A "Smart" Investment?

For all of the work that has been done with frame and wheel materials and configurations, and with new ways of shifting and braking, the single most important bicycle-related technological innovation--indeed, one of the world's most important technological innovations, period-- is 135 years old.

I am talking about the pneumatic tire, which John Boyd Dunlop created.  Note my choice of the last word in the previous sentence:  For decades, Dunlop was cited as the "inventor" of the air-filled rubber tire.  But neither he nor researchers on the subject seemed to have been aware of the patent fellow Scotsman Robert Thomson took out four decades earlier for his "aerial wheels," which were tubes of rubber strengthened by a process Thomson invented:  vulcanization.

 Thomson's creations were produced only in limited quantities mainly because rubber, at the time, was very expensive.  And, because there were no cars or planes, and very few of anything we would recognize as bicycles, the market for his creation was limited.  Apparently, though trials showed that carriages fitted with Thomson's "aerial"s were markedly faster and more comfortable, carriage owners and operators didn't line up to buy them.  My guess is that changing a flat tire would have been, to say the least, arduous.

Anyway, Dunlop's tires literally changed the world: Without them,  bicycles, cars and trucks would be no faster than horse-drawn carriages , and modern aircraft could not take off or land. And, ever since, owners and operators of vehicles have tried to eliminate the main drawback of air-filled tires--that they can flat--without sacrificing their buoyancy.

(To clarify:  For whatever advantages they offer, today's tubeless tires do not solve this dilemma.  Since they are filled with air, they indeed can go flat.)

It seems that every decade or two, someone or some company or another comes out with an airless tire.  A few years ago, I wrote about one I rode--the Zeus LCM--I tried about four decades ago, when I worked at Highland Park Cyclery in New Jersey. While I understood their appeal to commuters and folks who weren't confident in their mechanical abilities--or simply didn't want to dirty their hands or scratch their newly-enameled nails--I switched back to my air-filled tubed tires after a few rides.  

About two and a half years ago, I wrote about one of the latest attempts to create an airless tire.  Actually, unless I want to be struck by the ghost of my old physics teacher, I have to correct myself:  there is air at the core of the tire I'm about to describe, just as there is air in most "empty" spaces on Earth.  The difference is that the air at the hollow core of the Metl tire isn't pressurized and not necessary for the tire to hold its shape.

Rather, the Metl tire, as the name indicates, is kept round by a Slinky-like spring made from a nickel-titanium alloy and wound around the inside of a polyurethane-rubber tube, which has a replaceable rubber tread.  The alloy used in the spring, combined with its design, makes for a tire that, like conventional pneumatics, deforms on impact but springs back to its original shape.  This design is very similar to the tires used on planetary rover vehicles, so it's not surprising that tires were developed for the Smart Tire Company with NASA's cooperation.

The Metl tire, without its tread.

The treads are said to have a lifespan of 5000 to 8000 miles (about 8000 to 12,800 km) but the main body of the tire should last for the life of the bike, according to Smart.  They fit conventional rims and are now available--via a Kickstarter campaign--in 700C X 32,35 and 38C sizes.  The 35C width has a claimed weight of 450 grams (about 16 ounces, or one pound), which is fairly typical for a tire of its size.

A pledge of $500 will get you a pair of tires, and it costs $10 to re-tread them.  A complete set of aluminum or carbon-fiber wheels clad with Metl tires can be had with pledges of $1300 and $2300, respectively.  Just take note, dear investors (When have you ever seen that phrase in a novel?) that delivery of the tires and wheels isn't expected before next June.

Speed, From The Comfort of Your Sofa

In my post about the death of Prince Philip, I mentioned that he particpiated in one of the few genres of cycling in which I've never tried:  bicycle polo.

Now I'm going to talk about one of the few kinds of bicycles I've never tried:  the recumbent.

