WI: Bikes invented 100 years earlier
- Thread starter Will Kürlich Kerl
- Start date
I'm going to do my usual shtick and ask how. Bicycles are very complex pieces of machinery, bleeding-edge tech in the 1860s, still about as demanding to engineer as the most modern firearms in the 1900s. It's hard to envision them being built in the 1750s.
Of course you could have a more basic design, the early nineteenth century 'two wheels on a wooden frame' contraption, but its usefulness would be very limited, especially off metalled roads. Alternatively, it is just about conceivable that some technical genius or madman could produce a vehicle that would match the performance of an 1870s velocipede, but it would almost certainly be a one-off and incredibly expensive in terms of man-hours and materials.
Of course you could have a more basic design, the early nineteenth century 'two wheels on a wooden frame' contraption, but its usefulness would be very limited, especially off metalled roads. Alternatively, it is just about conceivable that some technical genius or madman could produce a vehicle that would match the performance of an 1870s velocipede, but it would almost certainly be a one-off and incredibly expensive in terms of man-hours and materials.
Not strictly necessary (though it does wonders for your comfort). A lot of things are like that: high-grade steel for your spokes and rims, machined precision parts for your chain, ball bearings for your axles. You can make a bicycle without any one of these, but once you make it without all of these, the result is underwhelming.
Without ball bearings, friction will play merry hell for any usable wheel size. The most you could get in 1760 is a draysine. Perhaps you could accelerate bicycle development if it's discovered that a single-track vehicle is stable while in motion, thus freeing your feet and legs.
So, I'd go from there: A successful draysine.
So, I'd go from there: A successful draysine.
Look at the wheel construction and rethink, then. Wire of that strength propduced reliably is a real challenge, and at that size you can't use wood. Laminate might work, but proper laminate wood is hardly easy, either.
This dude is planning to mass produce bikes made from folded cardboard. You can always find a way.
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/16/cardboard-bicycle/
Invented 100 years earlier than what ?
IIRC there were two wheeled vehicles proposed, and probably built in the 1600s. They failed because they were too heavy and ungainly to be practical. That couldn't be addressed until the Industrial revolution .
Another factor, often overlooked, is that the main roads of England and much of Europe were very crowded until railroads took most of the freight traffic away. And the back roads were rutted tracks in summer and bogs in winter (because they were cut up so by the hooves of cattle and horses)
I think it might be possible to move a practical and cost effective bicycle forward 20, maybe 30 years. No more.
OTL, the heyday of the bicycle was after industrialization, when huge numbers of men needed to travel moderate distances to work, and before the mass adoption of the car.
Go back too early, and there is not the mass market wanting a means to travel 2 to 10 miles. (shorter, it would be as easy to walk, further needs different transport, eg trains) .
Some things happen when they do because the time is right.
I tend to agree, 100yr is a bit early.
That said, there may be alternatives to steel wire spokes (tho IDK if they're exactly practical). In the same way wire replaced whalebone, couldn't whalebone be used?
Could liberal application of whale oil (or some form of grease) substitute for ball bearings?
The big technical innovation necessary is the chain drive & drive sprocket; could that be by belt drive? (That seems to require development of mechanisms to produce rotary motion, & IDK how early those were.)
Given you get a "perfect storm" of innovation, tho, the bicycle does drive developments in better roads. It improves opportunities for travelling salesmen. It offers opportunities for travelling tradesmen/women (seamstresses could deliver, frex). It improves medical care (doctors could travel more readily, & would be the #1 market, as for early cars). It increases tourism. It sparks a degree of "gender mobility", as women can use them to do things they couldn't before (tho this has been exaggerated). It creates opportunities for standardized manufacturing (which was commonplace in the bicycle industry long before Ford came along). It sparks demand for new technology (like wire spokes...with spinoffs elsewhere, like in umbrellas). And it creates whole new sports (velodrome racing, bicycle road racing).
All of these are OTL events. I see no reason they'd change if they happened sooner. The only issue is, are the bicycles themselves good enough to allow them, or so bad they prohibit.
That said, there may be alternatives to steel wire spokes (tho IDK if they're exactly practical). In the same way wire replaced whalebone, couldn't whalebone be used?
Could liberal application of whale oil (or some form of grease) substitute for ball bearings?
The big technical innovation necessary is the chain drive & drive sprocket; could that be by belt drive? (That seems to require development of mechanisms to produce rotary motion, & IDK how early those were.)
