Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? (2019)

https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-bicycle

by onychomys • 2 years ago

204 238 2 years ago

agumonkey2• 2 years ago

Since I started commuting by bike, I really thought that it would never work without flat roads. The value is in keeping kinetic energy as long as possible. Outside of flattened path in the wild it quickly becomes a burden. Today i could ride a primitive wooden wheel bike.

gruez• 2 years ago

Since I started commuting by bike, I really thought that it would never work without flat roads.

You never rode on dirt roads before? Sure, it's not as efficient as on pavement and you can't use road tires, but it's still much more efficient than walking.

Closi2• 2 years ago

Assume it’s different riding a modern bike with good bearings, brakes, spokes and inflated tires to a wooden-wheel peg bike.

WalterBright3• 2 years ago

I suspect that nobody thought of a 2 wheel design because nobody thought it would be stable. The hinge between the front and back wheel is crucial. Even today, few bicyclists understand how a bicycle is able to turn and remain upright.

None of the early designs seemed to have any brakes, making them quite impractical.

Without modern steel and machined parts, a bicycle of wood and iron would simply be too heavy.

digdugdirk• 2 years ago

This.

Also, horses are the original self-driving transportation, and anyone with the means to buy some newfangled technology like the early bicycle. It's been a hundred years and we're still not better in that regard than the finest of equine hybrid technology, so can you imagine the landed gentry giving that up to... Exert themselves to travel to town?

(Queue 'bicycle as feminist icon' comments below)

pimlottc• 2 years ago

That should be “cue”

rob742• 2 years ago

Yup... before the industrial revolution, those who could have theoretically afforded a bicycle (and had a need to transport only themselves to somewhere else) could also afford a horse, while all the others not only couldn't afford a bicycle, but also had no need for one. Peasants barely left their village, and if they did, it was to deliver some produce, either to their landlord or to the market, and for that a bicycle wouldn't have helped...

bawolff• 2 years ago

landed gentry giving that up to... Exert themselves to travel to town?

Landed gentry often love showing off their wealth in ecentric ways, so yes i could imagine that.

fbdab103• 2 years ago

Maybe there would have been an opportunity for a three-wheel recumbent bike to be developed first? Seems like a lot of easier engineering if you can take stability as a given and just worry about the driver supplying direction and power.

saalweachter2• 2 years ago

Eh, doesn't work well with the factors that led to the penny-farthing.

The penny-farthing was a direct drive on the front wheel - no chain. It had you positioned on top of the wheel to get as much traction as possible.

A primitive recumbent trike would tend towards the same design, like a child's trike, with no chain and a direct drive on the front wheel.

And because you'd get terrible traction, with so little weight, you'd be dead in the water until the machining was available to engineer a chain system to connect pedals in front of the cyclist with wheels underneath. I don't think there's any penny-and-two-farthings intermediate to make the recumbent trike work before that.

loeg4• 2 years ago

None of the early designs seemed to have any brakes, making them quite impractical.

None of them were freehub designs, so you could always backpedal to slow down. It's definitely more work than a real brake, but it's not nothing.

NegativeLatency3• 2 years ago

If they even had pedals

giraffe_lady• 2 years ago

Can't rule out the possibility that victorians were whipping sick skids. My fixie brothers & sisters through time.

umanwizard2• 2 years ago

Even today, few bicyclists understand how a bicycle is able to turn and remain upright.

I’d go so far as to say no cyclist understands. AFAIK there’s no simple physical explanation.

Smoosh• 2 years ago

Fortnine recently made a video (motorcycles, but still applicable) which I think aids in understanding the issues and debunks some incorrect ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSZiKrtJ7Y0

beryilma• 2 years ago

Motorcycles and bicycles turn with the same principle: countersteering.

When I started riding motorcycles, I bought a well-known motorcycling book. It had a whole chapter on countersteering because there are even today many seasoned motorcyclists who don't believe or understand that you turn using countersteering.

abdullahkhalids2• 2 years ago

Here is a simple simulation of a bicycle's stability [1]. The simulation more or less predicts what happens in real life, so we do understand why bicycles are stable.

