CFRP drawbacks

Tom Sherman said:

Chalo Colina said:

Tom Sherman said:

As for disposable houses, that is due to the foolish decision of
purchasing for initial lowest cost, not lowest lifetime cost. Build a
house out of concrete and proper masonry, and it will not be disposable.
In Europe, there are 1000+ year old stone masonry buildings still in
use.

But how many houses' worth of wood has been used to heat those cold
stone houses over the last 1000 years?

Probably about the same as the crappy wood frame houses I used to live
in as a child. The walls on those houses let the wind and numerous
insects through.

A modern concrete house with concrete/foam/concrete "sandwich"
construction will cost less to heat and cool than a stick-frame and wall
board box of the same size will. The concrete house will also be
practically impervious to fire, water damage, insect intrusion and
damage, will not need siding and roof replacement, and will have a
structure that will easily be as functionally as good as new several
hundred years later.

Of course, modern USian society prefers disposable items, and
CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION!

here in the kommunist krepublic of kalifornistan, we like wood 'kos is
doesn't fall over in our earthquakes.

jim beam said:

Tom Sherman said:

Chalo Colina said:

Tom Sherman wrote:
> As for disposable houses, that is due to the foolish decision of
> purchasing for initial lowest cost, not lowest lifetime cost. Build a
> house out of concrete and proper masonry, and it will not be
> disposable.
> In Europe, there are 1000+ year old stone masonry buildings still in
> use.

But how many houses' worth of wood has been used to heat those cold
stone houses over the last 1000 years?

Probably about the same as the crappy wood frame houses I used to live
in as a child. The walls on those houses let the wind and numerous
insects through.

A modern concrete house with concrete/foam/concrete "sandwich"
construction will cost less to heat and cool than a stick-frame and
wall board box of the same size will. The concrete house will also be
practically impervious to fire, water damage, insect intrusion and
damage, will not need siding and roof replacement, and will have a
structure that will easily be as functionally as good as new several
hundred years later.

Of course, modern USian society prefers disposable items, and
CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION!

here in the kommunist krepublic of kalifornistan, we like wood 'kos is
doesn't fall over in our earthquakes.

That is why post-tensioning of concrete was invented. One can build a
house of pre-cast concrete panels that are post-tensioned and grouted
after assembly.

I believe CALTRANS is still using concrete in elevated highways and
bridges, no?

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
Beer - It's not just for breakfast anymore!

Tom Sherman said:

jim beam said:

Tom Sherman said:

Chalo Colina wrote:
> Tom Sherman wrote:
>> As for disposable houses, that is due to the foolish decision of
>> purchasing for initial lowest cost, not lowest lifetime cost. Build a
>> house out of concrete and proper masonry, and it will not be
>> disposable.
>> In Europe, there are 1000+ year old stone masonry buildings still
>> in use.
>
> But how many houses' worth of wood has been used to heat those cold
> stone houses over the last 1000 years?

Probably about the same as the crappy wood frame houses I used to
live in as a child. The walls on those houses let the wind and
numerous insects through.

A modern concrete house with concrete/foam/concrete "sandwich"
construction will cost less to heat and cool than a stick-frame and
wall board box of the same size will. The concrete house will also be
practically impervious to fire, water damage, insect intrusion and
damage, will not need siding and roof replacement, and will have a
structure that will easily be as functionally as good as new several
hundred years later.

Of course, modern USian society prefers disposable items, and
CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION!

here in the kommunist krepublic of kalifornistan, we like wood 'kos is
doesn't fall over in our earthquakes.

That is why post-tensioning of concrete was invented. One can build a
house of pre-cast concrete panels that are post-tensioned and grouted
after assembly.

I believe CALTRANS is still using concrete in elevated highways and
bridges, no?

yes. they're so confident, they've spent tonsamoney cladding lots of it
in steel.

jim beam said:

Tom Sherman said:

jim beam said:

Tom Sherman wrote:
> Chalo Colina wrote:
>> Tom Sherman wrote:
>>> As for disposable houses, that is due to the foolish decision of
>>> purchasing for initial lowest cost, not lowest lifetime cost. Build a
>>> house out of concrete and proper masonry, and it will not be
>>> disposable.
>>> In Europe, there are 1000+ year old stone masonry buildings still
>>> in use.
>>
>> But how many houses' worth of wood has been used to heat those cold
>> stone houses over the last 1000 years?
>
> Probably about the same as the crappy wood frame houses I used to
> live in as a child. The walls on those houses let the wind and
> numerous insects through.
>
> A modern concrete house with concrete/foam/concrete "sandwich"
> construction will cost less to heat and cool than a stick-frame and
> wall board box of the same size will. The concrete house will also
> be practically impervious to fire, water damage, insect intrusion
> and damage, will not need siding and roof replacement, and will have
> a structure that will easily be as functionally as good as new
> several hundred years later.
>
> Of course, modern USian society prefers disposable items, and
> CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION!
>

here in the kommunist krepublic of kalifornistan, we like wood 'kos
is doesn't fall over in our earthquakes.

That is why post-tensioning of concrete was invented. One can build a
house of pre-cast concrete panels that are post-tensioned and grouted
after assembly.

I believe CALTRANS is still using concrete in elevated highways and
bridges, no?

yes. they're so confident, they've spent tonsamoney cladding lots of it
in steel.

Newer construction, or older columns that lacked spiral reinforcement?

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
Beer - It's not just for breakfast anymore!

Tom Sherman said:

jim beam said:

Tom Sherman said:

"jim beam" wrote:
> Tom Sherman wrote:
>> Chalo Colina wrote:
>>> Tom Sherman wrote:
>>>> As for disposable houses, that is due to the foolish decision of
>>>> purchasing for initial lowest cost, not lowest lifetime cost.
>>>> Build a
>>>> house out of concrete and proper masonry, and it will not be
>>>> disposable.
>>>> In Europe, there are 1000+ year old stone masonry buildings still
>>>> in use.
>>>
>>> But how many houses' worth of wood has been used to heat those cold
>>> stone houses over the last 1000 years?
>>
>> Probably about the same as the crappy wood frame houses I used to
>> live in as a child. The walls on those houses let the wind and
>> numerous insects through.
>>
>> A modern concrete house with concrete/foam/concrete "sandwich"
>> construction will cost less to heat and cool than a stick-frame and
>> wall board box of the same size will. The concrete house will also
>> be practically impervious to fire, water damage, insect intrusion
>> and damage, will not need siding and roof replacement, and will
>> have a structure that will easily be as functionally as good as new
>> several hundred years later.
>>
>> Of course, modern USian society prefers disposable items, and
>> CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION!
>>
>
> here in the kommunist krepublic of kalifornistan, we like wood 'kos
> is doesn't fall over in our earthquakes.