Given you get a "perfect storm" of innovation, tho, the bicycle does drive developments in better roads. It improves opportunities for travelling salesmen. It offers opportunities for travelling tradesmen/women (seamstresses could deliver, frex). It improves medical care (doctors could travel more readily, & would be the #1 market, as for early cars). It increases tourism. It sparks a degree of "gender mobility", as women can use them to do things they couldn't before (tho this has been exaggerated). It creates opportunities for standardized manufacturing (which was commonplace in the bicycle industry long before Ford came along). It sparks demand for new technology (like wire spokes...with spinoffs elsewhere, like in umbrellas). And it creates whole new sports (velodrome racing, bicycle road racing).
All of these are OTL events. I see no reason they'd change if they happened sooner. The only issue is, are the bicycles themselves good enough to allow them, or so bad they prohibit.
Workable bikes arising prior to/without the Bessemer process for mass producing steel strikes me as distinctly unlikely. Also the late 18th century potential consumer base was notably limited. Perhaps if Revolutionary France promoted the draysine in the manner it did optical teleghraphy(semaphore), the idea would gain sufficient profile for it to be better executed once peace returned.
Actually, the greatest limitation to the bicycle was the terrain. Centuries earlier, Leonardo daVinci drew a bicycle-like pedal vehicle, but like many of his fantasy-like works, it went ignored.
The French called early bicycles velociped, a name to suggest speed. Had the roads been around, the mechanics would have followed. Even with ropes and cords instead of a chain, a vehicle that could coast downhill with speed would have taken off, if the roads were there.
The French called early bicycles velociped, a name to suggest speed. Had the roads been around, the mechanics would have followed. Even with ropes and cords instead of a chain, a vehicle that could coast downhill with speed would have taken off, if the roads were there.
How so? There was a discussion on these boards, I think six or eight months ago that featured Roman scouts on bicycles made of wood and bronze.
Yesm, and that is a very lovely image until you try to get one to work in the real world. A lot of things can be simplified on a bicycle, but ever simplicfication reduces performance, and at some point (especially when having to deal with poor preindustrial roads), it's simply not worth it. A two-wheeler with crank pedals, greased axles, wooden wheels, no suspension and iron rims is going to be possible, but it will limit you to roads of good quality at speeds of less than a good horse (in the 1820s, overland rides on draisines were always between urban centres, and that was after the improvements to roads made in the past fifty years). That kind of thing has extremely limited applications. It's certainly useless for scouting and inferior to horses for carrying messages. It could be useful in relatively urbanised regions for individual intercity traffic, though. Ghent to Aix in two leisurely days, maybe.
Military Bicycles
Boer War
First extensive use (by horsemen)- severely downplayed
http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol041dm.html
Animal footpaths in pastural/wild landscapes are millions of miles of superb cycle paths, compacted over centuries or millennia
Lettow-Vorbeck used tireless bicycles extensively influenced by Boers
Japanese were influenced by these campaigns in their planning in Malaya
Boer War
First extensive use (by horsemen)- severely downplayed
http://samilitaryhistory.org/vol041dm.html
Animal footpaths in pastural/wild landscapes are millions of miles of superb cycle paths, compacted over centuries or millennia
Lettow-Vorbeck used tireless bicycles extensively influenced by Boers
Japanese were influenced by these campaigns in their planning in Malaya
I actually have an article by a German military man exploring the uses of military bicycles around 1900 (some good ideas in there). Some cyclists suggested as much as early as the 1880s, plausibly. But these already benefit from modern technology.
BlondieBC
Banned
It appears that people are overestimating the quality of road need for a bike to be better than walking. I will not dispute that paved roads are nicer, but they are not needed. When I was a kid, I rode my simple bike (no gears, no hand breaks, walmart quality) bike 3 miles to my friends house on a daily basis. It cut the travel time by at least half. Much of the trip was down cow paths (literally, the dirt areas exposed by hooves walking across grass) and truck paths (same as cows, but done by tire pressure alone). It is easy to ride a bike on these surfaces. Some of the areas had a good bit of loose rock.
If you can figure out how to build a bike, economically in 1750, then they will be widely adopted. Sure a horse is much better, so a person with wealth will use, but the common man will use bikes as the primary means of personal travel. You will see them in military units, or at least used a lot on military bases. While not sexy to film, an ATL battle ITTL such as gettysburg will have bike messengers running the messages back to Lee.
BTW, my dad's land has some actual wagon trails (you can tell by tire width). I can ride a bike down these quite easily.
And the mud is not an issue on the cow paths. What happens is that if you have a muddy day, you ride you bike on the line that divides dirt from grass. There is often a narrow area of grass right next to cow path that is not much higher than grass on a golf course (not all cow hooves hit path all the time, clumpsy cows exist). The thin grass give you enough consistency to not sink into the mud.