As you can see from the simulation, this is a multibody dynamics problem. The bicycle and human have lots of moving parts, and as they move there are forces in 3D [2] amongst them. So there can't really be a simplified, short and mostly complete English explanation (like for why planets go around the sun). That doesn't mean we can't predict.

[1] https://www.comsol.com/blogs/simulating-the-motion-of-a-self...

[2] i.e. you can't find a 2D plane in which all forces act.

rob742• 2 years ago

It's also amazing how stable a bicycle is, that it allows you to steer with one hand or even "look ma, no hands". I only came to appreciate that after I started riding e-scooters - those are very hard to control if you don't keep both hands on the handlebars, and taking both hands off will probably throw you off instantly.

dessimus• 2 years ago

Probably on the same percentile as the number of people that understand how the Otto cycle works to power their car, or how differentials in the axles function to apply said power to the wheels through turns, etc.

Understanding the physics is not a requirement to operate the vehicle.

WalterBright3• 2 years ago

It is simple. A bike will be stable without a rider because if it tilts to the left, the front wheel will also tilt to the left (as the hinge is behind the center of gravity). This results in a left turn, and the centrifugal force of the turn will bring the bike back upright and straighten the wheel.

The rider turns the bike by moving the handle bars slightly in the opposite direction he wants to turn. Then the bike falls in the direction he wants to turn, and the handle bars are then rotated in that direction. To straighten out, the handle bars turn a little tighter, and the centrifugal force of the turn pushes the bike back upright.

_carbyau_• 2 years ago

Simple? No. But the universe is not a simple place.

Definitive explanation? Yes - to a significant degree of definitive. As with all science/engineering-understanding there are always further details but this we've got pretty well down at the macro level humans operate at.

A site beloved by HN to explain this: https://ciechanow.ski/bicycle/

A beautiful site, check out the archives for other explanations and animations of things too.

jmopp• 2 years ago

The bicycles that were made from wood and iron gave an extremely stiff ride and were called boneshakers.

Ekaros4• 2 years ago

At time when roads were not what they are these days. Lot of their improvement before cars became from bicycles.

soperj2• 2 years ago

People have made stable bike frames out of bamboo.

amelius• 2 years ago

Nobody would think walking is as stable as we know it is (try to put e.g. a Star Wars action figure in standing position on a table, it is not so easy and not very stable).

There's more to it than just Newtonian mechanics.

WalterBright3• 2 years ago

Edison invented the research and development laboratory as a business.

The Wright Bros invented the directed research and development program, where:

1. the problems were identified

2. each problem was solved as a separate effort

3. the solutions were combined into a final working project

This has been followed ever since. The race to the moon program is probably the finest example of its implementation.

otabdeveloper42• 2 years ago

The real answer is "ball bearings".

(The medieval wheel was powered by extreme amounts of lubrication.)

labster• 2 years ago

Access to rubber from the tropics also seems relevant.

tokai5• 2 years ago

Rubber is also not needed. Leather and springs will do the job.

https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05...

tokai5• 2 years ago

Ball bearings were invented after the bicycle. Belive it or not, but people on a budget would still get bikes without bearings up until the interwar period.

otabdeveloper42• 2 years ago

Every pre-modern wagon had a big old bucket of grease hung at the side of it. It was needed to keep the axle continuously lubricated. (Sayings about wheels and grease are preserved to this day.)

Theoretically, a two-wheeled transportation contraption could have been made, but having to carry the grease with you would make it pointless.

hx8• 2 years ago

Why didn't we make a mass manufactured consumer product before the Industrial Revolution?

* The Industrial Revolution increased the number of people with disposable income. The potential market for a new thing was seen as much larger post Industrial Revolution.

* Inventing was seen as a much more profitable venture with the possibility of manufacturing behind it. There was a wave of entrepreneurs on the latest hype cycle.

* Urbanization helped spread ideas faster. The trains helped connect distant people. Part of the marketing of bicycles is seeing people ride them on the street. Busier streets with more visitors only help spread the word.