That is why post-tensioning of concrete was invented. One can build a
house of pre-cast concrete panels that are post-tensioned and grouted
after assembly.

I believe CALTRANS is still using concrete in elevated highways and
bridges, no?

yes. they're so confident, they've spent tonsamoney cladding lots of
it in steel.

Newer construction, or older columns that lacked spiral reinforcement?

me guessing the steel content and configuration inside concrete that's
then clad in steel is like you guessing at the microstructure of a
material you've never examined under a microscope. all i can tell you
is that it was plain concrete, and it's since been clad in steel. and
that it hasn't been subject to a large quake since.

jim beam said:

Tom Sherman said:

jim beam said:

Tom Sherman wrote:
> "jim beam" wrote:
>> Tom Sherman wrote:
>>> Chalo Colina wrote:
>>>> Tom Sherman wrote:
>>>>> As for disposable houses, that is due to the foolish decision of
>>>>> purchasing for initial lowest cost, not lowest lifetime cost.
>>>>> Build a
>>>>> house out of concrete and proper masonry, and it will not be
>>>>> disposable.
>>>>> In Europe, there are 1000+ year old stone masonry buildings
>>>>> still in use.
>>>>
>>>> But how many houses' worth of wood has been used to heat those cold
>>>> stone houses over the last 1000 years?
>>>
>>> Probably about the same as the crappy wood frame houses I used to
>>> live in as a child. The walls on those houses let the wind and
>>> numerous insects through.
>>>
>>> A modern concrete house with concrete/foam/concrete "sandwich"
>>> construction will cost less to heat and cool than a stick-frame
>>> and wall board box of the same size will. The concrete house will
>>> also be practically impervious to fire, water damage, insect
>>> intrusion and damage, will not need siding and roof replacement,
>>> and will have a structure that will easily be as functionally as
>>> good as new several hundred years later.
>>>
>>> Of course, modern USian society prefers disposable items, and
>>> CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION!
>>>
>>
>> here in the kommunist krepublic of kalifornistan, we like wood 'kos
>> is doesn't fall over in our earthquakes.
>
> That is why post-tensioning of concrete was invented. One can build
> a house of pre-cast concrete panels that are post-tensioned and
> grouted after assembly.
>
> I believe CALTRANS is still using concrete in elevated highways and
> bridges, no?
>
yes. they're so confident, they've spent tonsamoney cladding lots of
it in steel.

Newer construction, or older columns that lacked spiral reinforcement?

me guessing the steel content and configuration inside concrete that's
then clad in steel is like you guessing at the microstructure of a
material you've never examined under a microscope. all i can tell you
is that it was plain concrete, and it's since been clad in steel. and
that it hasn't been subject to a large quake since.

I doubt that CALTRANS ever built bridges and elevated roadways with
plain concrete columns. Most likely they had vertical bars near the
perimeter, with smaller diameter hoop bar ties. Newer columns would
have a continuous helical tie, for greater resistance to seismic loads.

Since a plain concrete cylinder loaded in compression from the ends
fails by tensile splitting, its strength can be greatly increased by
adding some confinement, such as a steel or composite "jacket" around
the perimeter (what "jim beam" is likely observing).

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
Beer - It's not just for breakfast anymore!

Ryan Cousineau said:

In article <[email hidden]>,

Jasper Janssen said:

Quoted message said:

Certainly there were more and more used bicycles in use, reducing new
sales.

But there's that pesky gigantic rise of the ridership on trains and
trollies--no mud, no sweat, no rolling down the wretched streets of
the day in ice, rain, and blazing sun, plenty of company, low fares
compared to bicycle prices, and so on.

I'm not sure that public transit -- even when it amounted to a damn in
america -- was a solid replacement for bicycles, though. On the other
hand, we're talking pre-burbclaves, so bicycles are primarily useful to
start with in cities, and american cities at this time are dense enough --
and the PT networks dense and good enough -- that most journeys could be
made on the PT network.

Also, um, people couldn't afford cars. So it didn't really matter if the
public transit was "good enough." You either took the trolley, walked,
or you didn't go.

Or you took the BICYCLE. Which was what we were TALKING ABOUT. And which
is the *subject of the fricking newsgroup*. We were *not* comparing to
cars.

Fer crying out loud.

jasper

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:46:07 -0500, Tom Sherman <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Jasper Janssen said:

...
Quick horror story: according to wp the 4CV was replaced by the Renault 4.
When I was little we owned a 4, from new. And it was scrapped after just 4
or 5 years because there were holes in the floor, not to mention the
bodywork, and it failed the compulsory test. (*%^*& Renault.

The Renault R5 (Le Car to USians) generally suffered from the same
terminal rust problem (to be fair, so did other cars, such as the first
generation Golf (Rabbit to USians). The latter Kenosha made Renaults

The Golf I barely rusts at all compared to that R4 we had.

Incidentally, my parents switched from the Renault to Fiats, which were a
little better on rust but not greatly better than, say, the Golf I you
mention. And now they're back to a used Renault (coming up on its 8th
birthday atm, I believe) and it has close to 0 rust. I did spot a few
square centimeters of rust on the front inner edges of the rear wheel
wells, but that's about it.

Jasper

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:27:25 -0500, Tom Sherman <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Well, at least with automobiles, the technology has greatly improved
everything to the point that very few would want to use most older
automobiles on a regular basis. On the other hand, the upright diamond
frame bicycle has changed very little in more than half a century.

As for disposable houses, that is due to the foolish decision of
purchasing for initial lowest cost, not lowest lifetime cost. Build a
house out of concrete and proper masonry, and it will not be disposable.
In Europe, there are 1000+ year old stone masonry buildings still in use.

Although it's not *typical*. 1000 year old masonry/stone buildings are by
definition the upper-upper-upper class buildings of their day, since
nothing else *was* in fact built in stone (it being expensive), and the
ones that are still in use today are either that way because they remained
the seat of power for long enough to survive to monument-protection-laws,
and/or have has *extensive* structural work, let alone internal work, done
on them.

And even so the majority of stone buildings built in the 10th and eleventh
centuries -- which is basically churches and castles, pretty close to --
have not survived.

The inner city centre here is a mixture of 14th through 20th century
buildings, with only a few of the older examples and most being
17th/18th/19th. The cellars are medieval a lot more often than the
superstructure.

Another problem is simple growth -- Utrecht stayed fairly static in size
from the 10th through late 19th centuries, so up til then a fair
proportion of buildings was old build, but afterwards whole new
neighbourhoods were being built outside the city walls. Right now probably
only a tenth of the city is old builds, that is
pre-outside-the-walls-expansion.

