The American public did not really care for 10 Speed Racing Style bicycles UNTIL Schwinn released the SAFETY LEVERS ( "Turkey Levers") in 1969!!!
EVERY MAJOR BICYCLE MANUFACTURER QUICKLY FOLLOWED SUIT ON EVERYTHING......EVEN ON HIGHER END MODELS.
Yes, that is how it was once upon a time when things were far out.
THE REASON THAT THE 10 speed Racer Style Craze THAT FUELED THE Bike Boom of the '70's HAPPENED IS THAT ORDINARY FOLKS COULD NOW RIDE THE "TOPS". You have to realize that young people didn't want to be identified as "Straight" ( the word had a different meaning then....) They wanted to be seen as Cool and Hip, and straight was as far from that as possible... Well, for whatever reason, at that time, a 10 speed with North Roads Tourist handlebars was as popular as long pleated skirts, saddle oxfords, and bee-hive, or boufant hairdoos for women and any whitewalled, flattop, crewcut, buzzcut, short or wet-head hairstyle for men was in 1969. You just didn't dress or look like the tv characters BUD ANDERSON (father knows best..'50's) and WALLY & The BEAVER(leave it to beaver '57-'63).
Never before had so much change in style of dress and what was deemed hip and cool changed so much......ever.
The USA was slower to adopt to this but between 1968 and 1970 the USA had reached where England and other countries already had been for years. England was the hip style leader for all the world beginning in early 1964 and remained so for at least the remainder of the Sixties....
The Beatles.................
Even the most ordinary square television programs like the first season of Brady Bunch that aired in 1969 has the mom dressed in boufant hairdoo and clothing-dresses that could equally be out of 1962, and the dad has short over the ear haircut and wears suits and ties and shoes that look like the attire that Sgt Joe Friday would wear daily. Well, as yall know Carol & Mike Brady did metamorphosize into sporting styles and hip clothing that was farther out than some young folks who would have been labelled hippies in about ten Southern States in 1970-1972.
The Sting Ray craze largely was the phenomenon of the younger Boomers that were born in the years between 1956 and 1964. So if you were about eight years old between about 1964 and 1972, you likely recall that Sting Rays and similar carbon copies by other makers were the dominant bicycles that were in the bike racks at your elementary school......... IF YOU WERE BORN BEFORE 1956, YOUR CHILDHOOD RIDE TO ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WAS THE TYPICAL JC Higgins/Schwinn/Columbia/Murray/Huffy/Ross/Western Flyer/Hiawatha/Firestone/Coast to coast/AMF Roadmaster/Rollfast/.....etc 'BEACH CRUISER STYLE BICYCLE WITH COASTER BRAKES AND FULL FENDERS AND NORTH ROADS-CRUISER HANDLEBARS & 1-Piece ASHTABULA CRANK.
The kids born in 1956 graduated from high school in 1974, so by the time that they had reached age 13, the Sting Ray was too much of a child's bike for them, and they had already moved on to something more suitable in an adult size bicycle for the last few years before getting the drivers license at age 16 or 15 as was the case in some states like South Carolina. So the 1964 birth kids, the last of the Sting Ray adoptees, largely were probably done with Sting Rays by age 11 or certainly 12, as you'd guess that 10 speeds were the rage and the Sting Ray craze was dead by 1975-1976 as eight to 10 year old kids wanted Evil Knievel like Motocross looking bicycles.
There were so many bad accidents with the crazy high rise bars that were seen on the 1964-1971 bars (or '63 onward thru '71 if the StingRays commenced in '63...)
A friend of my sister, named Catherine had to have emergency surgery to remove her spleen after crashing in the Summer of 1967 on her banana seat, high rise handlebar SCHWINN girls bike version of the StingRay. The handlebars impaled her side. Catherine was ten at the time (born in '57 and class of '75 and college class of '79).
The newly established Consumer Product Safety Commission campaigned strongly against both Lawn Darts(remember those...) and the crazy high rise handlebars so much in about 1970 that they got legislation prohibiting such bars with the width and height as seen during the 1964-1971 era.........whether the manufacturers agreed to dial it back or whether it was specific legislation that forced this, I do not recall but there was a significant change in the size and width of those crazy ape hanger high rise handlebars that all the banana seat craze bikes had until 1971. A heck of a lot of people got hurt just in normal ordinary accidents like Catherine's in 1967, but the accidents became exponentially worse for boys especially after the 1968 Caesars Fountain Jump put Evil Knievel on the radar screen. ABC Sports' Wide World of Sports featured Evil doing jumps (and near death crashes) between 1968 and 1973 that were massive television ratings winners. You've got to remember that most larger cities only had three television stations......ABC, NBC, and CBS were the broadcast networks....... Nobody had cable television other than some mountain areas and that just largely got you the three broadcast networks. Nobody cared about public television that was low power, UHF and barely viewable without a large rooftop antenna. Many cities only had TWO Broadcast TV Stations before 1973, where one tv station would be for example a CBS affiliate and the other maybe began as NBC affiliate and still was but largely picked the best of ABC shows & NBC shows to air, as by the end of the sixties, some ABC shows were as popular or more popular than most NBC shows and some CBS staples. The FCC allowed this until the early seventies because many folks still only had televisions that could only pick-up VHF stations (channels 2 thru 13)........... Televisions equipped with both VHF (2 thru 13) and UHF (14 thru 86) did not begin to be sold in stores in the USA until about 1964, so many folks still had sets without UHF tuners. Televisions were relatively expensive then and believe it or not, many households in the USA still did not own Color Televisions even in 1973, even though everything was broadcast in color here in the USA by 1966.
Well if you aren't at least a BOOMER or a pre WWII fossil and WWII era baby, then you likely have no idea how things changed so swiftly and so fast, and some might say radically.... THOSE TURKEY-LEVERS WERE LOVED BY NEARLY EVERYONE ON THE PLANET DURING THAT 1969 - 1975 ERA.
FOLKS BEGAN RIDING "RACING LOOK BICYCLES WITH THE DROP BARS....RACING BARS IS WHAT PEOPLE CALLED THEM THEN, BECAUSE THOSE "Turkey" Safety Levers ALLOWED FOLKS TO RIDE THE TOPS...... YEAH, NOBODY GAVE A DAMN ABOUT THE EFFECTIVENESS OF HARD BRAKING WHILE USING THE TURKEYS BECAUSE FOLKS WERE NOT RIDING THEIR BICYCLES LIKE EDDY MERCX or HOW THE Dope-Boy LANCE A. would later ride.
So yes, the Turkeys brought huge numbers to the racing style bikes and largely contributed to the BIKE-BOOM.
It was an impossibility that RACING STYLE BIKES could have caught on with such massive popularity Without the Introduction of the Turkeys.....-safety levers- that were the rage beginning in 1969. No way in hell that, the racing style bikes would have caught on with the masses here in the USA before that 1969 introduction. Yes, it is possible that maybe in the 1970's the 10 speed would have still gained somewhat in popularity even if the Safety Levers-'turkeys" had never been introduced...............Shimano and SUNTOUR had improved rear derailleur quality by the start of the seventies to a level of reliability and quality that the Europeans never even imagined. I do believe that yes the safety levers were 100% the biggest catalyst that got ordinary folks to initially jump aboard ten speed bicycles. These millions of ordinary folks also realized within one to two years in the early seventies that the Japanese rear derailleurs were durable and trouble free and most anything Campagnolo and Simplex was not and Huret was the least bad of the Europeans but still light years behind Shimano & Maeda SUNTOUR in quality.
..............What can I say but : "...we were all there ,,,,,,,,...a generation lost in space..........but thats how it used to be "