* Previous levels of material sciences limited the quality of the bike

gabesullice• 2 years ago

the latest hype cycle I see what you did there

ctrw• 2 years ago

Yes imagine how well a cast iron bike would handle. Or a wooden one. There is a reason why even steel is not used any more in bike frames.

soperj2• 2 years ago

Steel is literally the most common used material in bike frames.

NegativeLatency3• 2 years ago

Steel is a great material for bike frames. Cheap, strong, fairly light when in tubular form.

Now if you’re trying to save every last ounce and someone else is paying for the bike, sure go carbon, but the vast majority of people are not even at the fitness level to really “need” a carbon bike.

Ma8ee• 2 years ago

Steel is very common, and there are many bicycles made mostly of wood (while not particularly common today).

domh• 2 years ago

It's my understanding that steel is one of the more repairable metals? Aluminium and carbon fibre can't be welded as easily (in the case of aluminium) or at all (in the case of carbon fibre).

Steel framed bicycles are good enough for the vast majority. I fear bike manufacturers are switching to less repairable materials and proprietary parts to increase profits.

gambiting2• 2 years ago

My grandma had a wooden bike that she rode to school, that was back in the 1950s Poland.

bigfudge• 2 years ago

Steel is less common, but not really for performance reasons. There are plenty of lovely steel bikes, and they are more durable and just as light. Feel is also nicer (although this slightly more subjective). Ali is just cheaper to manufacture.

comprev• 2 years ago

All my bikes are steel because I've cracked & snapped numerous frames over the years from riding them too hard. During my racing years (2005-2015) at least one rider would crack their frame at each race weekend!

sl-1• 2 years ago

Also, not enough standardization of measurements to make interchangeability to work. And another point is that shipping used to be too costly over anything but water --> whole production chain had to be quite localized.

throw0101b4• 2 years ago

Also, not enough standardization of measurements to make interchangeability to work.

A good book on increasing precision in history, The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World:

The rise of manufacturing could not have happened without an attention to precision. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in eighteenth-century England, standards of measurement were established, giving way to the development of machine tools—machines that make machines. Eventually, the application of precision tools and methods resulted in the creation and mass production of items from guns and glass to mirrors, lenses, and cameras—and eventually gave way to further breakthroughs, including gene splicing, microchips, and the Hadron Collider.
Simon Winchester takes us back to origins of the Industrial Age, to England where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. It was Thomas Jefferson who later exported their discoveries to the fledgling United States, setting the nation on its course to become a manufacturing titan. Winchester moves forward through time, to today’s cutting-edge developments occurring around the world, from America to Western Europe to Asia.
As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society

* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/35068671

rsynnott3• 2 years ago

I think the point is that we didn't make it for a _long_ time after the Industrial Revolution. The "safety bikes" mentioned in the article, the first really practical bikes, only really took off in _1890_.

wolfram742• 2 years ago

I've recently visited the aerospace smithsonian and they had an exhibit on the wright brothers. I'd known about their prior careers as bicycle makers and repairers, but the thing that really grabbed my attention was the price. For a single speed, bare bones tube design they were charging (when adjusted for inflation) around 1500 dollars. Now a comparable bike costs maybe a 10th that.

kevin_thibedeau• 2 years ago

Penny-farthings were expensive. They were the equivalent of $3000+ bikes today which are primarily only purchased by enthusiasts with sufficient disposable income.

__mharrison__2• 2 years ago

And then we haven't really seen much innovation in 100 years. Maybe recumbents...

makeitdouble• 2 years ago

Those could be seen as incremental, but from the top of my head the two biggest changes could be:

- foldables: they're a real game changer regarding where bikes fit and where they can go. Designs also tremendously improved and the cycling performance is really good nowadays.

- electric assist: it's not just adding a motor, a lot of work has happened to make the better of the it, and cargo bikes have become widespread mostly because of this.

NegativeLatency3• 2 years ago

Aluminum frames, disk brakes, suspension forks

loeg4• 2 years ago

There's been lots of innovation in the last 10-20 years, much less 100.

bee_rider• 2 years ago

Lots of the details have changes quite a bit. They might look somewhat similar, but a nice bike nowadays is mostly carbon fiber, and pretty aerodynamic.