Still, the majority of new houses are being built these days with inner
structural elements of concrete panels (prefab or cast on site, no clue)
and an outer skin around the insulation cavity made of brick, for looks.
It's only something like 10 or 20, maybe up to 30% cheaper to build a new
home with a wooden frame and siding around the outside, and it will have
much larger ongoing costs over the ensuing decades, let alone centuries.

Jasper

Chalo said:

Tom Sherman said:

As for disposable houses, that is due to the foolish decision of
purchasing for initial lowest cost, not lowest lifetime cost. Build a
house out of concrete and proper masonry, and it will not be disposable.
In Europe, there are 1000+ year old stone masonry buildings still in use.

But how many houses' worth of wood has been used to heat those cold
stone houses over the last 1000 years?

A lot less than would have been needed to heat drafty wooden houses,
that's for sure.

In winter, what you care about is the heat (in watts per square meter)
radiating off the outside walls, and/or being lost through drafts. That
number is much greater for wooden construction than for stone
construction, when you compare similar eras of building (ie, no cheating
by using modern, well-insulated wooden houses with plastic draft excluders
against old uninsulated brick houses).

Jasper

Jasper Janssen said:

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 14:27:25 -0500, Tom Sherman <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

Well, at least with automobiles, the technology has greatly improved
everything to the point that very few would want to use most older
automobiles on a regular basis. On the other hand, the upright diamond
frame bicycle has changed very little in more than half a century.

As for disposable houses, that is due to the foolish decision of
purchasing for initial lowest cost, not lowest lifetime cost. Build a
house out of concrete and proper masonry, and it will not be disposable.
In Europe, there are 1000+ year old stone masonry buildings still in use.

Although it's not *typical*. 1000 year old masonry/stone buildings are by
definition the upper-upper-upper class buildings of their day, since
nothing else *was* in fact built in stone (it being expensive), and the
ones that are still in use today are either that way because they remained
the seat of power for long enough to survive to monument-protection-laws,
and/or have has *extensive* structural work, let alone internal work, done
on them.

And even so the majority of stone buildings built in the 10th and eleventh
centuries -- which is basically churches and castles, pretty close to --
have not survived.

The inner city centre here is a mixture of 14th through 20th century
buildings, with only a few of the older examples and most being
17th/18th/19th. The cellars are medieval a lot more often than the
superstructure.

Another problem is simple growth -- Utrecht stayed fairly static in size
from the 10th through late 19th centuries, so up til then a fair
proportion of buildings was old build, but afterwards whole new
neighbourhoods were being built outside the city walls. Right now probably
only a tenth of the city is old builds, that is
pre-outside-the-walls-expansion.

Still, the majority of new houses are being built these days with inner
structural elements of concrete panels (prefab or cast on site, no clue)
and an outer skin around the insulation cavity made of brick, for looks.
It's only something like 10 or 20, maybe up to 30% cheaper to build a new
home with a wooden frame and siding around the outside, and it will have
much larger ongoing costs over the ensuing decades, let alone centuries.

Here in the You Ess of Aye, the goal is to get as big as box as possible
for the price. Based on the apartments I have lived in of similar
construction, I would expect most of these new houses to need major work
within 20 years. Crappy roofing, siding, windows, plumbing fixtures,
cabinetry, etc. is the norm. If these houses were bicycle components,
they would be well below Shimano Tourney standard.

Sometimes you do get what you pay for.

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
Beer - It's not just for breakfast anymore!

In article <[email hidden]>,

Jasper Janssen said:

Ryan Cousineau said:

In article <[email hidden]>,

Jasper Janssen said:

On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:00:56 -0600, [email hidden] wrote:

>Certainly there were more and more used bicycles in use, reducing new
>sales.
>
>But there's that pesky gigantic rise of the ridership on trains and
>trollies--no mud, no sweat, no rolling down the wretched streets of
>the day in ice, rain, and blazing sun, plenty of company, low fares
>compared to bicycle prices, and so on.

I'm not sure that public transit -- even when it amounted to a damn in
america -- was a solid replacement for bicycles, though. On the other
hand, we're talking pre-burbclaves, so bicycles are primarily useful to
start with in cities, and american cities at this time are dense enough --
and the PT networks dense and good enough -- that most journeys could be
made on the PT network.

Also, um, people couldn't afford cars. So it didn't really matter if the
public transit was "good enough." You either took the trolley, walked,
or you didn't go.

Or you took the BICYCLE. Which was what we were TALKING ABOUT. And which
is the *subject of the fricking newsgroup*. We were *not* comparing to
cars.

We were referring to the many people at the turn of the century who had
not even a bicycle, and certainly not a car.

I perhaps distracted everyone by mentioning that these people didn't
have cars, but the point was that bicycle sales levelled off before the
point of effective market saturation. In other words, some people either
didn't want one (rare) or couldn't afford one (common). Their remaining
choices were as discussed above.

Can now afford several times as many bicycles as my grandfather could at
the same age,

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"My scenarios may give the impression I could be an excellent crook.
Not true - I am a talented lawyer." - Sandy in rec.bicycles.racing

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:51:11 GMT, Ryan Cousineau <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>,

Jasper Janssen said:

Ryan Cousineau said:

In article <[email hidden]>,
Jasper Janssen <[email hidden]> wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:00:56 -0600, [email hidden] wrote:
>
> >Certainly there were more and more used bicycles in use, reducing new
> >sales.
> >
> >But there's that pesky gigantic rise of the ridership on trains and
> >trollies--no mud, no sweat, no rolling down the wretched streets of
> >the day in ice, rain, and blazing sun, plenty of company, low fares
> >compared to bicycle prices, and so on.
>
> I'm not sure that public transit -- even when it amounted to a damn in
> america -- was a solid replacement for bicycles, though. On the other
> hand, we're talking pre-burbclaves, so bicycles are primarily useful to
> start with in cities, and american cities at this time are dense enough --
> and the PT networks dense and good enough -- that most journeys could be
> made on the PT network.

Also, um, people couldn't afford cars. So it didn't really matter if the
public transit was "good enough." You either took the trolley, walked,
or you didn't go.

Or you took the BICYCLE. Which was what we were TALKING ABOUT. And which
is the *subject of the fricking newsgroup*. We were *not* comparing to
cars.

We were referring to the many people at the turn of the century who had
not even a bicycle, and certainly not a car.

I perhaps distracted everyone by mentioning that these people didn't
have cars, but the point was that bicycle sales levelled off before the
point of effective market saturation. In other words, some people either
didn't want one (rare) or couldn't afford one (common). Their remaining
choices were as discussed above.

Can now afford several times as many bicycles as my grandfather could at
the same age,

Dear Ryan,

You may be showing a little of the rabid bicycle bias of RBT when you
say that "some people didn't want one (rare)".

