pavement_nyc

Is there a timeline like this? (something along the line of 1981 - cotterless cranks, 1993 - integrated shifting, etc.)

iab

Frank Berto's The Dancing Chain will provide a nice timeline for derailleurs.

I don't know of anything for other components but I believe Stronglight came out with a cotterless aluminum crank in 1933.

Ambrosio, Fiamme and Mavic were some of the first to introduce aluminum rims, stems and bars in the early 30s. C.A.R.-Vega introduced an aluminum hub at the same time. FB had a 3-piece hub at the same time.

sced

IMHO the pace of development has been amazingly slow. Think about a 1903 bike and the Wright flyer. Since the invention of the safety bicycle in the 1880's the basic design has changed little.

sloar 

i have a bike from the mid 1890's and was very suprised how little bikes have changed.really the only difference between my bike and a newer one is other than the wood rims and wood grips is how the stem is tightened to the forks. it has a seat post clamp on the top of the forks to clamp the stem tight.

Bianchigirll 

If you are refering to shimano's STI= Shimano Total Integration, I believe that goes back to '89 or so when they started attaching their "Rapid Fire" mountain bike shifters to their brake levers in an effort to keep bike companies from speccing shimano drive trains with lowerend brakes. Actually I belive the same goes for shimano's SLR= shimano Linear Response brake systems it was more an effort to force use of shimano brake levers and calipers as a unit.

I believe for the most part anything thought of as an innovation from shimano is more an effort at making their parts less comaptible with other makers systems. Also I believe the DuraAce integrater brake/ shifter debuted in '91

auchencrow

Speedplay has a comprehensive timeline on bicycle innovation - as long as it pertains to pedals that is.

jolly_ross

Start a page in Wikipedia and tell us about it - it can be limited in scope (and even accuracy) - will soon enough grow and be fixed.

Maybe start it with the contents of this page: https://www.jimlangley.net/ride/bicyclehistorywh.html

rhm

I'd be interested to see a detailed timeline as well. I don't know of one, though.

A lot of innovations in cycling did not catch on when first invented, or were later superseded by subsequent innovations, only to be reinvented many years later. For example the Racycle of the nineteen-teens had a cotterless crank, outboard bearings, integrated headset, and other features reminiscent of today's state-of-the-art bicycles.

Bianchigirll 

I agree lots of companies seem to have had integrated (but not hidden) headsets way back when. The ilfated Browning Automatic transmission was similar to an design of the late 1800s or early 1900s but not electric of course.

iab

The Dancing Chain alone is nearly 400 pages. And that only deals with derailleur innovations.

But I agree. An innovation encyclopedia would be nifty.

KonAaron Snake 

It seems like the biggest difference now is materials and manufacturing - the basic design really is pretty much perfect as is and the differences in shifting are incremental rather than revolutionary. Look at saddles...leather suspension saddles are still the most comfy and the only thing that changed are the rail materials. MTBs have more differences than roadies...the improvements in suspension are pretty impressive and I think the more modern disc brakes are nifty. Necessity breeds invention, and MTBs are relatively new - so I think the field is generally more innovative.

Probably the most impressive newer stuff are things like rechargeable LEDs, rechargeable cameras, etc. The stuff that grew out of other tech and was applied to bicycles. Ceramic bearings...gore tex and similar fabrics...Kevlar in tires...stuff like that.

rhm

I agree about materials, improvements in manufacturing processes etc, but there have also been significant improvements in roads, cycling ergonomics, and changes in the way bikes are used; and all these things have had their impact on bicycle design.

Jeff Wills

In my heap o' stuff I have the 100th anniversary issue of American Bicyclist and Motorcyclist (a dealer-only magazine), published in December 1979. It has a decent, albeit condensed, history of the bicycle from the 1880's to 1980. I often refer to it to point out "innovations" that were invented at the dawn of the Bicycle Age.

(In-hub suspension like Pantour? Invented in 1887 as "Warwick's Spring Bearing".)

Captain Blight

Although cotterless cranks came out fairly early in the development of the bicycle (Really, the machine as we know it has only been around for about 120 years), the last TdF won on cottered cranks is thought, around here, to be 1958.

Hetchins had an integrated headset in the '50s. Shimano had a precursor to Octalink and outboard bearings with their Integer front freewheel cranks; this was ill-fated as it was invariably paired with the Positron indexed shifting; this was introduced in like 1977-ish.

The Altenburger Syncro brakes were a very early dual-pivot sidepull, those date from like 1969. There are probably French forays into the technology even earlier.

Movement away from the skip-tooth chain so prevalent in track circles (hah, see what I did there?) toward the half-inch-pitch chain allowed much greater flexibility in gearing, thus driving the development of derailleur gears. It's interesting how the Continental Europeans adopeted derailleur gears long before the Brits did, which is either a measure of how conservative the Britons were or how good the Sturmey hub is, or maybe both. I feel that part of this issue was that in England, cycle racing was very much a workingman's sport up through the '70s, while this may not have been the case on the Continent.

