On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 05:09:39 GMT, Ryan Cousineau <
[email protected]>
wrote:
>In article <[email protected]>,
> [email protected] wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 03:42:06 GMT, Ryan Cousineau <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >In article <[email protected]>,
>> > Gary Young <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >
>> >> On Mon, 24 Sep 2007 18:40:11 +0000, Ryan Cousineau wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > In article <[email protected]>,
>> >> > Chalo <[email protected]> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >> Carl Fogel wrote:
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > I don't see anything on the Wiki page about economic benefits of
>> >> >> > car-free zones. Is there one near you in Texas that illustrates what
>> >> >> > you have in mind?
>> >
>> >[more on car-free zones]
>> >
>> >> >> It's time for car driving to disappear as an urban practice, much as
>> >> >> heating with coal and pitching excrement out on the street have
>> >> >> disappeared.
>> >> >
>> >> > Nobody had to ban coal heating, horses as transportation, or open
>> >> > sewers. In each case, as soon as a superior alternative arrived (for
>> >> > horses, it was arguably bicycles, with a lot of help from trains),
>> >> > people abandoned the old ways as soon as they could afford to*.
>> >
>> >> > *Okay, indoor plumbing depended on the massive public works project
>> >> > known as the sewer system
>> >>
>> >> Whereas a system of highways suitable for automobiles didn't?
>> >
>> >Automobiles didn't depend on that system, any more than the bicycles
>> >depended on the "good roads campaign:"
>> >
>> >http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9403E2D91730E033A25752C2A9
>> >6F9C94659ED7CF
>> >
>> >It's pretty cool that the NYT finally opened up their archives, eh?
>>
>> Dear Ryan,
>>
>> Ooh! Ooh!
>>
>> Advanced search . . . bicycle, up to 1899 . . .
>>
>> Gee, only 9,599 results, that won't take long . . .
>>
>> Let's look at the first one . . . June 11, 1880 . . .
>>
>> "A bicycle is dangerous, not when it is in motion, but when it is at
>> rest. It is then that it throws its rider and tramples on him with a
>> viciousness that the depraved horse would be ashamed to exhibit. When
>> the novice tries to get on his bicycle, he invariably falls over and
>> under it two or three times. If he can once get it started at a fair
>> pace, it will ... [ END OF FIRST PARAGRAPH ]
>>
>> http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9507E0DB1630EE3ABC4952DFB066838
>> B699FDE
>>
>> (It gets even better after that--click on the pdf link for the whole
>> sordid story!)
>
>What a strange shaggy-dog story! Was this meant as a sort of anonymous
>humor article?
Dear Ryan,
No, it's sober 1880's reporting.
http://tinyurl.com/3ypcxl
Crazy--
Er, improbable inventions were common, and newspaper editors could
scarcely be expected to stoop to understanding mechanical details (not
that they do much better nowadays).
So the absurd wind-up spring was plausible to the editor.
But the dangers that he mentions were quite true.
It was 1880, so he was writing about early highwheelers, towering
penny-farthing fixies that tended to throw the rider forward in a
face-plant, legs tangled in the handlebars, whenever the rider hit a
bump, rider tried to brake by fighting the pedals, or got into loose
stuff with a 50-inch wheel mounted on the bottom bracket. They also
just plain fell apart, giant wheels collapsing.
There are numerous patents for breakaway handlebars and other strange
mechanisms intended to avoid the ugly part where you lurch forward,
your thighs hit the handlebars, and you did a swan dive into the
ground. One truly bizarre handlebar curved _behind_ the rider's legs
(imagine the stoker's handlebars curving forward around the captain's
legs, somewhat like greatly extended wheelchair arms). They never
caught on, since they made it almost impossible to mount and dismount.
A more "practical" anti-header handlebar used inverted ape-hanger
handlebars that dropped down below the pedals and rose up again:
http://i22.tinypic.com/jpu7p4
None of the weird inventions worked. Highwheeler riders toppled
forward with painful and even fatal regularity.
Downhills were terrifying. Think fixie with no brake on a steep dirt
road. Think fixie with a seat about 50 inches in the air. Think fixie
that will tip forward and pitch you face-first into the road if you
fight the pedals to brake.
Now think of horses coming around the curve at you in the middle of
all this and rearing up in terror to block the road. Not that you can
corner worth a damn, even without the horses.
Bad as we think no-brake fixies are, highwheelers were much worse.
Imagine a no-brake fixie that throws you over the handlebars if you
try to slow down through the pedals.
Safety bicycles were well-named and wiped out the ordinaries, as
highwheelers were called, in about a decade. The replacement in a few
years of the penny-farthings by the safeties gives perspective to the
perennial hopes of recumbent riders for driving safety bicycles into
the sea.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
