DiabloScott

For road bikes that is. I mean without the 9v and 10v versions in between?

Once they got indexing figured out, and once they got the rear spacing at 130mm, it was just a matter of making the teeth and chain thinner and adjusting the cable pull. Seems like maybe they could've done it in one step but were holding back to get us to buy more stuff.

ThermionicScott 

Suspect you're right on that last sentence. In fact, perhaps that was the purpose of their 14-speed cassette/chain patent all along -- to prevent anyone else from squeezing many more gears in too quickly.

Bill Kapaun

I don't know if they had the machining technology with laser this & that to produce "real thin" cogs with the ramps etc.
A constant upgrade path is profitable with all the lemmings that will buy the latest "just because they can".
My 3X9 has more gears than I need.
A 1X?? won't. The jumps are far too wide for my physical condition(s).

CliffordK

And 12 speed or 13 speed?

I came to cassettes a bit late, so went from 5/6/7 speed freewheels to 9 speed cassettes to 11 speed cassettes. I think my Tricross currently has 8 speed, but I've managed to skip 10 speed.

The manufacturers probably could have skipped some, but keep in mind freehubs. For Shimano, they have 7 speed freehubs, 8/9/10 speed freehubs, and wider 11 speed freehubs, and now a newly designed 12 speed freehub.

Campagnolo apparently had an 8 speed freehub, then a 9/10/11 (and 12?) speed freehub.

Anyway, the jump to 11s, at least for Shimano meant redesigning the freehub. The 12s freehub redesign was to use a 10T sprocket.

Anyway, it may not have made sense to go from 9s to 11s.

I have to say that I really like the Campagnolo 11s shifter redesign, and presume the Shimano 11s shifters with the aero cable routing would be nice too.

Anyway, perhaps one could argue skipping say 9s, and going directly from 7s to 8s to 10s to 11s. Nonetheless 9s remains an excellent introductory groupset.

CliffordK

I suppose one should also think about chains.

I believe the 9s continued to have thin pins sticking out.
11s has pins completely flat with the plates.

10s?

Anyway, flat pins would mean a significant chain and chain production redesign, as well as developing new shift gates to reliably pick up the chain.

Hyperglide, of course, had to replace Uniglide before many of the new innovations would effectively work.

dsbrantjr

My bikes are all 3X7 and I have a lifetime supply of consumables. No "upgrades"needed here, thanks.

Andrew R Stewart 

I suppose no one here has read of the 14 cog rear gear set up Shimano patented 20+ years ago. Andy

ThermionicScott 

Post #2 .

Andrew R Stewart 

My mistake. That's what I get for not reading all the posts fully. Glad there's another old guy here Andy

gsa103

Dura-Ace 7700 (9sp) was introduced in 1996. Which hung around until 2003, when they introduced DA 7800 (10-spd) but required new hubs. It wasn't until 2005 that Shimano introduced a 10-spd group that fit the old 8/9/10 hub. 11-speed took yet another hub design.

So basically, it took Shimano 10-years to go from 9 to 10 spd, during which time there was a huge evolution in how things are manufactured. CNC techniques are starting to hit mass production. I suspect Shimano could have made the jump straight to 10 or 11 speed, but they couldn't have done it profitably. CNC machining a chain, precision bushings, it's all possible. What likely wasn't possible was the ability to mass produce it at a market friendly price, a DA groupset set for $100k would sell about 4 copies, and would cost way more than that to develop.

You can give any respectable R&D organization a large budget and tell them to build 1-2 prototypes and get really amazing results. The challenge is making things at cost and scale. Consider F1 race cars, each car is well into the $10Ms, simply because they can afford to do things like bin matching parts. Cycling stuff isn't cutting edge, there simply isn't the money. Cycling is consistently 10-years behind the leading edge.

70sSanO

SHBR

Its much more profitable to offer slight incremental improvements over decades than to make a huge jump, without any further improvements.

They figured out how to make lightbulbs last a lifetime, yet we still replace them?

Planned obsolescence.

Rinse and repeat.

Darth Lefty 

Sy Reene

As it is, the manufacturers could make both new 8s thru 11sp cranks and cogs the same gauge and interchangeable, but they don't. Ie. there's not a lot of reasons to make 8s chainring teeth any wider than used on 11sp chainrings, and an 8s-9s cassettes, made with 11s-width cogs, would actually have a quite narrower form factor (goodbye cross chaining).