Lio6• 2 years ago

You don't think things like indexed gears, suspension, hydraulic brakes or lighter materials are innovations?

Even dropper seat posts are a useful recent innovation IMHO.

__mharrison__2• 2 years ago

We just got an ebike. I rode slickrock on it last week and it was delightful.

Droppers are overrated (for me). Disk brakes are awesome. Bike weight (for mountain bikes) has probably gone up in the last 30 years. One by shifting is nice and the new front chainrings that keep chains on are cool.

aembleton• 2 years ago

Derailuers, Hydraulic brakes, Suspension, Lights, In hub Dynamos, Belt Drives, Gearboxes

travisd• 2 years ago

I highly highly highly recommend the book “Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle.” It explores the origin, the various social implications across various cultures (it often became a symbol of perversion due to its association with women’s liberation), and even the modern day e-bike movement. 12/10 book, very well written too.

zikduruqe• 2 years ago

I'll second this.

Aaronstotle2• 2 years ago

I'll have to check this out

foxyv4• 2 years ago

Just ordered a copy on your suggestion. Looking forward to reading it!

space_oddity• 2 years ago

Thnx for reccomendation, interesting one!

justforasingle• 2 years ago

I would consider treadmills known to exist as early as 4000BC as an early step towards bicycles. Commonly used for grinding wheat or moving water - possibly even cranes. There both gearing and leg power interact - just gotta apply the force to a set of four wheels and you're halfway there.

dools6• 2 years ago

The author kind of glosses over the "balance" bit, but I don't think it's a coincidence that the creation of 2 wheeled vehicles coincides with the creation of the first gyroscopes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope

pubby3• 2 years ago

I've heard that the gyroscopic effect in bicycles is rather small. The balance instead comes from the positive angle of the front wheel, creating feedback. If the bike leans one direction, the wheel rotates to counteract it.

masklinn3• 2 years ago

Destin’s inverted steering bike is definitely an argument for that, inverting the steering does not affect the gyroscopic effect, but the bike requires re-learning how to ride.

jay_kyburz• 2 years ago

I've been riding an scooter to work for a few years, and the gyroscopic effect of the wheels on a bike do make a big difference. You can't take one hand off the handle bars to use your arm to indicate on a scooter. You will lose control instantly. When I ride my bike I can ride most of the way sitting up and not holding the handle bars at all.

zargon• 2 years ago

It doesn't matter how the bicycle balances, just that inventors thought it to be possible. Gyroscopes could have inspired that belief. Balancing was probably discovered in a "it works if we design it like this" manner, rather than from first principles.

dools6• 2 years ago

You can measure it for yourself: balance on the bike when it is stationary, then compare the experience to when you're moving.

When you are moving, it adds in the gyroscopic balancing effect.

Gyroscopic motion means that the force applied acts about 90 degrees later, so when you turn the handlebars which are on a (roughly) vertical axis (call it the "z" axis), the force of that turn is actually applied about the axis that runs from front to back (call it the "y" axis). Gyroscopes "translate" the force.

If you're stationary, and there is no gyroscopic motion, then the only thing that turning the wheel really does is allow you to move the front of the bike to the left or right in order to change your centre of gravity.

0823498723498722• 2 years ago

because gyroscopes also require bearings?

adr1an• 2 years ago

Also, horses self-drive you home after a long night drinking beers in the tavern.

Symbiote• 2 years ago

Hardly anyone would use a horse for this. The tavern is within walking/staggering distance of all the houses.

discreteevent2• 2 years ago

The tavern is within walking/staggering distance of all the houses.

In an agricultural area? How would that work?

okwhateverdude• 2 years ago

My trusty two-wheeled steed manages to take me home drunk after the bar just fine

nokun72• 2 years ago

The bicycle, as we know it today, was not invented until the late 1800s.

