On Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:54:21 GMT, Ryan Cousineau <
[email protected]>
wrote:
>In article <[email protected]>,
> [email protected] wrote:
>
>> http://www.hfmgv.org/village/qtvr/wrightbrothers.mov
>>
>> You can pan and zoom and go to the next room.
>
>Lovely find.
>
>> A) That's a shaft-drive bike, front and center. Sorry, Orville, but
>> that won't fly.
>>
>> B) The bike has a nicely visible mounting peg on its rear axle.
>
>You know, I agree that you've explained the purpose and history of
>mounting pegs, and when one-sided, that purpose is singular and
>indisputable, but at my local corner Daiso, they also sell pegs very
>much like those. There, the pegs are explicitly meant to be used for
>carrying another rider.
>
>But of course, those same pegs, whatever their original purpose, then
>went on to become the trick standing and grind pegs on freestyle BMX
>bikes, giving them a third life.
>
>Is this essentially a single design feature that has been revitalized
>twice by finding a new reason for being? That's a remarkable bit of
>technology.
>
>> C) It's poised in the finest rear-wheel bike-stand that I've ever
>> seen. If I had a bike stand like that, I'd never flip my bike
>> upside-down again.
>
>And yet, how are the two frames next to it stored?
>
>> D) I don't know whether Andrew Muzi will like the LBS stuff more than
>> Chalo Colina will like the machine tools, but neither of them can ever
>> complain about cramped quarters again.
>
>In the second room, I noticed that 19th century equivalent of in-built
>compressed air: dual overhead power shafts, with belt-drive for all the
>machines.
>
>What, chain was no good for them? I suppose belt was more forgiving when
>you brushed against it or it broke.
Dear Ryan,
Yes, BMX pegs are sort of reinventing the--
Er, not reinventing the wheel, but you get the idea.
Mounting pegs were just part of the earliest safeties. All full-size
highwheelers came with them (except for racers, where you were helped
up and held steady by an assitant until the start). So many of the
early safeties with their large wheels and fixed gears offered the
same mounting step.
Unfortunately, mounting steps are darned hard to see because riders
tend to stand on the left side of the bike and smile over it into the
camera. (I was browsing through "King of the Road" by Andrew Price
today while looking for other things and noticed lots of them, but
I'll spare you my glorious discoveries, at least for a little while.)
Here's an amusing example of just how hard a mounting peg can be to
see. The Smithsonian has an online picture of a generic old safety
bike with its parts numbered and named:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/collection/object_319.html
But that picture is so low-res that you can't read the numbers or the
text, even enlarged! Even when I copied the picture and used an
enlarging program, most of the stuff was still illegible.
In fact, about half the numbers and captions were accidentally cut
off. (Not that I think there's an online conspiracy to hide things
from me.)
I belatedly found the original high-res picture, uncropped, from
"Wheels and Wheeling: The Smithsonian Cycle Collection":
http://i2.tinypic.com/815ql4z.jpg
Full size, the bike fills the whole screen and you can see that the
coasting pegs are #31 on the front and are called "coasters." A tiny
bit of the rear mounting step is now visible, labeled #33 and called
"step." The mounting step was just a common part of a bike back in
those days, like quick-releases and water bottle cages are today.
I haven't seen any old safeties with mirror-image mounting pegs like
modern BMX, but you've given me an excuse to show a double-step on a
highwheeler:
http://www.macomb.k12.mi.us/wq/beck/1e.htm
With that large 56-inch wheel, the normal low left-side mounting peg
wasn't quite enough, so a higher right-side mounting peg was added.
The rider below might have appreciated that second right-hand mounting
step as he scaled the backbone of his highwheeler:
http://i2.tinypic.com/4tz3tp0.jpg
As for the almost universal preference for belts over chain in shops
of that era, leather belts were cheaper, quieter, and cleaner than
chains.
Belts needed no oil, were easy to change around on the machinery, and
never wore out the sprockets that they didn't run on.
If you look inside your inexpensive multi-speed drill press, you'll
find a belt and pulleys instead of the over-complicated chain drive
that provides so much entertainment on RBT.
Larger and more precise tools tend to skip from belt to direct gears,
with no chain drive versions in between. The cost of electric engines
has been reduced so much that most factories now run electric lines to
separate engines at each station rather than running many tools off a
central shaft--the engines run only when needed and the operators have
much more control.
I still want that Wright brothers bike stand.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
