Re:Why did we wait so long for the bicycle? (2019)
by kazinator on Monday December 07, 2020 @06:17PM
(#25339094)
Yes, it really is about the tech.
Firstly, bicycles need pneumatic tires. They need serious pneumatic tires that hold pressure, and withstand temperature changes. Not having good roads is a factor; but you can address that with good, wide, durable tires. The inner tubes have to be reliable, and reparable. Tires are not feasible without vulcanized rubber. Rubber that is not vulcanized turns soft when hot, and when it's cold, it hardens and cracks. It is not durable for road use; it will quickly abrade and peel away under braking.
A bicycle made using wooden wagon wheels with steel rims is not feasible. It's not just the atrocious ride quality. It would not be safe. A bicycle tilts when it turns; it needs a wheel with a rounded profile, not square. The wheel must provide traction, otherwise the unit will skid easily. Hard wheels are suitable only for vehicles with axles: carriages and trains. A bike without tires could not only not be used on a dirt road; it wouldn't even work on a varnished wooden deck.
The drive train of a bicycle, such as the chain, requires considerable skill and tooling in machining. This was not available until well into the industrial revolution.
Ball bearings used in bicycle bearings, such as the bottom bracket hub, have to be manufactured to ridiculous precision.
You might as well ask why did we wait for so long for zipper fasteners---those teeth are so darned accurately shaped and clamped onto the cloth tape.
For a good part of the bicycle era, bicycles were commonly used on dirt roads. Their tech had to be good enough for it, though.
Before you can even solve the tech issues, someone has to get the idea: the idea that it's feasible for a human to ride a single-track vehicle. It's obvious now; almost anyone can learn to ride a bicycle, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. You would not suspect such a thing, in a world in which bicycles don't exist. (Physicists likely knew that a rolling wheel is stable, with equations to prove it, but that doesn't translate to an intuition that people could easily become riders of a contraption based on that stability.) However, the idea didn't take long to arrive after the technological feasibility. It's not the case that we had a feasible design for bicycles in place for hundreds of years, which only waited for the industrial revolution to arrive. The ideas come from experiments which are enabled by the tech.
Firstly, bicycles need pneumatic tires. They need serious pneumatic tires that hold pressure, and withstand temperature changes. Not having good roads is a factor; but you can address that with good, wide, durable tires. The inner tubes have to be reliable, and reparable. Tires are not feasible without vulcanized rubber. Rubber that is not vulcanized turns soft when hot, and when it's cold, it hardens and cracks. It is not durable for road use; it will quickly abrade and peel away under braking.
A bicycle made using wooden wagon wheels with steel rims is not feasible. It's not just the atrocious ride quality. It would not be safe. A bicycle tilts when it turns; it needs a wheel with a rounded profile, not square. The wheel must provide traction, otherwise the unit will skid easily. Hard wheels are suitable only for vehicles with axles: carriages and trains. A bike without tires could not only not be used on a dirt road; it wouldn't even work on a varnished wooden deck.
The drive train of a bicycle, such as the chain, requires considerable skill and tooling in machining. This was not available until well into the industrial revolution.
Ball bearings used in bicycle bearings, such as the bottom bracket hub, have to be manufactured to ridiculous precision.
You might as well ask why did we wait for so long for zipper fasteners---those teeth are so darned accurately shaped and clamped onto the cloth tape.
For a good part of the bicycle era, bicycles were commonly used on dirt roads. Their tech had to be good enough for it, though.
Before you can even solve the tech issues, someone has to get the idea: the idea that it's feasible for a human to ride a single-track vehicle. It's obvious now; almost anyone can learn to ride a bicycle, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. You would not suspect such a thing, in a world in which bicycles don't exist. (Physicists likely knew that a rolling wheel is stable, with equations to prove it, but that doesn't translate to an intuition that people could easily become riders of a contraption based on that stability.) However, the idea didn't take long to arrive after the technological feasibility. It's not the case that we had a feasible design for bicycles in place for hundreds of years, which only waited for the industrial revolution to arrive. The ideas come from experiments which are enabled by the tech.