Originally Posted by
livedarklions
Good info, and a fun post. Since the real Luddites were probably dead well before the introduction of the safety bicycle, we'll just note that discerning their attitude towards any particular bike would be completely speculative. Keep in mind that the bicycle was quite a disruptive technology when it was introduced, and Luddism was all about nipping those in the bud.
The technical novelties that came with introduction of the bicycle were ball bearings and pneumatic tires.
Ball bearings had existed, they were simply too expensive to use, and designers figured how to get the job done without them. Bikes created the demand for ball bearings. Bikes were the killer app that made ball bearings a thing. After a lot of false starts and dead ends the technique for making balls in bulk was the tech for making marbles. Toy marbles. Just start with small pieces of steel instead of small rocks. It was seventeenth/eighteenth century tech.
Pneumatic tires were completely novel. I want to keep them. All that's needed to make a tire is needle and thread. Oh, and rubber. Which means international trade is needed. Global trade has been a constant since the Bronze Age. It might be nice to try a tire with a casing made from Dacca muslin. From what is known of that fabric it would seem ideal. But the stuff only exists in museums. No one has known how to weave it for about 200 years. Preserving just that sort of knowledge is what Luddism was about.
All the other details that go into current bicycles are just that, details. A derailleur is a series of levers and pivots. Any Luddite mechanic can understand any derailleur. Or at least any mechanical derailleur. Electric derailleurs we won't even think about.
Luddism was always about valuing persons over commerce. Not hostile to nice things. Or more specifically not hostile to nice things made by humans.