With peak sales of about 2 million for a few years (dropping 80%
before and after the brief boom), there were an awful lot of people in
a country of 70 million more than three out of four people couldn't
have owned a bicycle, given the sales figures.

In fact, outside the magazines of enthusiasts, bicycles were often
considered expensive, unreliable, unwieldy, newfangled, and dangerous
contraptions. That's why the bicycle articles in magazines flourished
for a few years and then vanished along with the bike boom.

The fad (sorry, but what else can we call it?) expanded to sales of 2
million bikes in its best year, and then collapsed. It turned out that
the people who did indeed want a bicycle badly enough to pay the high
price for owning one were nowhere near a majority of the U.S.
population.

And yes, bicycles were expensive before the bike boom collapsed. By
1899, large manufacturers like Gormully & Jeffrey were slashing prices
to $40 to fight sales figures that would drop below 20% of what they
were in 1897:

http://www.aafla.org/SportsLibrary/Outing/Volume_34/outXXXIV01/outXXXIV01ze.pdf

That $40 sounds absurdly cheap to us today, but inflation makes it
hard to understand how expensive $40 was. This inflation calculator,
for example, suggests that $40 in 1899 would be about $934 in 2006:

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

But even that doesn't really capture how expensive bikes were. A
better way to understand how outlandishly expensive bicycles were back
then is to remember that even the cheapest models were later often
sold on monthly installment plans of a dollar a month. (Just the stamp
to mail the $1.00 payment would cost $0.41 today.)

For all but the wealthiest, cars were simply fantasies. Again, when
the bicycle boom was imploding in 1900, there were more ocean liners
in the harbors than there were automobiles in the entire U.S.

Some of our exaggerated notions of how prolific cars were come from
Hollywood. It's much easier, quicker, and cheaper to fill a
blocked-off street with a convenient collection of old cars than to
fill the street with old horse-drawn wagons and coaches. This equine
censorship extends far beyond 1900. For example, Hollywood "history"
gives little hint that [censored]'s army in Europe and Russia depended
heavily on horses. The first soldiers that Audie Murphy killed in 1943
were Italian officers fleeing on horseback, and he tells of hundreds
of horses in a German convoy, all killed by artillery in France.

Here's New York, Easter morning 1900:

http://www.archives.gov/research/american-cities/images/american-cities-101.jpg

No automobiles, no bicycles. Most people walked, rode in horse-drawn
carriages, or took trains and trollies. Bicycles were mostly for
recreation.

When we see parades of bicycles in pictures from that year, it's hard
to remember that they were special parades, photographed for
enthusiasts.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

Quoted message said:

I doubt that CALTRANS ever built bridges and elevated roadways with plain
concrete columns. Most likely they had vertical bars near the perimeter,
with smaller diameter hoop bar ties. Newer columns would have a
continuous helical tie, for greater resistance to seismic loads.

For those of us who aren't engineers, could you explain what "vertical bars"
and "hoop bar ties" are? Are we talking about the difference between just
pouring concrete into a column vs reinforcing with what is commonly called
"rebar?" Or something more sophisticated than that?

Thanks-

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

"Tom Sherman" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

jim beam said:

Tom Sherman said:

"jim beam" wrote:
> Tom Sherman wrote:
>> "jim beam" wrote:
>>> Tom Sherman wrote:
>>>> Chalo Colina wrote:
>>>>> Tom Sherman wrote:
>>>>>> As for disposable houses, that is due to the foolish decision of
>>>>>> purchasing for initial lowest cost, not lowest lifetime cost.
>>>>>> Build a
>>>>>> house out of concrete and proper masonry, and it will not be
>>>>>> disposable.
>>>>>> In Europe, there are 1000+ year old stone masonry buildings still
>>>>>> in use.
>>>>>
>>>>> But how many houses' worth of wood has been used to heat those cold
>>>>> stone houses over the last 1000 years?
>>>>
>>>> Probably about the same as the crappy wood frame houses I used to
>>>> live in as a child. The walls on those houses let the wind and
>>>> numerous insects through.
>>>>
>>>> A modern concrete house with concrete/foam/concrete "sandwich"
>>>> construction will cost less to heat and cool than a stick-frame and
>>>> wall board box of the same size will. The concrete house will also
>>>> be practically impervious to fire, water damage, insect intrusion
>>>> and damage, will not need siding and roof replacement, and will have
>>>> a structure that will easily be as functionally as good as new
>>>> several hundred years later.
>>>>
>>>> Of course, modern USian society prefers disposable items, and
>>>> CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION, CONSUMPTION!
>>>>
>>>
>>> here in the kommunist krepublic of kalifornistan, we like wood 'kos
>>> is doesn't fall over in our earthquakes.
>>
>> That is why post-tensioning of concrete was invented. One can build a
>> house of pre-cast concrete panels that are post-tensioned and grouted
>> after assembly.
>>
>> I believe CALTRANS is still using concrete in elevated highways and
>> bridges, no?
>>
> yes. they're so confident, they've spent tonsamoney cladding lots of
> it in steel.

Newer construction, or older columns that lacked spiral reinforcement?

me guessing the steel content and configuration inside concrete that's
then clad in steel is like you guessing at the microstructure of a
material you've never examined under a microscope. all i can tell you is
that it was plain concrete, and it's since been clad in steel. and that
it hasn't been subject to a large quake since.

I doubt that CALTRANS ever built bridges and elevated roadways with plain
concrete columns. Most likely they had vertical bars near the perimeter,
with smaller diameter hoop bar ties. Newer columns would have a
continuous helical tie, for greater resistance to seismic loads.

Since a plain concrete cylinder loaded in compression from the ends fails
by tensile splitting, its strength can be greatly increased by adding some
confinement, such as a steel or composite "jacket" around the perimeter
(what "jim beam" is likely observing).

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia
Beer - It's not just for breakfast anymore!

In article <[email hidden]>,

Quoted message said:

On Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:51:11 GMT, Ryan Cousineau <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

In article <[email hidden]>,

Jasper Janssen said:

On Sat, 13 Oct 2007 03:01:32 GMT, Ryan Cousineau <[email hidden]> wrote:
>In article <[email hidden]>,
> Jasper Janssen <[email hidden]> wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:00:56 -0600, [email hidden] wrote:
>>
>> >Certainly there were more and more used bicycles in use, reducing new
>> >sales.
>> >
>> >But there's that pesky gigantic rise of the ridership on trains and
>> >trollies--no mud, no sweat, no rolling down the wretched streets of
>> >the day in ice, rain, and blazing sun, plenty of company, low fares
>> >compared to bicycle prices, and so on.
>>
>> I'm not sure that public transit -- even when it amounted to a damn in
>> america -- was a solid replacement for bicycles, though. On the other
>> hand, we're talking pre-burbclaves, so bicycles are primarily useful to
>> start with in cities, and american cities at this time are dense enough
>> --
>> and the PT networks dense and good enough -- that most journeys could
>> be
>> made on the PT network.
>
>Also, um, people couldn't afford cars. So it didn't really matter if the
>public transit was "good enough." You either took the trolley, walked,
>or you didn't go.

