In article
<
[email protected]>,
datakoll <
[email protected]> wrote:
> carl, give us some slack would you? what's the gizmo's function? you
> don;t expect us to read that do you? good grief.
>
> have you come across a device that mounted on a chain guard would tell
> what cog the chain is on?
> OR SEND a pulse to a bar mounted indicator? I know what's involved
> (Edison) but am curious what went on before.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=H9kqAAAAEBAJ&pg=PP1&dq=616878#PPP1,M1
Oh Gene, read it, because it is utterly worth the effort.
It's a logging odometer/inclinometer. There's a paper roll inside the
box that records the data. I'm guessing a little bit here, but I believe
the odometer moves the paper and the pen sweeps side to side on the
paper with the inclinometer readings. Which means, if I'm understanding
this, that after the ride you get a paper record of your slopes, which
is akin to a first derivative of the altitude.
I like to imagine an avid amateur cyclist of the day logging his rides
with this and a stopwatch, then turning it over to his computer* for
processing into a course profile and VAM data. Even though nobody would
try to log VAM data rigorously for another hundred years.
Were I a wealthy patron of the arts, my first commission would be to
have one of these built by a watchmaker, only with a mechanical clock
integrated so that it traced the profile and speeds directly. Hopefully
the watchmaker would make it tiny and elegant and put it in a highly
polished brass casing.
Version two would of course use hub-dynamo power to operate a wireless
transmitter which would send out data points in morse code.
Period-correct technology, of course.
I would then be the king of the steampunks!
*From the OED: 1. One who computes; a calculator, reckoner; spec. a
person employed to make calculations in an observatory, in surveying,
etc.
--
Ryan Cousineau
[email protected] http://www.wiredcola.com/
"In other newsgroups, they killfile trolls."
"In rec.bicycles.racing, we coach them."