Of course the French Constructeurs were using sealed-cartridge-bearing bottom brackets before WWII, and as ubiquitous as chainstay-mounted derailleurs were at that time, they were abandoned in favor of dropout-mounted mechs. I find it a measure of the industrial dominance of the French that there were two standards (three, if you count Simplex) for dropout mounting as late as the early '80s.

We really should collaborate on a Wikipedia page. I think that together, we're as close to a panel of experts as exists in America today.

sykerocker 

Definitely in agreement regarding the collaboration on a Wikipedia page.

Something that needs to be kept in mind is the concept of marketing on technical innovation. One of the things that really stuck out for me in your post was Altenburger brakes. A really good brake design, hurt by the fact that they were only ever used on bottom line bikes. Nobody would have ever considered running Le Tour using Alterburger brakes. And so they died. To be brought back later in more elegant form by Shimano and Campagnolo.

Really, what's needed is two parallel timelines. When something was invented, and when it was finally reinvented and became popular.

ThermionicScott 

That's a great idea! So many things that we take for granted were tried early on, flopped, and were reinvented later on.

mickey85

If you're talking about brakes, cantilever came about in the 50's (I think...), and are still relevant on certain bikes, V brakes came about in the mid-90's, calipers have been around for about forever, and went full-time in the early-80's after centerpulls fell off. Frame materials, steel has been fairly similar since at least the 30's (and some have been long-lived - hence Reynoles 531 for instance, that's been around since at least '49 and made its way to the late 80's/early 90's). CF happened in the late 80's, and there have been certain aluminum bikes since the 30's or 40's.

Nothing under the sun is new.

T-Mar

CCM introduced their proprietary Triplex cotterless (three piece) crankset in the early 1920s and offered it on their higher end models for several decades.

smontanaro 

Airplanes (and cars) were not limited to the power and geometry constraints imposed by the human body. I don't think there is any real comparison of those with bikes. Within the given constraints, I think bikes have changed quite a lot.

fietsbob

Data book, a reprint of a Japanese publication , has a lot of Rebour like drawings
and dates the pages for them..

isbn 1-892495-01-5 if you want to seek out a copy..

there I see Mafac cantilevers date largely unchanged from 1946..

bradtx

It would take alot of research to define an accurate timeline to each and every innovation. Add to that many innovations were unsuccessful initially, put on a shelf to be resurrected as a viable concept (market place) at a later time.

Since the safety bicycle was invented the only major innovation, IMHO, was the advent of gearing changes while the cyclist was cycling. Everything (mostly) else seems like evolutionary improvements
.

Brad

Lenton58 

The history of Reynolds 531 tubing goes back as far as 1923, and its use in bicycle construction dates from 1934.

The production and use of lightweight steel tubing got a huge boost during WWI. For example, Anthony Fokker's D-VII biplane fighter used by the German imperial air arm was arguably the finest machine of its type to come out of WWI. It was so superior that it was specifically mentioned in the articles of the armistice that pertained to cessation of hostilities on the western front, November 11, 1918. Its all-steel tubing airframe made for both lightness and strength at a time when most airframes were wooden or at best composites of steel tubing and wood. From the beginning of the war, Reynolds was making tubing for the British military. In 1916, it began supplying tubing for airframes.

After the war, there was no turning back despite the downturn in military contracts. In 1897, Reynolds had already patented a process for creating butts in tubing extrusions and thereafter began supplying it for bicycle construction. In 1923, the company again turned its attention to airframes and introduced a butted tube-set designated as HM — High Manganese content. In 1924, this tubing was applied to tube-sets intended for bicycle construction. And thus, this seems to have been a revolution in bicycle technology — a tube-set that lead the way in both lightness and strength.

In 1934, HM was reformulated, and the new product was named '531'. In 1935, this tubing was turned into Reynolds' flagship bicycle tubing. It was very quickly recognized by British cycling enthusiasts and enjoyed great popularity until production of 531 bicycle tube-sets was halted as WWII loomed up. Reynolds devoted its resources to building airframes for the iconic Supermarine Spitfire — a fighter plane that went under continuous development until 1945.

After the war when bicycle tubing production was resumed, 531 frame-sets were increasingly in the winner's circle. In 1958, Charly Gaul (Luxembourg) rode a 531 frame to victory in the TdF. From then on, 531 frames were a force to be reckoned with in the TdF until 1991.

There is no doubt in this member's mind that Reynolds determined a revolution in bicycle technology by virtue of metallurgy and production technique. This is not to say its achievements were unique, but rather that they lead the way for an extraordinarily long time. And arguably, in terms of steel tubing, they may still do so.


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