Not sure why the article starts off with an incorrect hypothesis. There is evidence of bicycles in the sculptures in at least one Indian / Hindu temple Southern India. The temple dedicated to "Panchavarna Swamy" - 5 colored god, was built at least 1500 years old. (dated to the early 7th century by historians)

Photo of the bicycle in the temple: https://imgur.com/a/M1ZAUFf

bendews• 2 years ago

That photo you have provided is from a temple in Indonesia, and the Indian temple story you have summarised is regarded to be false, the carving in question was likely added during renovation during British rule.

nokun72• 2 years ago

Yes, that is possible. Also check this video, which is yet another bicycle carving from India: https://youtu.be/9zHHPCAao4k?si=VIc2XkgAnwf4MOxK

arp242• 2 years ago

Doesn't seem true. Or at the very least unverified.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bicycle-2000-year-old-temp...

notorandit• 2 years ago

None mentions Leonardo's bike. Weird.

tokai5• 2 years ago

Apparently that drawing is a fake.

pxeger12• 2 years ago

Even more unbelievable to me is that the idea of wearing a helmet to protect your head while cycling wasn’t invented until 1970

0823498723498722• 2 years ago

(1953) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Robic#/media/Fichier:Jean...

pxeger12• 2 years ago

This came from the depths of memory but I have no idea how it got there, oops. https://helmets.org/history.htm suggests the first standard for bike helmets was in 1970?

inglor_cz2• 2 years ago

The intriguing part about that question is that wheelbarrows are a very old technology and people would even transport one another (or their kids) on a wheelbarrow, not just goods. And neither bad roads nor primitive technology stopped them.

The idea of moving a burden or a person around using a wheel and human power (no animals) was around for centuries.

Closi2• 2 years ago

The quality of roads is relevant, but not really the answer. Bicycles can be ridden on dirt roads or sidewalks.

I mean this is true with a modern bike, but a primitive bike with wooden wheels, no spokes, no gears, no suspension and questionable brakes would be pretty awful on a trail.

paganel2• 2 years ago

Plus, there were no sidewalks to begin with, the road in my grandma's village close to the Carpathians Mountains still hasn't got one (they've only paved over what it used to be the village road about 10 years ago).

And people tend to forget rain and hence mud when it comes to the state of pre-modern roads, there's no way one could have ridden a bicycle through a lot of mud and rain puddles. Being high up there in a horse-driven coach meant that you were also avoiding all that mud hassle.

Ekaros4• 2 years ago

And also to remember that roads were more of trails or something you might seen on field or in forest. Not the nice flat surfaces created with road drags we think of dirt roads as.

culebron21• 2 years ago

One point this article misses is the size of the cities. Until mid-1800 cities were at most 1-1.5 km long, usually just 2-3 streets. Just look at old maps of Manchester. The only exceptions were the capitals like London, which were an order of magnitude more populous, but still only 2-5 times bigger in distance.

The primary means of transportation was not horse, but feet. You could walk to a destination on the other side of an average city of those times in 15 minutes, so a bike wouldn't bring big gains in time.

Only in 2nd half of 19th century, cities began growing, and transportation became a problem.

kqr4• 2 years ago

What about on the countryside? Villagers traveled to church and other villages regularly. That can easily take a couple of hours by foot – and by horse, at a normal pace – but would go significantly faster on bicycle.

I know there are reasons they didn't have bicycles, but I don't think "going by feet is equally good" is one of those reasons.

JR14272• 2 years ago

You need a pretty good road surface for early bicycles, so that might be a factor for why they didn't emerge sooner in the countryside.

ajuc2• 2 years ago

There's no point going from 1 village to another when you're a serf, and for centuries it was even illegal (at least in most of Central&Eastern Europe). Serfdom wasn't much different from slavery in practice - you couldn't own property, marry without the permission of your landlord, leave your village, etc. This only changed in 19th century.

Also villages, churches, manors, inns, markets, blacksmiths, and all the other necessary infrastructure was rarely more than 1 hour on foot away.

In my country there's 1 church per 30 km2, that's on average 6km between churches which is roughly 1 hour on foot.

throw0101b4• 2 years ago

What about on the countryside? Villagers traveled to church and other villages regularly.

"Regularly" may have been once a week (e.g., Lord's Day / Sunday). Otherwise people lived either in villages themselves, or in hamlets (collective security at night) and 'commuted' to their fields. Or on-site of the land owner if they were workers (earlier: serfs).