The "safety" bicycle, with two wheels of equal (or nearly so) size and a gear-and-chain drivetrain appeared in the late 1880s.  Earlier bicycles--the high-wheelers often called "penny farthings"--had a front wheel much larger than the rear.  The crank and pedals attached directly to the front wheel, so how high or low a gear you rode depended on the size of the wheel.  Typical front wheels were 60 to 70 inches in diameter, which meant for a rather precarious perch in the saddle.  The "safety" bicycle was a contrast to such machines.

Charles Challand's "Normal"

But not everyone liked the bent-over position of those early "safety" bicycles.  So, Charles Challand, a Geneva professor, created the "normal" bicycle--so called because it allowed the rider to pedal in a "normal" position.

Around the same time, Irving Wales of Rhode Island applied for a patent on a similar bicycle.  His bike, however, had an added feature:  a hand drive similar to the one on a rowing machine.  Though augmenting pedal power could make for a faster ride, hand power never really caught on.

Other tinkerers would experiment with other features, which re-appear from time to time on modern recumbents:  An Italian recumbent had a steering wheel instead of handlebars; an English machine had a 16 inch front wheel and short wheelbase, rather like a time trial or triathlon bike.  A long-wheelbase recumbent from France, possibly made by Peugeot, had a 26-inch rear wheel and 22-inch front, with a front end resembling that of a diamond-frame safety bike.  But the handlebars were where the saddle of a safety would have been; bridle rods linked them to the steerer (headset). 

That long-wheelbase recumbent might have been the most conspicuous example of what recumbent bike designers have tried to achieve:  a smooth, stable ride from the comfort of your sofa.

Paul Jaray's "Sofa" bicycle

Speaking of which:  In 1921, Austrian aeronautical engineer Paul Jaray created the "sofa" bicycle.  In addition to its seating arrangement, it boasted another unique feature:  treadle drive.  On his first stereotype, Jaray connected the treadles to the rear wheel by steel cables with return springs.  

In a later version, a cable from the left treadle lever wound several times around a left drum on the rear hub, then onto a horizontal pulley, and then onto a right drum.  After several more winds, the cable connected to the right treadle lever.  This might seem complicated, but it did away with the "dead center" problem of the first stereotype.

Over the years, other cyclists, engineers, inventors and tinkerers experimented with different recumbent designs.  Two developments, though, halted the machines' evolution for a few decades.  The first came in 1934, when the UCI published a new definition of racing bikes that, some said, was crafted specifically to exclude recumbents, which were being ridden to record times and distances.  The second was World War II.  

Still, the recumbent never quite faded away.  There seems to be renewed interest in them, and they're being reconfigured with modern materials and componentry.  One rarely, if ever, sees recumbents here in New York or in other large cities, I believe, because of their (and their riders') lack of visibility in traffic.  But I intend to ride a "sofa" one day.

Harley Plugging Into E-Bikes

 Is an e-bike really a bicycle?  What about a motorized bicycle?  What's the difference between a motorbike and a bicycle with a motor?  And, at what point did a bicycle with a motor attached to it become a motorcycle?

That last question certainly would have been relevant, or at least interesting in the first years of the 20th Century.  That's when the first "motorcycles" were introduced.  More than a century later, they look more like fat-tired "cruiser" bicycles (like the ones Schwinn and Columbia made before the 70s Bike Boom) with motors attached than, say, something one might expect to find in a Harley-Davidson showroom.

Unless it's this Harley: 

Although it comes from H-D, it's not called a "Harley."  Rather, the company has called it--and the division that will offer it--Serial 1.  The machine in the photo is a prototype of what will be available in the Spring of 2021, according to the company.

It's interesting that Harley is going "full circle" in an attempt to renew itself.  I can remember when riding a Harley was a sign of marching (OK, riding) to one's own drummer: Think of Wyatt (played by Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) in Easy Rider.  These days, though, the guy perched on a Harley is more likely to be a dentist who's, oh, about my age than a young, footloose rebel.  Harley-Davidson sales have been all but nonexistent among millenials and not much better among Generation X.  

Could a Harley, rather than a DeLorean, be the vehicle that brings young people back to the future?