Into The Fold On Being And Nothingness

Handing over a bank note is enough to make a bicycle belong to me, but my entire life is needed to realize this possession.

That insight came from none other than Jean-Paul Sartre.  Yesterday, I made a reference to him.  Well, wouldn't you know it?:  Today I came across the above quote, and this photo:


Here he is riding "Le Petit Bi":

This bike has been all but lost to the mists of time or, more precisely, the ashes of World War II.  Andre Jules Marcelin, a French Nobel Laureate (1926) physicist, invented it and received his first patent for it in Luxembourg in October 1939.  The following year, he received patents for it in France and Switzerland.

No one seems to know who manufactured the bike or how many were made.  All that is certain is that only a few exist.  Did the war severely curtail their production?  Or were many destroyed in bombing raids and such?

Professor Marcelin did his research at the Laboratoire de Chimie Physique (Chemical Physics Lab) of the Sorbonne-University of Paris.  He and other Sorbonne scientists held seminars on Monday nights where writers, poets, painters and other artists to speak.  It's possible that Marcelin met Sartre there, as well as Francois Picabia, seen here on a Bi:

Interestingly, that photo and the one of Sartre ended up in a Nazi propaganda magazine called Signal, which tried to show that life was normal for the French people under the German occupation.  

That Marcelin went to the trouble of filing for patents in multiple countries shows that he saw some sort of commercial potential in the Bi.  He even had plans for a foldable tandem and a motorized Bi:

Perhaps most intriguing of Marcelin's designs is the one he patented in 1935, four years before the Bi, for what looks like a foldable recumbent bicycle.

Whatever its history, the Bi did have something of a legacy.  One of the first lightweight folding bicycles, the Bickerton, came out during the 1970s.  The first prototype of it borrowed heavily from Le Petit Bi:

The Bickerton that finally came to market had a significantly different design, most likely because Harry Bickerton (who was an engineer) saw that he couldn't make the bike out of aluminum (as he did to achieve his bike's light weight) if he were to use the Petit Bi design.

So, although Andre Jules Marcelin patented Le Petit Bi, perhaps no one will realize its possession--or, more precisely, it.

Into The Fold: Bickerton

Mention folding bicycles today, and the first name that comes to most people's minds is Dahon.   Discerning (or rich) cyclists would probably mention Brompton.  

Those of us who came of age during or before the '70's Bike Boom recall the Raleigh Twenty and similar bikes made by Peugeot and other European manufacturers.  For a few days, I owned an Italian-made Chiorda from that era.

Interestingly, "folders" may be the one genre of bicycles not made by Japanese manufacturers of that time. At least, I don't recall any from Fuji, Nishiki or any of the other bike-builders from the Land of the Rising Sun.

One of the most interesting folding bikes of all--at least for its time--is almost entirely forgotten now.  However, it might be said to be the forerunner of today's folding bikes.  Andrew Ritchie said the bike I'm going to talk about was his inspiration in designing the first Brompton bicycle.

Harry Bickerton was one of those eccentric tinkerers who so often come from England.  He worked as an engineer at Rolls-Royce and De Havilland. In 1968, a driving ban made his commute difficult.  Dissatisified with using his road bike and the best folding bike he could find, he set out to combine the best features of the two.

The result was patented four years later.  It could fit into a shopping bag and, best of all, weighed only 17 pounds--less than almost any road, or even track, bike available at that time.

He achieved the feat with a hinge he developed that remained relatively rigid when the bike was opened up--and by constructing the frame from aluminum.  Also, most of the components were made from aluminum alloy--in contrast to the all-steel folding bikes from Raleigh and other makers--and the handlebars were made to be folded relatively easily.

Notice that I used the word "relatively".  In comparison to other folding mechanisms of the time, Bickerton's worked more smoothly and reliably.  However, it had to be handled with care.  As Tom Cuthbertson wryly noted, the manual that came with the bikes was one of the greatest pieces of instructional literature ever written because it had to be. 

Perhaps the most unique feature of the bike, though was that there were no welds or brazes anywhere in the frame.  Rather, it was constructed from aluminum profiles fitted together. 

Like other aluminum bikes that preceded Klein and Cannondale, the Bickerton is an example of a "flexible flyer".  Or, at least, a flexible magic carpet.  People who rode Bickertons almost always said they were great as long as you didn't mind the flex.  

I never rode a "Bickie" myself, but I suspect that its flexibility gave it more ability to absorb shock than other small-wheeled bikes.  I would guess that if you rode into one of those potholes with its own Zip Codes that we have in some parts of New York, you might have more chance of coming out of it without the mishap I incurred on my Dahon.

Perhaps the Bickerton's floppy qualities made it less durable, and might be a reason why so few can be found today.  Production stopped in 1989 and the factory closed in 1991, but bikes bearing the family name are being made in Taiwan for a company headed by Harry's son Mark.  The new Bickertons look a heck of a lot like Dahons.

Bickerton has a distributor in Mexico but not in the US.  Hmm...I wonder whether Dahon has anything to do with that.