Living on a farmstead wasn't really a thing until relatively recently in history.

philwelch2• 2 years ago

The church would have been at the center of the village within easy walking distance.

throw0101b4• 2 years ago

One point this article misses is the size of the cities. Until mid-1800 cities were at most 1-1.5 km long, usually just 2-3 streets.

See perhaps:

Marchetti's constant is the average time spent by a person for commuting each day. Its value is approximately one hour, or half an hour for a one-way trip. It is named after Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti, though Marchetti himself attributed the "one hour" finding to transportation analyst and engineer Yacov Zahavi.[1]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti%27s_constant

* https://archive.is/edypl / https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-29/the-commu...

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

I really doubt this holds today.

golergka• 2 years ago

What happened to these constants with WFH? Personally, I have a lot of productive days now when I don't even leave my home.

elric• 2 years ago

It's not obvious that a bicycle would be in any way better than a carriage. So it makes sense that people tried to improve carriages instead of single riders. If you ignore the pollution aspects of cars, and the problems caused by the sheer number of them, they are a superior mode of transport to bicycles. If I were a 1400s inventor, a 4 wheel carriage with pulleys would seem much more attractive than a 2 wheeled contraption which leaves me exposed to the elements.

JR14272• 2 years ago

I wonder if much is know about the origins of wooden Chukudu scooters of Congo [1]?

The wikipedia article states that they date back to only the 1970s, but there does not appear to be any technology reason why they couldn't long pre-date that, and they apparently work well on dirt roads that have probably been around for a long time.

One article [2] claims they have been used "for centuries" but a quick Google did not find any evidence to back that up, but it does seem plausible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chukudu#:~:text=5%20External%2....

[2] https://oneminutexplore.com/the-chukudu-a-timeless-marvel-ma...

saalweachter2• 2 years ago

I wish the articles gave more details on the axles.

martyvis3• 2 years ago

I got a laugh out of this set of published things that were blamed on bicycles as they became the "in" thing. https://twitter.com/paulisci/status/1561848479470694403

zeitgeistcowboy• 2 years ago

It’s because vulcanized rubber tires weren’t available until the 1840s. There is no sub for inflatable tubes and rubber tires. Without it the ride would be very very bumpy for a light frame with two wheels.

tokai5• 2 years ago

Pneumatic tires are from 1888. People rode without them for half a century. They even rode without solid rubber tires.

https://onlinebicyclemuseum.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05...

ErigmolCt• 2 years ago

I'm thinking bicycle has not finished its development yet

JoeAltmaier• 2 years ago

Roads.

Bicycles are murder on bad roads. You could invent them earlier but probably not convince anybody to ride them?

nakedrobot2• 2 years ago

The Romans had roads... So did the Greeks, who also produced the Antykethera mechanism (precision machining)

Ekaros4• 2 years ago

But not the roads very suitable for bicycles. Even modern bikes are not exactly nice on many stone roads. Now remove air-tires and every little bumb will be felt.

Mordisquitos• 2 years ago

Notably, cyclist associations were instrumental in advocating for road conditioning in the late 19th century and early 20th, both in the UK [0] and the USA [1], and maybe elsewhere.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roads_Improvement_Association

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Roads_Movement

analog312• 2 years ago

My theory: People had nowhere to go. They had a reason to transport goods, but not themselves. They lived on the farms where they worked, or within walking distance of factories, church, etc.

paxys2• 2 years ago

It's always tricky to speculate on cause vs effect. Did bicycles come about because people needed to travel longer distances, or did people start to travel longer distances because they had better modes of transportation available to them?

lynguist• 2 years ago

I think it’s an omission to not include the vast improvements that happened to the bicycle after 1888. It wasn’t finished by 1888 with the safety bicycle.

Only by the 1860s the fast iteration of bicycles (together with substantial innovations in machine production) started and then went hand in hand with cars and motorcycles.

Some huge innovations after the safety bicycle were the derailleurs which continued to be iterated upon well after WW2, when the bicycle as we know it was finished.

