wrote in message 
news:n0u2c4d5shadrtcqmju70295jkqua3rikg@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 5 Sep 2008 10:05:42 -0700 (PDT), Chalo
>  wrote:
>
>>'Bents seem to be in a state of development comparable to where normal
>>bicycles were in the 1870s-- there is no real consensus as to the best
>>configuration for a 'bent, and nobody has yet succeeded in making one
>>that clearly demonstrates the inferiority of other basic designs.
>
> Dear Chalo,
>
> That's an interesting comparison.
>
> Velocipedes were the first bicycles with pedals. They appeared in the
> 1860s and looked like huge, clumsy modern bicycles with a crank
> attached to the front wheel.
>
> By the early 1870s, velocipedes had evolved into highwheelers.
>
> The front wheel grew larger and larger to provide decent gearing, the
> rear wheel shrank to allow easy mounting and to save weight, and the
> seat moved up higher and higher for comfort and leverage, so the rider
> ended up perched close enough to the front axle to tumble forward on
> his face if he braked hard or hit a bump.
>
> Safety highwheelers were developed at the same time, since the danger
> of a header became obvious as soon people started riding highwheelers.
>
> The safety versions were either dwarf highwheelers with mechanical
> gearing to overcome the limits of a small front wheel, normal-size
> highwheelers with mechanical gearing tricks to move the rider back
> toward the rear wheel, or reversed highwheelers, with the big wheel in
> back.
>
> The safety highwheelers were never very popular, even though they were
> prized by collectors. The primitive mechanical gearing tended to fail
> outright or else wear out quickly, it cost far more than a simple
> solid crank, and there was some stigma attached to riding a small
> wheel bicycle when real men fearlessly rode 56-inch wheels.
>
> The triumph of the highwheeler around 1880 was clear--it was known as
> the ordinary because the brick-simple highwheeler was indeed the
> ordinary bicycle, and everything else was just a silly contraption
> that was less reliable, more expensive, and so on.
>
> Like recumbents, the safety highwheelers did well in competition,
> often winning races. The victories of the safety highwheelers had
> about the same effect on their sales as recumbent victories have
> today--the Tour de France is not likely to switch to recumbents, no
> matter how fast the Varna Diablo II goes.
>
> In 1884, half a dozen or so bizarre versions of the modern safety
> bicycle appeared, most of them using chains, sprockets, and steering
> borrowed from the thriving tricycle world.
>
> Tricycles were enormously popular back then. Uncle James Starley is
> famous because he came up with tangent lacing for highwheelers in the
> early 1870s, but most of his production was tricycles, not
> highwheelers. (And Starley's tricycles mostly used radial lacing. In
> fact, most highwheelers ignored tangent lacing until 1885.)
>
> Why were tricycles so popular?
>
> First, tricycles were much easier to learn to ride. Nowadays, anyone
> who tries to ride a highwheeler already has has years of experience
> riding safety bicycles. Back then, the typical bicyclist was a grown
> man who had never balanced on two wheels or turned a pedal.
>
> Next, tricycles were much safer. They didn't fall over, anyone could
> get on or off them, and they didn't go very fast. Just learning to
> mount and dismount a highwheeler on flat ground usually involved a
> number of falls.
>
> Most of all, tricycles handled hills much better. You could climb
> hills with a tricycle and pass highwheelers whose riders had gotten
> off and were pushing. Then you could turn around and go back down,
> comfortably and safely, while the highwheelers were careening out of
> control past you, unable to brake safely and liable to being thrown
> over the handlebar if they hit a bump.
>
> That's why so many old books have titles that mention bicycles _and_
> tricycles--the tricycles gave bicycles serious competition for just
> riding around in the 1880s.
>
> But 1884 was the beginning of the end for tricycles and highwheelers.
> A spate of weird-looking two-wheelers with tricycle gearing and chains
> and steering erupted--Humber, Marvel, Antelope, Pioneer, BSA, and the
> prototype of nephew John Starley's Rover with remote steering, which
> was improved in 1885, and soon we had the modern double-diamond safety
> bike.
>
> Curiously, nephew John Starley later wrote that he had hill climbing
> in mind when he built the Rover, not safety. Looking back, we tend to
> emphasize the obvious safety of sitting between two wheels, while our
> great grandfathers took the highwheeler's dangers for granted and
> cared more about getting up those damned hills.
>
> The safeties quickly evolved to the classic double-diamond, with
> inflatable tires appearing in 1889. Again, our modern notions lead us
> to the wrong impression. The cushioning advantage of the pneumatic
> tire is so obivous to us that we assume that Dunlop was looking for
> comfort, but in fact his first experiments were aimed at showing that
> an inflated tire rolled faster and farther than a solid rubber tire,
> and the early pneumatics were used for racing.
>
> By 1894, a decade after the first horde of chain-driven designs
> appeared, the modern bicycle design was practically set in stone:
>
> http://www.nostalgic.net/index.asp?S=arc/ScannedLit/TheBicyclingWorld-3-16-94/TBW%2D3%2D16%2D94pg00%2Ejpg
>
> Page down past the aluminum bicycle ad at the top and look at the
> 25-lb 1894 Warwick. It's a fixie with wooden rims, balloon tires, and
> inch-pitch chain. The big chain disappeared first, the wooden rims
> lasted longer, and many riders still use big tires for comfort (and
> more riders would use wider tires if the roads were still unpaved).
>
> Caliper brakes, rear hub brakes, hub gears, and derailleurs were all
> available before 1900.
>
> It took only ten years for safety bicycles to wipe out the
> highwheelers--1894 was last year that highwheelers were produced.
> Since then, the safety bicycle hasn't really changed much in 120
> years. We have more gears, lighter frames, fewer spokes, thinner
> tires, and so on, but 99% of the pedals are still attached to upright
> double-diamond designs.
>
> A few illustrations . . .
>
> Velocipedes with two big wheels and front crank:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:The_American_Velocipede.jpg
>
> Highwheeler with small rear wheel and lamp hanging under front axle:
> http://i12.tinypic.com/4tz3tp0.jpg
>
> A dwarf Kangaroo safety highwheeler, with coasting pegs sticking out
> front and chain gearing hanging below the axle:
> http://tinyurl.com/5ugd6o
>
> The Star safety highwheeler, which put the big wheel in the rear:
> http://tinyurl.com/5ugd6o
>
> Starley's first remote steering Rover with a 36-inch front wheel:
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=VDlaT0KxJfAC&printsec=frontcover#PPP237
>
> The more sensible Rover:
> http://i13.tinypic.com/4v67a5z.jpg
>
> Again, Chalo makes a good point--the enormously popular upright
> bicycle went through its bizarre variations in about ten years and
> then settled on the modern bicycle design that hasn't changed much in
> over a century, while recumbents have been wavering between various
> designs since the 1930s (or earlier) without ever achieving much
> popularity.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Carl Fogel

Excellent review of the early development of the bicycle. Many more posts 
like this to ARBR and you will have been responsible for bringing this 
newsgroup back to life.

Regards,

Ed Dolan the Great - Minnesota
aka
Saint Edward the Great - Order of the Perpetual Sorrows - Minnesota