8 ms·
I always find it interesting to think about bicycles and just how recently they were invented. Compare bicycles with steel making, for example. Steel making ha
by adverbly 4y ago
I always find it interesting to think about bicycles and just how recently they were invented.
Compare bicycles with steel making, for example. Steel making happened thousands of years ago. The modern bicycle was what - under 200 years ago?
Bikes seem like such a primitive technology, and yet as this article demonstrates, it takes a lot of engineering to design even primitive products.
It makes me wonder how many other simple or primitive products are out there which have yet to be discovered.
- otabdeveloper4 4y agoBall-bearings? Primitive?? Surely you jest!
- ejensler 4y agoAgreed. Bicycles are kind of a miracle of seeming simplicity hiding a ton of important developments of the industrial age. 99 Percent Invisible did a recent episode on just this topic: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-safety-bicycle/ https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-safety-bicycle/.
- kube-system 4y agoI guess perspective makes it a lot less surprising that the first airplanes were made by bicycle manufacturers.
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoDon't even get me started on airplanes though - there was only 66 years between the first airplane (Wright Flyer in 1903) and the moon landing (1969). Disclaimer: that's of course a cool anecdote on the surface, but rockets have been around since the 13th century so they're two mostly different technologies.
- johannes1234321 4y agoAre rockets and planes related? Quite different requirements regarding aerodynamics and propulsion.
- kube-system 4y agoIt's all the same, just that the density of the fluid the vehicle is traveling in changes.
- johannes1234321 4y agoSo a submarine is the same, again? Key development for flight: Wings which carry the plane. First planes didn't even have an engine (besides human) Key development for rockets: Strong powerful engines to escape gravity. Aerodynamics matter relatively little, mostly for heat control. I don't know how related the development of jet engines and rocket engines was. Of course things like the Space Shuttle, which has some airplane-like aerodynamic steering tie both together ...
- kube-system 4y agoWe're playing a bit fast and loose with our phrasing here if we want to split hairs about the development of these technologies. Powered, navigable, human flight existed before the development of wings. The early rockets mentioned above weren't for human flight, nor for spaceflight. Rockets were developed to be terrestrial weapons, not to propel humans. Rocket engines and turbine engines are both a type of jet engine. These engine technologies themselves weren't developed together because one was developed to make airplanes go higher and faster, and the other was developed to stab people with arrows better. If what we're really talking about is "human flight", then rockets and turbine engines were both used to propel humans on airplanes before anyone started considering spaceflight. And then when humans did consider spaceflight, humans were developing space planes and tubular orbital rockets at the exact same time. The space shuttle was far from the first plane to operate at heights where the control surfaces no longer work. The X15 actually flew 2 years before Vostok 1. The people developing human flight were always interested in going faster and higher. The technologies they experimented with were intermixed the whole time.
- johannes1234321 4y agoThanks for the long response really appreciated!
- samstave 4y agoYou will be amazed to know that the Ball Brothers, who invested the Mason Jar/Atlas Jar, and perfected canning and soups... is also Ball Aerospace - who makes super-high end space components for the MIC, black projects, skunkworks, NASA etc... All from the Mason Jar. https://www.visitmuncie.org/a-legacy-etched-in-glass-the-ball-brothers-in-muncie/ https://www.visitmuncie.org/a-legacy-etched-in-glass-the-bal... (also "Aliens")
- jodrellblank 4y agoBikes benefit a lot from pneumatic tyres, pressure pumps, smooth asphalt (not cobbles), precision engineering of chains, chemistry of oils and lubricants, rust-proof steel, rubber brake pads with compounds that last long enough and resist rain, spring steel for suspension, cables that don't stretch. Without those things you get a wooden boneshaker hobby-horse, large, heavy, energy inefficient, incovenient: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hobby+horse+victorian+bike&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hobby+horse+victorian+bike&t=ffab&... (And internal combustion engines; how are you going to distribute them around the Roman Empire by the tens of millions without trucks or ships?)
- Alex3917 4y agoThe key invention that made them possible was ball bearings. This is why the modern bicycle and the modern car were invented within a year or two of each other.
- alt227 4y ago...and roads, which were created for use by horses and carraiges.
- B1FF_PSUVM 4y agoYep, 90% materials, and so are other things like windsurfing, paragliding, etc. Very little of the "modern stuff the ancients didn't figure out" could be done without modern materials. If dumped back in time, maybe you could make rent teaching swimming or doing accounting. Medicine would probably be too dangerous.
