header/footer and the thumbnail- stands out more, easier to distinguish. Infinite scroll is a nice addition :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The original darker theme was intended to make the thumbnails stand out, but I didn't know if people found it useful. Once I get some more feedback for this version, I may tone down the brightness for the next update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Really nice idea. I never used V1 but looking at the screenshot I think the darker colours are nicer. If it's not too much trouble maybe you can add a Dark/Light Theme option, like arstechnica.com for example.

Great job nonethless :)

</comment><comment><USER4> I really like the redesign. I've been a user of your site since it launched and enjoy visually browsing Show HN posts. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER5> Much better, the old layout always seemed a bit "broken", thanks.

</comment><comment><USER6> never saw the v1 but i love this. thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Here's a screenshot of the previous version: <http://i.imgur.com/PeGXp.png>

<comment><USER6> i agree then - infinite scroll is much more of a hook. seeing all those page numbers would overwhelm/disengage folks like me.</comment></comment></comment>


Sunil Tripathi Update: Body found in waters off Rhode Island park - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57581387-504083/sunil-tripathi-update-body-found-in-waters-off-rhode-island-park-idd-as-brown-university-student-official-says/

<comment><USER2> Awful, I feel really bad for his family. First he goes missing, then he's suspected (by mob decision) of being a bomber/terrorist, and then they find his body. What a nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ugh. This makes me really sad. I originally believed the "reports" and even reposted, but within a minute I slapped myself upside the head and deleted that post. I'm glad I did... I would feel even worse if I hadn't. Of course, I don't know whether the reddit witchunt has contributed to his death: he had been missing for two weeks prior.

I don't feel anywhere near as terrible as his parents will however.

:(</comment>