Or you took the BICYCLE. Which was what we were TALKING ABOUT. And which
is the *subject of the fricking newsgroup*. We were *not* comparing to
cars.

We were referring to the many people at the turn of the century who had
not even a bicycle, and certainly not a car.

I perhaps distracted everyone by mentioning that these people didn't
have cars, but the point was that bicycle sales levelled off before the
point of effective market saturation. In other words, some people either
didn't want one (rare) or couldn't afford one (common). Their remaining
choices were as discussed above.

Can now afford several times as many bicycles as my grandfather could at
the same age,

Dear Ryan,

You may be showing a little of the rabid bicycle bias of RBT when you
say that "some people didn't want one (rare)".

Heh. I suppose I could fall back on some economist's definition of
"didn't want one" based on the price being too high, but I'll gladly
concede...

Quoted message said:

With peak sales of about 2 million for a few years (dropping 80%
before and after the brief boom), there were an awful lot of people in
a country of 70 million more than three out of four people couldn't
have owned a bicycle, given the sales figures.

In fact, outside the magazines of enthusiasts, bicycles were often
considered expensive, unreliable, unwieldy, newfangled, and dangerous
contraptions. That's why the bicycle articles in magazines flourished
for a few years and then vanished along with the bike boom.

....that many didn't consider a bicycle practical transport. However...

Quoted message said:

The fad (sorry, but what else can we call it?) expanded to sales of 2
million bikes in its best year, and then collapsed. It turned out that
the people who did indeed want a bicycle badly enough to pay the high
price for owning one were nowhere near a majority of the U.S.
population.

And yes, bicycles were expensive before the bike boom collapsed. By
1899, large manufacturers like Gormully & Jeffrey were slashing prices
to $40 to fight sales figures that would drop below 20% of what they
were in 1897:

http://www.aafla.org/SportsLibrary/Outing/Volume_34/outXXXIV01/outXXXIV01ze.pd
f

That $40 sounds absurdly cheap to us today, but inflation makes it
hard to understand how expensive $40 was. This inflation calculator,
for example, suggests that $40 in 1899 would be about $934 in 2006:

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

But even that doesn't really capture how expensive bikes were. A
better way to understand how outlandishly expensive bicycles were back
then is to remember that even the cheapest models were later often
sold on monthly installment plans of a dollar a month. (Just the stamp
to mail the $1.00 payment would cost $0.41 today.)

....this certainly makes the strong case that bicycle ownership was
limited by its sheer unaffordability. Same as cars, though to a lesser
degree. But in either case, did bikes stop selling because everyone who
could afford one had one? I was under the impression that cycling lost
much of its daredevil reputation once the safety took over.

Quoted message said:

For all but the wealthiest, cars were simply fantasies. Again, when
the bicycle boom was imploding in 1900, there were more ocean liners
in the harbors than there were automobiles in the entire U.S.

Some of our exaggerated notions of how prolific cars were come from
Hollywood. It's much easier, quicker, and cheaper to fill a
blocked-off street with a convenient collection of old cars than to
fill the street with old horse-drawn wagons and coaches. This equine
censorship extends far beyond 1900. For example, Hollywood "history"
gives little hint that [censored]'s army in Europe and Russia depended
heavily on horses. The first soldiers that Audie Murphy killed in 1943
were Italian officers fleeing on horseback, and he tells of hundreds
of horses in a German convoy, all killed by artillery in France.

I started researching horse usage in WW II. Instead, I ended up with
this:

http://www.45thdivision.org/Photo_Gallery/gallery_Hall.htm

Quoted message said:

Here's New York, Easter morning 1900:

http://www.archives.gov/research/american-cities/images/american-cities-101.jp
g

No automobiles, no bicycles. Most people walked, rode in horse-drawn
carriages, or took trains and trollies. Bicycles were mostly for
recreation.

When we see parades of bicycles in pictures from that year, it's hard
to remember that they were special parades, photographed for
enthusiasts.

I'm not going to pretend I want to pursue this deeply enough to get to
the bottom of the question of whether bicycles were too expensive to
expand to a wider audience or not. I do stubbornly suspect that the
question is a bit like asking whether the Mercedes S-Class would sell
better if it was the same price as a Honda Civic, and thus affordable to
almost any person likely to consider themselves middle class.

Perhaps yes, but then, it's priced like it is because it really cost
that much.

As a confirmed bike-nut (and a third-generation bike commuter (a label
which I'm sure would impress my Dutch relatives only if their
grandparents couldn't afford bicycles)), I totally understand why cars
became more popular than bicycles with such rapidity: faster, more
comfortable, easily enclosed against the elements, and with greater
range. What's not to like?

--
Ryan Cousineau [email hidden] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"My scenarios may give the impression I could be an excellent crook.
Not true - I am a talented lawyer." - Sandy in rec.bicycles.racing

On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:11:59 GMT, Ryan Cousineau <[email hidden]>
wrote:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

...this certainly makes the strong case that bicycle ownership was
limited by its sheer unaffordability. Same as cars, though to a lesser
degree. But in either case, did bikes stop selling because everyone who
could afford one had one? I was under the impression that cycling lost
much of its daredevil reputation once the safety took over.

Quoted message said:

For all but the wealthiest, cars were simply fantasies. Again, when
the bicycle boom was imploding in 1900, there were more ocean liners
in the harbors than there were automobiles in the entire U.S.

Some of our exaggerated notions of how prolific cars were come from
Hollywood. It's much easier, quicker, and cheaper to fill a
blocked-off street with a convenient collection of old cars than to
fill the street with old horse-drawn wagons and coaches. This equine
censorship extends far beyond 1900. For example, Hollywood "history"
gives little hint that [censored]'s army in Europe and Russia depended
heavily on horses. The first soldiers that Audie Murphy killed in 1943
were Italian officers fleeing on horseback, and he tells of hundreds
of horses in a German convoy, all killed by artillery in France.

I started researching horse usage in WW II. Instead, I ended up with
this:

http://www.45thdivision.org/Photo_Gallery/gallery_Hall.htm

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I'm not going to pretend I want to pursue this deeply enough to get to
the bottom of the question of whether bicycles were too expensive to
expand to a wider audience or not. I do stubbornly suspect that the
question is a bit like asking whether the Mercedes S-Class would sell
better if it was the same price as a Honda Civic, and thus affordable to
almost any person likely to consider themselves middle class.

