Originally Posted by
JohnDThompson
Not sure that Vitus was the first. Reynolds 531 also came out in the 1930s, and Columbus claims to have made seamless, cold-drawn tubing even earlier:
The odd thing was when I first googled this French company came up several different times in different ways of asking the question, but today when I asked the same question again I got this:
Sportive Cyclist's Guide To Bike Frame Materials: Steel - Sportive Cyclist where it says:
"Reynolds is based in the UK (who said we’ve lost our industrial base!). The company started life in 1841 as a maker of nails, before turning to bicycle tubing at the end of the nineteenth century. The firm patented the invention of butted tubes (whereby tube walls were made thicker, and therefore stronger, at the ends) in 1898." Weird that I got two different responses, so not sure which is correct, but the date on the Reynolds is earlier than either the French of the Italian companies, and if that site is right then that makes Reynolds the earliest, and it does say that Reynolds patented the double butted tubing method. I don't know.