The Original Sports Technology?

Last week, many of us gave thanks for one thing or another on the American holiday dedicated to expressing gratitude by engorging one's self with food.

Some of us were grateful for family and friends; others, simply to be alive. Then there are those who were grateful to stores for opening an hour earlier than they did last year.  You know what they say:  Early bird gets the bargains.

Well, all right, I don't know who said that.  But a fellow named Tom Taylor and I both gave thanks for...you guessed it...the bicycle.  Of course, we are both happy that a thing that gives us so much pleasure was ever invented.  He, however, gives another really good reason to be happy that the Draisienne, or whatever you consider the first bicycle, was invented.

You see, Taylor is, a mountain biker and involved in other outdoor sports.  At least, that's what I gather from what he says.  And he lives in Moab, after all.

In his article, he said the bicycle was "the original sports tech."  What he means is that, as far as we know, cycling was the first sport or leisuretime activity based on a product that required a certain amount of industrial capacity to produce.

As he explains, you don't need shoes to run and, "a branch falls from a tree, you find a pebble on the ground, and now you can play some form of cricket, or hockey, or baseball or golf.  Yes, you can make a better golf club and ball, but you can play regardless."  

He has a point:  Some of the most accomplished players in the "ball sports" learned how to play with nothing that resembles proper equipment.  They might've just rolled up whatever they could find to make a "ball" and, if sticks or clubs were necessary, twigs, branches or 2x4s from the junkyard stood in.  Naturally, some such athletes played barefoot until they signed their first professional contracts.

It also goes almost without saying that they played in the absence of any formal leagues, or any other kinds of structure or rules. For that matter, they sometimes didn't play on anything resembling a playing field or court.

I am talking about no less than Pele and Sammy Sosa.  Also, any number of hockey players used rocks or other things for "pucks" and anything that could be used to swat served as their hockey sticks.  I even read about one world-class player--I can't recall which, at the moment--who didn't even have skates until he joined a semi-professional league:  He and his friends would simply glide around on the ice on their most slippery shoes.

Now, we have often heard of champion cyclists who came from humble backgrounds, whether the family farm or a gritty indstrial town.  One could say that, for such reasons, a cyclist can't come from the same dire poverty as a football player from the favela because it takes more money to buy even the cheapest bicycle than it does to fashion a ball or stick.  Even if a budding young racer has to borrow a bike from a relative, friend or neighbor, simply having that kind of access signals less deprivation than not having a playing ball.

All of this might explain why no Grand Tour (or other major race) winner has come from an undeveloped country, while marathons and other running races are routinely won by competitors from places like Ethiopia and Jamaica.  This explanation makes sense, at least to me, when you realize that many European and American cyclists are also runners (and I'm not talking only about triathloners).  As Tom Taylor says, you can learn how to be a runner without shoes.  But it's pretty hard to learn how to ride a bike if, well, you don't have a bike.

It Was Always The Future--Until Now?

A sportswriter once joked that soccer (what the rest of the world calls football) will always be the sport of the future in America.

And an economist once said, only half in-jest, that Brazil will always be the country of the future.

Likewise, back in the '70's Bike Boom, bicycles were being touted as the "transportation of the future."  Around 1979 (the time of the second American "gas crisis") I saw, in a shop window, a touring bike with a sign hanging from it proclaiming it "the RV (recreational vehicle) of the '80's."

Then, of course, Ronald Reagan was elected and put the kibosh on anything--except nuclear power--that might've reduced this country's dependence on fossil fuels.

Through the '80's and '90's, bicycle sales in the US basically flatlined, with a few upticks in the middle of each decade.  Anecdotally, I don't recall seeing many more cyclists on the road in the late '90's than I saw around 1983, when I first moved back to New York.  When I was mountain biking in the mid- and late '90's, I would sometimes see new faces on the trails, but they never seemed to do any other kind of cycling.  I wonder how many of them still ride.