Perhaps yes, but then, it's priced like it is because it really cost
that much.

As a confirmed bike-nut (and a third-generation bike commuter (a label
which I'm sure would impress my Dutch relatives only if their
grandparents couldn't afford bicycles)), I totally understand why cars
became more popular than bicycles with such rapidity: faster, more
comfortable, easily enclosed against the elements, and with greater
range. What's not to like?

Dear Ryan,

The U.S. bicycle boom around 1900 exhibits most of the characteristics
of a fad--sorry, but it's hard to get around that. Wildly increasing
sales peaked and then dropped like a rock in a few years, along with
magazine and newspaper coverage.

The same fad explanation applies to the later U.S. bike boom a few
decades ago.

(I'm not saying that "Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds" has all the answers, but it applies a lot more than we bike
nuts would like to believe.)

Partly bicycles were expensive, partly everyone in the relatively
small group that wanted a bicycle had gotten one. We U.S. bike nuts
today can't understand why other people aren't enthusiasts. They can't
understand why any grown-up would throw a thousand bucks (or our time)
away on a kid's toy.

As for riding [censored]'s horse, it's a fun page, and the pictures show
that the U.S. was the first truly mechanized army. Everyone else still
had more horses than we realize. And tradition hung on pretty hard:

"West Point during World War II, by Tom Wicker."

"'When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7,1941,' Wicker
writes, 'the United States Military Academy was much like the Army of
which it was a proud part--outmoded and inadequate. The fancily
uniformed Corps of Cadets still trained on horseback three times a
week and had to learn how to load a 75 millimeter howitzer pack on
mules. Riding breeches still were a part of the required dress, not
to be discontinued until November 1942.'"

"But already big, and lasting, changes were in the works, and that is
the story Wicker tells. Motorized vehicles were substituted for
horses. 'Horsemanship' however was not altogether eliminated until
1947, when the last horses were 'withdrawn from the post.'"

http://www.kkpnyc.com/westpoint/westpoint_book_chapter.html

As far as I can tell, West Point never had bicycling classes.

:-)

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

Quoted message said:

On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:11:59 GMT, Ryan Cousineau <[email hidden]>
wrote:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

...this certainly makes the strong case that bicycle ownership was
limited by its sheer unaffordability. Same as cars, though to a lesser
degree. But in either case, did bikes stop selling because everyone who
could afford one had one? I was under the impression that cycling lost
much of its daredevil reputation once the safety took over.

Quoted message said:

For all but the wealthiest, cars were simply fantasies. Again, when
the bicycle boom was imploding in 1900, there were more ocean liners
in the harbors than there were automobiles in the entire U.S.

Some of our exaggerated notions of how prolific cars were come from
Hollywood. It's much easier, quicker, and cheaper to fill a
blocked-off street with a convenient collection of old cars than to
fill the street with old horse-drawn wagons and coaches. This equine
censorship extends far beyond 1900. For example, Hollywood "history"
gives little hint that [censored]'s army in Europe and Russia depended
heavily on horses. The first soldiers that Audie Murphy killed in 1943
were Italian officers fleeing on horseback, and he tells of hundreds
of horses in a German convoy, all killed by artillery in France.

I started researching horse usage in WW II. Instead, I ended up with
this:

http://www.45thdivision.org/Photo_Gallery/gallery_Hall.htm

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I'm not going to pretend I want to pursue this deeply enough to get to
the bottom of the question of whether bicycles were too expensive to
expand to a wider audience or not. I do stubbornly suspect that the
question is a bit like asking whether the Mercedes S-Class would sell
better if it was the same price as a Honda Civic, and thus affordable to
almost any person likely to consider themselves middle class.

Perhaps yes, but then, it's priced like it is because it really cost
that much.

As a confirmed bike-nut (and a third-generation bike commuter (a label
which I'm sure would impress my Dutch relatives only if their
grandparents couldn't afford bicycles)), I totally understand why cars
became more popular than bicycles with such rapidity: faster, more
comfortable, easily enclosed against the elements, and with greater
range. What's not to like?

Dear Ryan,

The U.S. bicycle boom around 1900 exhibits most of the characteristics
of a fad--sorry, but it's hard to get around that. Wildly increasing
sales peaked and then dropped like a rock in a few years, along with
magazine and newspaper coverage.

The same fad explanation applies to the later U.S. bike boom a few
decades ago.

(I'm not saying that "Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds" has all the answers, but it applies a lot more than we bike
nuts would like to believe.)

Partly bicycles were expensive, partly everyone in the relatively
small group that wanted a bicycle had gotten one. We U.S. bike nuts
today can't understand why other people aren't enthusiasts. They can't
understand why any grown-up would throw a thousand bucks (or our time)
away on a kid's toy.

As for riding [censored]'s horse, it's a fun page, and the pictures show
that the U.S. was the first truly mechanized army. Everyone else still
had more horses than we realize. And tradition hung on pretty hard:

"West Point during World War II, by Tom Wicker."

"'When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7,1941,' Wicker
writes, 'the United States Military Academy was much like the Army of
which it was a proud part--outmoded and inadequate. The fancily
uniformed Corps of Cadets still trained on horseback three times a
week and had to learn how to load a 75 millimeter howitzer pack on
mules. Riding breeches still were a part of the required dress, not
to be discontinued until November 1942.'"

"But already big, and lasting, changes were in the works, and that is
the story Wicker tells. Motorized vehicles were substituted for
horses. 'Horsemanship' however was not altogether eliminated until
1947, when the last horses were 'withdrawn from the post.'"

http://www.kkpnyc.com/westpoint/westpoint_book_chapter.html

As far as I can tell, West Point never had bicycling classes.

:-)

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

From the free NYT archive for February 7, 1897, at the high point of
bicycle sales:

"Six or seven years ago it was believed that the bicycle had reached
the height of its popularity, and the numerous places where they were
in use at the rate of one to every hundred inhabitants was pointed to
as proof of the correctness of the assumption [], but the number has
steadly increased since that time , and to-day it would be difficult
to find a town where the proportion is not greater than this, and in
many cities it is claimed that there is one wheel to every ten
inhabitants."

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E00E3D81F31E132A25754C0A9649C94669ED7CF

So the claim was that one person out of ten could bicycle in 1897. The
other nine walked, rode the trolley, took a train, rode a horse, or
sat in a coach behind a horse. The rate was unlikely to have risen,
since the bike boom collapsed over the next few years, with yearly
sales dropping over 80% from around 2 million bike in a country that
reached 80 million.

Another way to look at the bike boom is to see how it was shown in
literature.