- blululu 4y agoYeah. Surfing is a great example of a Stone Age sport that has been radically changed by Space Age technology. Koa wood gets you a longboard that is hard to steer and can only surf long smooth waves. The modern surfboard is very much born out of California's aviation industry and its fixation on light, strong materials and aerodynamics. Surfing Pipeline is only possible with modern plastics, fins and shaping.
- atoav 4y agoA thought: The invention of the bicycle came at a similar time like engine driven vehicles. Before those became popular, the direct competitor for bicycles (one person transportation) were horses. There might have literally not been a need to invent a bicycle as horses fulfilled the same purpose and had the advantage that they fared better on the back then nearly non-existent infrastructure. Also: a single person transportation vehicle was not something a lot of people needed in their lives. You needed something to move stuff, but the demand to move single people daily came into existence with the dawn of big cities.
- odd_perfect_num 4y agoIt takes a LOT more calories to power a horse than a biker.
- atoav 4y agoOn a cretan mountain path with before christ technology?
- Psychlist 4y agoThere's a reason that horses were the fancy sports car/military tool of the animal transport world. They eat a lot, break easily, and don't last long. People used oxen, donkeys, llama etc way more than horses. And the Chinese invented wheelbarrows and used them extensively rather than using draft animals. They often use bicycles much the same way as wheelbarrows now, and rich people often find that amusing (possibly because a KMart bike is a toy, a Chinese bike is a workhorse).
- blululu 4y agoA parallel thought is that the first airplane is the product of bicycle mechanics and not railway or automotive mechanics. As others pointed out, there are a lot of necessary technologies like rubber, bearings, lubricants, sprockets and chains that need to be developed, but there is also something very elegant about bicycles. If you start to mess around with a 70's era road bikes you get a sense of just how perfectly everything needs to fit together and how everything affects everything else. (You see it more clearly in older bikes because you need to deal with non-standard parts). I think I learned more about bicycles from the royal pain of a 1982 Peugeot than anything else. This is not to say that a car doesn't have similar complexity, but the use of chemical fuel and 4 wheels masks how the tunings fit together. With my current bike there is a serious difference when it is perfectly tuned.
- fiftyacorn 4y agoThe production of quality steel isnt thousands of years old. Yeah they could produce small items - but to make the steel of the quality needed for bicycles is pretty new - the past 150-200 years with the Bessemer process
- moffkalast 4y agoThey could've just made them out of carbon fiber composites before /s
- alt227 4y agoBicycles are a relatively new invention because they require roads/flat paths which are also a relatively new occurance, and came about due to the widepread use of horses and then carraiges for transportation. A bike at any other point in human history would have been completely useless trying to traverse natural terrain.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoThe modern "fat bike" would be (is!) quite good at traversing a variety of natural terrains where humans live, without roads or paths/trails.
- IIsi50MHz 4y ago"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads." . o O ( Now if only 18.8 MPH were enough to activate the flux capacitor. )
- midoridensha 4y agoMountain bikes do not require roads or flat paths; they work fine on trails (hence the name "mountain bike"), which have existed since large animals evolved. However, mountain bikes arguably require even more technologies than other bicycles, especially for suspension and brakes (MTBs pioneered the use of disc brakes on bicycles).
- cainxinth 4y agoI always loved the scene in HBO's Deadwood when the first bicycle comes to town and everyone gathers to watch someone try and ride it.
- bluishgreen 4y agoNo shit, you can make an airplane if you know your way around a bicycle as the wright brothers demonstrated. They were bicycle mechanics originally.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoThe safety bicycle (chain, pedals in the middle) is about a decade newer than the car (under 150 years), although they hit mass production within a year either side of each other depending in how you define it.
- globular-toast 4y ago> Bikes seem like such a primitive technology, and yet as this article demonstrates, it takes a lot of engineering to design even primitive products. Very strange. I get that we take things for granted if they've been around forever (ie. since before we were born). But I never considered bicycles "primitive". What makes you think that? Is it because they don't need electronics? What is a non-primitive transport technology?
- ndsipa_pomu 4y agoThe timing of the invention of the bike is discussed here: https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-bicycle https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-... He settles on general economic and cultural factors. Experimentation requires there to be enough people with spare time and resources to play around with things with no immediately obvious payback.