The bicycle is not simple or obvious at all.

analog312• 2 years ago

Indeed, and most of us focus on the adoption of the bicycle as a practical mode of transportation, but the earliest bikes were not. So the evolution of the bike had to go through a phase when it was a toy, being refined as a toy. Just the act of managing a bike was the purpose of riding the earliest ones. Then people started going on recreational rides. Then recreational riding finally created demand for a safer bike. And a safe, manufactured bike, turned it into transportation.

The uniform, smaller size of safety bike wheels also enabled adoption of pneumatic tires.

maCDzP• 2 years ago

I work as a civil engineer in road construction. I was certain that it was the roads that drove the development of bikes, not the other way around.

It’s cool that the bike movement had a role in building roads. And that a political movement can drive technological change.

eru5• 2 years ago

Yes, when bicycles were young people took trains to travel between cities (or boats). So no one was really interested in roads all that much.

TacticalCoder• 2 years ago

So no one was really interested in roads all that much.

Romans had roads thousands of years before trains were invented. They had "things on wheels" too: horse-pulled (or human pulled) carriage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_roads

FWIW there are many places in Europe where pedestrian, bicycles, cars and whatnots are still using these very same roads, made of pavement, the exact same way romans were building it. I use these in the old city center nearly daily.

philwelch2• 2 years ago

Before trains they took stagecoaches. So people were very interested in roads.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK• 2 years ago

There are many places in the world today where there are no paved roads, but people ride bicycles OK. Lived in one such place as a child, rode my bicycle through the mud to the grocery store every day.

dncornholio2• 2 years ago

There's also a lot of paved road where you will absolutely not see a bicycle.

gtmitchell• 2 years ago

That’s only really true for bicycle with modern rubber wheels. Attempting to ride through the mud or on rough surfaces with wooden wheels would have been much more challenging (not to mention uncomfortable).

GuB-42• 2 years ago

So was the development of the wheel to begin with.

Without an appropriate surface, such as a road, wheels are a pretty bad mean of locomotion.

colloydi• 2 years ago

Fully elucidating these economic and cultural factors is a major future project of this blog

One rule of thumb seems to be that a new technology needs to be not merely better but ten times better than the alternative(s) for it to go viral. For instance, James Dyson built a washing machine with twin contrarotating drums. It was significantly better than conventional machines, but not ten times better when all costs were accounted for, e.g. the increased price and its unconventional larger size.

rsynnott3• 2 years ago

IIRC it was _not_ significantly better than conventional machines; "Which" found that it had the same performance as a mid-range Bosch.

Dyson's gadgets which really were significantly better than the contemporary competition tended to succeed, despite a cost premium. Notably the vacuum cleaners, of course.

pizzafeelsright• 2 years ago

Loads of bike shedding here.

chiffre01• 2 years ago

Bicycles require a number of technologies, mass produced steel for example, that weren't really around until the 19th century. However something like the flying shuttle probably could have been invented centuries earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_shuttle

westcort• 2 years ago

I think the eruption of mount Tambora, in 1816 and ensuring famine was the main impetus for the creation of the bicycle. Think from the perspective of the future:

Q: "Why didn't they just use solar cells to power their cars instead of using gasoline?"

A: "They had almost unlimited access to an energy-dense fuel called petroleum they mined from the earth."

My point is we can imagine many technologies that would serve our needs with much less energy use.

https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-....

csours• 2 years ago

I don't have time to research and write a good comment right now, but metrology and tolerancing is super important to the modern bicycle.

Look up Henry Leland and the progress made in metrology, and look at the time period he worked in.

How much variance can you have in a bike chain and still have a bike worth using?

I think that would make a VERY good interactive museum experience.

photochemsyn• 2 years ago

I think this one explains why the mass adoption of the bicycle took so long. Before the era of precision manufacturing, each mechanical device had to be hand-assembled by an expert machinist who fine-tuned crude parts into a working device - meaning there were no drop-in mass-produced replacement parts. This would make maintenance and construction impractically expensive.

dncornholio2• 2 years ago

I love fucking bicycles! In the Netherlands, they make the roads safer, they make the neighbourhoods saver, they make people more healthy, they reduce crime, they make people drive more careful.