For example, Conan Doyle wrote the bulk of the Sherlock Holmes stories
during the rise of the safety bicycle and the bike boom and collapse,
from 1887 to 1904. (There was more of Holmes, but only after a
decade-long hiatus.)

But Holmes never rides a bicycle anywhere. He takes hansom cabs or
trains and orders "four-wheelers" when it's too far to walk. Holmes
probably couldn't ride a bicycle any more than Watson could solve a
mystery. Doyle wasn't aware of hordes of Englishmen bicycling because
his keen powers of observation revealed that there weren't any hordes,
just a group of enthusiasts who wildly overestimated how appealing
bicycles are.

The only bicycles that I recall in the Holmes canon are the famous
ones in the "The Adventure of the Priory School", about which Holmes
makes all sorts of outlandish deductions--he can identify forty-two
kinds of bicycle tires from their tracks*, can spot the mark left by a
patch on a tire track, and can easily tell that the rider is standing
to sprint and weaving. Holmes knows that the "hind" wheel bears more
weight and therefore makes a deeper impression and claims to be able
to tell which way the tracks were heading, and so on.

Most of this bicycle expertise is implausible nonsense, of course,
like so much of Holmes's observation and deduction, flowing from
Doyle's pen rather than any local bike shop.

And Holmes obviously screws up the main point of the bicycle case.

As Frank Krygowski explains in his monograph "Thick-Headed Holmes and
the Dangerous Bicycle: A Plea for Mandatory Helmet Laws in
Literature," there's an obvious deduction to be drawn from the
following passage, and it ain't murder:

"Our search was not a very long one. The tracks of the tyre began to
curve fantastically upon the wet and shining path. Suddenly, as I
looked ahead, the gleam of metal caught my eye from amid the thick
gorse bushes. Out of them we dragged a bicycle, Palmer-tyred, one
pedal bent, and the whole front of it horribly smeared and slobbered
with blood. On the other side of the bushes a shoe was projecting. We
ran round, and there lay the unfortunate rider. He was a tall man,
full bearded, with spectacles, one glass of which had been knocked
out. The cause of his death was a frightful blow upon the head, which
had crushed in part of his skull."

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Priory_School

Like the dog that did not bark in the night, the word "helmet" does
not appear in the story about bicycles.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

* And Jobst wonders why bicycle manufacturers insist on tread
patterns! If they were all smooth, how could Holmes tell them apart?

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:11:59 GMT, Ryan Cousineau <[email hidden]>
wrote:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

...this certainly makes the strong case that bicycle ownership was
limited by its sheer unaffordability. Same as cars, though to a lesser
degree. But in either case, did bikes stop selling because everyone who
could afford one had one? I was under the impression that cycling lost
much of its daredevil reputation once the safety took over.

> For all but the wealthiest, cars were simply fantasies. Again, when
> the bicycle boom was imploding in 1900, there were more ocean liners
> in the harbors than there were automobiles in the entire U.S.
>
> Some of our exaggerated notions of how prolific cars were come from
> Hollywood. It's much easier, quicker, and cheaper to fill a
> blocked-off street with a convenient collection of old cars than to
> fill the street with old horse-drawn wagons and coaches. This equine
> censorship extends far beyond 1900. For example, Hollywood "history"
> gives little hint that [censored]'s army in Europe and Russia depended
> heavily on horses. The first soldiers that Audie Murphy killed in 1943
> were Italian officers fleeing on horseback, and he tells of hundreds
> of horses in a German convoy, all killed by artillery in France.

I started researching horse usage in WW II. Instead, I ended up with
this:

http://www.45thdivision.org/Photo_Gallery/gallery_Hall.htm

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I'm not going to pretend I want to pursue this deeply enough to get to
the bottom of the question of whether bicycles were too expensive to
expand to a wider audience or not. I do stubbornly suspect that the
question is a bit like asking whether the Mercedes S-Class would sell
better if it was the same price as a Honda Civic, and thus affordable to
almost any person likely to consider themselves middle class.

Perhaps yes, but then, it's priced like it is because it really cost
that much.

As a confirmed bike-nut (and a third-generation bike commuter (a label
which I'm sure would impress my Dutch relatives only if their
grandparents couldn't afford bicycles)), I totally understand why cars
became more popular than bicycles with such rapidity: faster, more
comfortable, easily enclosed against the elements, and with greater
range. What's not to like?

Dear Ryan,

The U.S. bicycle boom around 1900 exhibits most of the characteristics
of a fad--sorry, but it's hard to get around that. Wildly increasing
sales peaked and then dropped like a rock in a few years, along with
magazine and newspaper coverage.

The same fad explanation applies to the later U.S. bike boom a few
decades ago.

(I'm not saying that "Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of
Crowds" has all the answers, but it applies a lot more than we bike
nuts would like to believe.)

Partly bicycles were expensive, partly everyone in the relatively
small group that wanted a bicycle had gotten one. We U.S. bike nuts
today can't understand why other people aren't enthusiasts. They can't
understand why any grown-up would throw a thousand bucks (or our time)
away on a kid's toy.

As for riding [censored]'s horse, it's a fun page, and the pictures show
that the U.S. was the first truly mechanized army. Everyone else still
had more horses than we realize. And tradition hung on pretty hard:

"West Point during World War II, by Tom Wicker."

"'When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7,1941,' Wicker
writes, 'the United States Military Academy was much like the Army of
which it was a proud part--outmoded and inadequate. The fancily
uniformed Corps of Cadets still trained on horseback three times a
week and had to learn how to load a 75 millimeter howitzer pack on
mules. Riding breeches still were a part of the required dress, not
to be discontinued until November 1942.'"

"But already big, and lasting, changes were in the works, and that is
the story Wicker tells. Motorized vehicles were substituted for
horses. 'Horsemanship' however was not altogether eliminated until
1947, when the last horses were 'withdrawn from the post.'"

http://www.kkpnyc.com/westpoint/westpoint_book_chapter.html

As far as I can tell, West Point never had bicycling classes.

:-)

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

From the free NYT archive for February 7, 1897, at the high point of
bicycle sales:

"Six or seven years ago it was believed that the bicycle had reached
the height of its popularity, and the numerous places where they were
in use at the rate of one to every hundred inhabitants was pointed to
as proof of the correctness of the assumption [], but the number has
steadly increased since that time , and to-day it would be difficult
to find a town where the proportion is not greater than this, and in
many cities it is claimed that there is one wheel to every ten
inhabitants."

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E00E3D81F31E132A25754C0A9649C94669ED7CF

So the claim was that one person out of ten could bicycle in 1897. The
other nine walked, rode the trolley, took a train, rode a horse, or
sat in a coach behind a horse. The rate was unlikely to have risen,
since the bike boom collapsed over the next few years, with yearly
sales dropping over 80% from around 2 million bike in a country that
reached 80 million.