JohnDThompson 

Sure, they could have. But then they would have had to forgo the profits from selling each of the the latest and greatest incremental upgrades on the way there.

bluehills3149

I worked as a manufacturing engineer in the 90's and there's nothing in 11spd that could not have been made then (or the 80's for that matter). Our plant had presses that dated from WW2 era and they were still producing parts at fine tolerances and the addition of PLC's (industrial computers) made them quite automated as well.I think those who say it's about $ are right. To jump from say 8 to 11 in 1993 would have required lots of r&d as every component would need upgrading so you'd need to hire a bunch more engineers and new industrial lines. so yeah, a 100k groupset and almost no takers.
Take cassettes. At first Shimano spent lots of r&d on them, testing and what not. It made new tooling and a brand new production line. And still the first year production might be slow with lots of rejects and re works. Over time, they work out the kinks, automate the process more and speed the production line up after 5 years they are so cheap to make that they are on every wheel.

Retro Grouch 

It's the engineers that are evolving, not the bicycles.

Todays kids are smarter than we were. That's a good thing because they're the ones who are paying for my social security. You go, kids!

HillRider

Yes, as you and ThermionicScott both mentioned, I'm well aware of those patents. However, the cog and chain designs were radically different from anything at the time and, more important, from anything that has been made since. It was an interesting concept but didn't portend the current cog increases.

fietsbob

Could have gone from Horse & Buggy to Electric cars & trucks, too...

Andrew R Stewart 

I don't completely agree. The industry has always been in a cog count contest. The 14 cog patent happened in the middle of the many year span from the common 5 cogs (of when I started) to the now common 11 cogs. I saw it as a statement of Shimano's engineering abilities, saying that Shimano was ready and able to design far more cogs into a system then any other manufacture (SunTour and Campy being the two other players) was able to. Shimano's business model has never been about staying put. The 14 cog patent is one more example of their resolve to be considered #1 , I feel they understood the consumer, and how to "work" the consumer, better then other manufactures did. One example is how they have paced the "advances" over the years and across the grades they produce. So while the unique aspects of the 14 cog patent isn't in use today does nothing to take away from the goal of more cogs then the other guy has when one is "on the line and ready to go". Andy

LesterOfPuppets

Electric cars have actually been around almost as long as gas burning cars have.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Electric

hokiefyd 

It's not unlike automotive automatic transmissions. For many years, 3 speeds were it. Maybe you had a bolt-on overdrive. Then the OEMs came out with 4 speed automatics. Then 5 speed automatics. Then 6. Some used 7. 8 and 9 are somewhat common these days. Now we have 10 speeds. You had to have a use case for the extra complexity and tighter tolerances, and fuel efficiency is a commonly-cited driver of that. It keeps the engine closer to its most efficient operating range, without the large steps between gears.

No different with bikes, I presume. Compare an imaginary 11-28 cassette with only three 3 sprockets. That would be somewhat difficult to use. It's okay with 5 sprockets. 7 is better. 8, 9, 10...the steps continue to get smaller each time with the same overall range. We humans enjoy the same benefit as our car engines do -- we get to stay in our best operating range (cadence) while our bike transmission (derailer) works for us.

That's great with 2x or 3x drivetrains. The current trend is 1x. We need more range for that. We need something like an 11-42 cassette (for example), or more, to get the same gearing range as we used to have with 2x or 3x. 11-42 with only 8 or 9 sprockets would be somewhat difficult to use. More sprockets at the back make 1x drivetrains more relevant to more people, because they can get that large gearing range without large steps.

We could ask the same question of the automotive industry. Why don't we quit with this silly 10 speed transmission and go straight to 15 or straight to 20? That sounds as absurd today as a 10 speed probably sounded to an engineer in 1978, but we may be there one day. We don't necessarily see a use case for it today, but we might in the future. Or, maybe we'll just be at CVT in everything (Continuously Variable Transmission), where there's a continuous adjustment between the top and bottom end of the range. I like that concept.

Bikes have it, too, the Nuvinci hub. I like that concept, and I'd consider running a Nuvinci on one of my bikes, except that they're too rich for my blood at the moment.

fietsbob

... as I understand FIM 50 & 125 cc racing motorcycle engines have such a narrow high rpm powerband,
their transmissions have many gears more than a large displacement 4 stroke with 1L+ displacement..

resembling it is the Pinion mid drive gear box.. for bicycles..

Kontact 

It isn't really a question of technology - Campy didn't have to wait until metallurgy came along that made skinny chains possible. It is mainly a question of economics and marketing.