Just by having a lot of people on bicycles instead in closed cars, it creates a whole different society then if everyone would be in cars and I love it.

scott_s3• 2 years ago

I think the author should give more credence to it not being intuitive that people could easily learn to balance on a bicycle. The other examples he gave - horse, canoe - are stable without a rider. If you put a canoe in the water, it will stay upright. Horses, obviously, are stable without a rider. A bicycle without a rider will fall over.

I don't think it's obvious that putting a human on a long, two-wheeled vehicle will make it more stable than that vehicle is on its own. I think it's also not obvious that most humans can quite easily and quickly learn how to balance a bicycle.

kazinator2• 2 years ago

Long before bicycles, people observed that rolling wheels (e.g. coins) are stable above a certain speed, falling over when they slow down.

(This is actually true of bicycles, for a similar reason: like a single wheel, they steer in the direction of a fall, and that counteracts the fall, because if you steer left, you fall right and vice versa.)

The possibility that a two-wheeled vehicle could be stable when moving should have manifested itself to some of the brightest minds in European science as far back as at least the Renaissance.

pas• 2 years ago

most of the mystery disappears as one notices the absence of good quality roads and low-friction (fine) mechanics (as both are hard requirements for an "economical" human-powered vehicles - as even untrained everyday folks are relatively good at endurance running/walking and carrying a light backpack, but carrying ourselves plus a vehicle over bad terrain makes it not worth it)

we like to think how amazing the wheel is, but ... what's amazing is a road network. and what's ridiculous is that some empires spent their might on making flat slabs and putting them in a big pile, while others used some of theirs to make roads, but it took so many years to combine the two :)

and that's why railroads appeared before bicycles basically.

oh, and see also one of the earliest known built road things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Track#/media/File:Sweet_... it's about 5800 years old!

martopix• 2 years ago

If the problem was balance, why were tricycles not widespread, then? There must have been other factors.

scott_s3• 2 years ago

I'm not saying balance was a problem - quite the opposite. It turns out balance is not a problem. I'm saying that in a world without bicycles, I don't think it's obvious that balance is not a problem. My point is that I find it quite reasonable that people just didn't even think about a two-wheeled vehicle for a long time because it's not obvious that it will be stable.

What people did try to make work was a four-wheeled cart, which I think is in line with a tricycle. I also agree there were other factors - I think there is no single answer to this question, but rather a constellation of factors. My claim is that I believe it reasonable to include people's lack of imagination that two-wheels could work in that list of factors.

vanattab• 2 years ago

I don't know how prevalent tricycles were but in the article the advertisement for the "saftey bike" says "safer then any tricycles" so there were some. Not sure why they were safer then tricycles of the time. Were these tricycles tall?

Found one picture https://www.google.com/search?q=1860+tricycles&oq=1860+tricy...

foxyv4• 2 years ago

I kind of wonder what it would be like to build a tricycle using pre-1800s technology. What would be the most difficult challenge? Lack of chain drive? Lack of quality bearings? Durability? Materials? Lack of rubber?

I bet a bicycle using 1700s tech would be horribly expensive considering the GDP per capita too. Not having rubber tires would make them dangerous as heck too. Traction is a huge factor in vehicles that aren't animal drawn. A horse/ox/human provides a ton of traction and stability to a vehicle when they pull it.

foxyv4• 2 years ago

Riding a horse is HARD. Riding a bicycle is so much easier and safer. I gave up horse back riding after falling for the 4th time and seeing all the paralyzed people at horse shows. Being randomly yeeted 15 feet in the air by a half ton animal because it saw a weird shadow on the ground makes riding a road bike in traffic seem downright tame.

83% of horseback riders are injured while riding. It's literally an extreme sport more dangerous than skiing or motorcycle racing. It boggles my mind to see riders without helmets or other protective gear.

scott_s3• 2 years ago

No disagreement here. Do you think your point is in conflict with mine?

maxglute• 2 years ago

CTRL+F for locks and found nothing relevant to bicycle secuirty. I assume there's some locking or valet system going on

dang• 2 years ago

Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25331858 - Dec 2020 (83 comments)

Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20443822 - July 2019 (492 comments)

Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? (2019)

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