Another way to look at the bike boom is to see how it was shown in
literature.

For example, Conan Doyle wrote the bulk of the Sherlock Holmes stories
during the rise of the safety bicycle and the bike boom and collapse,
from 1887 to 1904. (There was more of Holmes, but only after a
decade-long hiatus.)

But Holmes never rides a bicycle anywhere. He takes hansom cabs or
trains and orders "four-wheelers" when it's too far to walk. Holmes
probably couldn't ride a bicycle any more than Watson could solve a
mystery. Doyle wasn't aware of hordes of Englishmen bicycling because
his keen powers of observation revealed that there weren't any hordes,
just a group of enthusiasts who wildly overestimated how appealing
bicycles are.

The only bicycles that I recall in the Holmes canon are the famous
ones in the "The Adventure of the Priory School", about which Holmes
makes all sorts of outlandish deductions--he can identify forty-two
kinds of bicycle tires from their tracks*, can spot the mark left by a
patch on a tire track, and can easily tell that the rider is standing
to sprint and weaving. Holmes knows that the "hind" wheel bears more
weight and therefore makes a deeper impression and claims to be able
to tell which way the tracks were heading, and so on.

Most of this bicycle expertise is implausible nonsense, of course,
like so much of Holmes's observation and deduction, flowing from
Doyle's pen rather than any local bike shop.

And Holmes obviously screws up the main point of the bicycle case.

As Frank Krygowski explains in his monograph "Thick-Headed Holmes and
the Dangerous Bicycle: A Plea for Mandatory Helmet Laws in
Literature," there's an obvious deduction to be drawn from the
following passage, and it ain't murder:

"Our search was not a very long one. The tracks of the tyre began to
curve fantastically upon the wet and shining path. Suddenly, as I
looked ahead, the gleam of metal caught my eye from amid the thick
gorse bushes. Out of them we dragged a bicycle, Palmer-tyred, one
pedal bent, and the whole front of it horribly smeared and slobbered
with blood. On the other side of the bushes a shoe was projecting. We
ran round, and there lay the unfortunate rider. He was a tall man,
full bearded, with spectacles, one glass of which had been knocked
out. The cause of his death was a frightful blow upon the head, which
had crushed in part of his skull."

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Priory_School

Like the dog that did not bark in the night, the word "helmet" does
not appear in the story about bicycles.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

* And Jobst wonders why bicycle manufacturers insist on tread
patterns! If they were all smooth, how could Holmes tell them apart?

This January 1901 article from the free NYT archive gives a good idea
of the collapse of the bike boom when compared to reality. It's pretty
much a reporter putting the best face on price-slashing, dropped
sponsorships, and the racing line dying:

"A significant feature in the present bicycle show at the Madison
Square Garden [basically Interbike 1901] is the small space occupied
by the racing whee. This is in marked contrast to the shows three
years ago and more, when the racer attracted a large part of the
bicycle interest. Almost every big firm then was employing
professional riders to use their machines and establish new records.
Scores of these worn and battered wheels were exhibited as trophies of
the track. Now scarcely one is to be seen. With the exception of the
one ridden by Floyd A. McFarland, when he won the recent six-day
bicycle race wtih Elkes, and the wheel upon which Charles M. Murphy
made his mile record of 57 4-5 seconds, scarcely a professional racer
is to be seen."

"Nearly every big concern, however, shows a racing machine, but
without exception they all admit that there is very little demand for
them."

"'The easy days of the professional cyclist are gone,' said one
salesman. 'Why, a professional can't hardly get a wheel now unless he
pays his money down like any other ordinary individual.'"

"The tendency of the year is runnig for strongly in favor of
comfortable, all-around roadsters. With their cushion frames, smaller
tubing, less clumsy tires, coaster brakes, and other modern appliances
for ease and lightness, the roadster of to-day is a model of neatenss
and durability, beside which the standard price one-hundred-dollar
wheel of three years ago [1898, near the height of the boom] appears
heavy and uncouth. The best racing machines may be purchased from $50
to $75, while well-made roadsters run from $25 to $50. One firm is
showing an excellent racer for $40, while its highest-priced chain
roadster is $35. The chainless [shaft-drive] wheels are higher, from
$60 to $75."

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=940CE3DC1330E132A25754C1A9679C946097D6CF

The article goes on with quotes about how the bikes are not being
cheapened but are actually improved and talks about the booming new
motorcycle market.

It's a good example of an ostensibly objective news article slanting
things furiously.

Prices had fallen from $100 to $25-$35, but that was still very
expensive, and the cheapest $25 bikes were about like the cheapest
bikes today--not what you really want.

With almost no demand, racing bikes were sitting unsold, and the
healthy professional racing circuit was collapsing, so the
manufacturers stopped sponsoring riders. When riders won't buy the new
model that Joe GoFast wins on, the fad is fading.

Prices were being slashed. The new bikes were indeed better, but the
customers just didn't care because they weren't buying bicycles.

As for the marvelous new motorcycle market "boom" . . . Well, it would
be three years--1901, 1902, 1903--before Harley-Davidson and Indian
sold a grand total of 6 motorcycles.

By then, the NYT had practically abandoned the regular bicycle
articles that filled its pages during the boom. "Outing" magazine,
which had been founded as a bike magazine (complete with poetry and
sheet music about cycling), did the same, dropping even its reduced
bicycle page.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

"jim beam" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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sorry dude, basing engineering criticisms on your unfortunate experiences
of art class just don't hold. epoxys are used extensively in
engineering - bridges, a/c componentry and architecture for example.

Sorry dude, you "metarials skool" don't cut it. Where's a bridge with epoxy
as structural material?

Idiot.

"jim beam" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Jambo said:

"jim beam" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Peter Cole wrote:
<snip [censored]>

> Just show me the deformed CFRP & we'll put this issue to rest.
you still don't get it. in structural applications, deformation /is/
failure.

What [censored]. Get that from your "metarials skool"? Tell us, beamboy:
what about elastic deformation? Bridges do this all the time, so do
buildings, and every other structure in existence. So buildings swaying
in the wind is failure - [censored], abandon your houses, everyone, chicken
little beamboy says they're failing...

you moron. read what i clarified.

Yeah, still reads the same [censored], idiot boy.

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you therefore want to push deformation out along the stress/strain graph
as far as you can. that's what cfrp does.

So "deformation = plastic deformation=destruction". Another brilliant
re-definition of scientific terms from beamboy, the fraudulent [censored].

see above. moron.

Still says the same [censored], idiot boy.

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and with better fatigue. and with lighter weight. for someone that
purports to be an "engineer", you have a pretty damned scary inability
to grasp basic fundamentals.

Yadda, yadda, yadda...

DLFF.

Idiot.