I got to thinking about these phenomena after I came across Clive Thompson's article in Wired. "The Vehicle of the Future Has Two Wheels, Handlebars and is a Bike," exclaims the title.   I checked my cynicism at the door and read it.  He made one really interesting point:  The same technologies that are bringing us driverless cars and other things that seemed like the stuff of science fiction not so long ago are bringing us back to a reliable technology that's more than a century old, i.e., the bicycle.

Photo by Noah Berger

One of the main drivers, if you will, of that would-be trend is bike-sharing programs.  As he pointed out, they were tried way back in the '60's but, with no way to track the location of the bikes, the programs quickly died.  When the first of the modern share programs started just over a decade ago, the technology that gave rise to "smart" phones and their apps made it possible to track bikes--and, in the early programs, to create docks where bicycles could be secured.  Newer programs are, of course, dockless because they rely on another technology--phone apps.

Thompson didn't intend any pun when he said that to see the future, we don't have to re-invent the wheel.  And I don't mean a pun when I say that perhaps technology is bringing us full circle.

Bicycles just might be the transportation of the future--right now.

Mature? Not Yet: Disc Brakes On Bicycles

In the mid-1970s, my high school acquired its first computer.  The father of one of my classmates, who worked in a nearby military base, in one of those jobs he couldn’t talk about, negotiated the purchase.  For $6000, my alma mater got a used machine, about half the size of a classroom—and with about half of the capacity of devices kids carry in their backpacks nowadays.

When I graduated the following year, one of my relatives gave me a new Texas Instruments Model 101 digital wristwatch.  With its red LED display and sleek goldtone band, it seemed like the epitome of elegance and slick high-tech, all rolled up into one.  No one else I knew had such a timepiece:  For the one and only time in my high-school years, I was the coolest kid in the class.  At least, that’s how I felt.

Neither the computer nor my watch made it past my sophomore year of college.  The big box (“It’s just an oversized, overpriced file cabinet!” one parent exclaimed upon learning what it cost) assigned classes like “Sports Heroes” to honors students who signed up for the Shakespeare seminar.  (I know.  I was one of those students.) And that was the least of the computer’s malfunctions. Worst of all, nobody seemed to know how to fix them.

And nobody seemed to know how to fix my watch.  One shop claimed that displays of numbers that had nothing to do with the time of day were a result of “water damage” –only moments after I took that watch out of its box.  (I have since learned that technicians and reps say “water damage” when your electronic device is acting up or not working and  they can’t figure out why.)

Less than a decade after I graduated high school, the Yankees were giving away digital watches (with the team’s logo, of course) as promotional items on Fan Appreciation Day. My graduation gift, in contrast, sold for more (in non-inflation adjusted dollars) than most smartphones or laptops cost today.  And the watches the Yankees gave away were more reliable (water resistant to 100 meters, and shock resistant) than the one I got on Graduation Day.   

I was thinking about the computer and watch as I read an article in the most recent Bicycle Quarterly.

In “Are Disc Brakes Mature Technology? “, Jan Heine recounts his and other BQ editors’ experiences with both mechanical and hydraulic disc brakes on road, mountain and city bikes.  While the brakes on one bike offered the power and modulation of good caliper brakes, their performance was hampered by their incompatibility with the levers that came on the bike.  The brakes on the other bike were not as good as road calipers and, worse, there were a couple of potentially serious failures. 

Heine seems to think that disc brakes have potential, but there are issues that need to be worked out.  Braking power is still determined mainly by the size of the disc.  A larger disc is heavier and could necessitate larger forks—both of which are anathema to racers and other performance-oriented cyclists.  More important, though, is that while larger discs offer more power, they seem to offer less modulation.  From what Heine and others say, it seems that larger rotors give the brakes the “all or nothing” feel that V-brakes (at least the ones I’ve used) always seem to have.

Avid BB7 disc brake on Look X85 cyclo-cross bike

The flip-side is, of course, that smaller rotors offer less power.  And, if there isn’t enough power, whatever modulation the brakes offer is all but irrelevant.

Another problem, as Heine points out, is that on disc brakes, the pad grabs the disc on the rear.  On a front fork, that means the wheel is pulled away from the dropout (or fork end).  When you’re barreling down a hill—or sluicing through traffic—few things are more dangerous than a front wheel popping out of a fork. 

Most modern quick release levers, Heine says, aren’t secure enough for bikes with powerful disc brakes.   Through-axles, like the ones found on downhill bikes, might be a solution.  But even with them, the fork blades on most non-suspension (telescoping) forks wouldn’t be stiff enough to counter the forces the brakes would put on them.  So, Heine says, a dedicated suspension fork might be the best kind to use with disc brakes.

 (In contrast, rim brakes pull the wheel slightly upward, into the dropout.  And their forces are concentrated in or near the stiffest and strongest part of the fork:  the crown.  That is the reason why properly-installed wheels don’t fall out of forks equipped with rim brakes or no brakes.)

I myself don’t plan to start using disc brakes any time soon:  I have never had trouble getting the braking power and modulation I need from rim brakes, as long as I use good cables and pads and keep everything properly adjusted.  Plus, there is something to be said for the simplicity, not to mention the lighter weight, of such brakes.  So, I hope that disc brakes don’t become the only option on new bikes or that component manufacturers stop making rim brakes and parts.

On the other hand, I am not against some bikes coming with disc brakes, or for such brakes to be offered on bikes where they might make sense.  Most of all, I hope they don’t become a de facto standard—or the only option—before they are a “mature” technology.  At least, when my digital watch failed, I still had the mechanical watch another relative gave me for a birthday—my 12^th or 13^th, if I remember correctly.  And plenty of others were available. 

Google As I Say, Not As I Do

I was a hypocrite.  There was something I used to forbid my students from using.  Then, one day--you know where this is going!--one of my students caught me red-handed with it.

If you guessed that thing is a smartphone, you'd be on the right track.  I'm talking about something people often use on their phones--and tablets and laptops.

It's the conduit that led some of you, my dear readers, to this blog.

You guessed it:  Google. 

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, its creators, formally incorporated their company on this date, 4 September, in 1998. 

I learned of Google's birthday, if you will when I was--of course--Googling something. 

(What kind of role model am I?  I teach students not to verb nouns.  And I said I was "googling" something!)

It's quite a coincidence-- isn't it?--that Google's birthday is the day after that of eBay, which turned 20 yesterday.  It wasn't the first Internet search engine, but it was probably the first to offer access to so much of the worldwide web in a format that most people can easily use. 



Google's webpage, 1998

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, eBay seems to have been tailor-made for cyclists, especially those who are looking for parts and accessories, even bikes, that are no longer made or are simply difficult to find.  Google, I believe, has been a boon for cyclists in a similar way:  It has given us access to all sorts of information about bicycles and cycling. 

Cyclists have been using Google to look for assembly or repair instructions, check parts compatiblity , find bike clubs and rides, learn about an obscure bike brand and search for all sorts of other cycling-related information for more than a decade now.  All sorts of bicycle catalogues, manuals, brochures and magazines have been scanned and posted to various sites on the web, nearly all of which can be reached by Google. 


Messrs. Page and Brin certainly chose quite the date to turn their Stanford research project into one of the world's great cash cows.  Here are some other interesting and important events that took place on 4 September:

• 475 --Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was deposed when Odacer proclaimed himself "King of Italy".   According to many historians, this event effectively ended the Roman Empire.
• 1781--City of Los Angeles was founded.
• 1870--Emperor Napoleon III of France was deposed and The Third Repubic was declared. (This is the reason why Paris and other French cities have streets called "rue 4 Septembre".)
• 1888--George Eastman registered the trademark "Kodak" and received a patent for his camera, the first to use roll film.
• 1951--The first live transcontinental television broadcast took place in San Francisco. 
• 1972--Mark Spitz became the first competitor to win seven gold medals in a single Olympiad.

And...in 1957, Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel. Oh, well.

Fun fact:  Have you ever noticed that the letters of the Google logo are blue, yellow, red and green?  Those just happen to be the colors of Lego blocks--which were used to build the enclosure that housed the first Google computer at Stanford.