Suze Clemitson - A History of Cycling in 100 Objects

Bloomsbury Sport

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This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in 2017

Text Suze Clemitson, 2017

Cover illustrations by Simon Scarsbrook

Suze Clemitson has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

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ISBN: 978-1-4729-1888-8 (PB)

ISBN: 978-1-4729-1889-5 (eBook)

ISBN: 978-1-4729-1890-1 (ePDF)

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Photo Acknowledgements

Getty Images

LEquipe/Offside

the Marin Museum of Bicycling

M&N / Alamy Stock Photo

Sturmey-Archer Heritage

Gerard Brown

provided by Google Patents

Castelli

H. A. Roth, provided by ASSOS S.A.

Carson Blume

Arne Mill/frontalvision

courtesy of the Wellcome Collection

Bloomsbury Publishing

David Taylor

Edd Westmacott / Alamy Stock Photo

Dave Walker

courtesy of the University of California Libraries

Schwinn, courtesy of Pacific-Cycle

Contents

AUTHOR'S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks, as ever, to Charlotte Croft and Sarah Connelly at Bloomsbury for their unfailing support and skill at doing what they do so effortlessly well.

To Lucy Doncaster for her editorial flair and being so easy to work with and Nik Cook for casting a constructively critical and expertly technical eye across these pages.

Thanks also to the Co-The Cafe in Brantome for keeping me supplied with fabulous coffee and endless free WiFi when I had neither.

To every cycling writer who has written lucidly, coherently and brilliantly about the technical innovations that created cycling as both a sport and a pastime, my undying thanks for making my research so pleasurable.

And as ever, to my brilliant family, without whom I would never have written a word.

The Bicycles

It starts, quite literally, with a big bang. When Mount Tambora in Indonesia erupted in 1815, massive quantities of carbon dioxide entered the atmosphere and caused temperatures to drop worldwide, including Europe. In the Year Without A Summer that followed, crops across the region failed and famine and disease set in, resulting in horses being slaughtered for food and to save money and resources. Society now needed an alternative to costly horsepower, which is where Baron Karl von Drais big democratic idea of a (human) muscle-powered machine comes in.

Known variously around Europe as the Laufmaschine (the German for running machine); Draisine (after its inventor, Karl Friedrich Christian Ludwig, Baron Drais von Sauerbronn); vlocipde (the French for fast feet); and hobby horse or dandy horse in England (on account of the fact that it was deemed an expensive toy for rich dandies), the Draisine was a simple affair. Consisting of little more than a plank of wood joining two equal-sized wheels with a rudimentary saddle and steering system attached, it was used initially by Drais who was at that time working as a forester for the Grand Duke of Baden as a fast means of getting around his employers estate. Realising its potential, the intrepid Baron jumped astride his invention on 12 June, 1817 in the centre of Mannheim, he travelled 16km (10 miles) in just over an hour, marking the inception of horseless transport.

The Draisine was based on a simple premise that enabled riders to sit astride a frame and run along much like childrens balance bikes of today. A good idea in principle; in practice the terrible state of European roads made striding and balancing both dangerous and uncomfortable and the design was soon superseded.

In England, in 1818, just a year after the Draisines inaugural outing, London-based coach-maker Denis Johnson began manufacturing his hobby horse, which was a lighter, improved version of the Draisine featuring larger wheels and, for the ladies, a model with a dropped, curved frame that was easier to mount in style. This proved very popular among the wealthy classes and the craze soon reached the USA, where many examples were made and could be hired for use in one of the specially constructed riding rinks (similar to skating rinks, but made of wood). Despite its popularity, however, the fad was short-lived because its lack of practical use along with its nickname, the dandy horse. By the 1820s, the Draisine and its imitators were a footnote in transport history.

But what of the man behind the machine? Born into a noble family in 1785, in Karlsruhe, Germany, Drais was a democrat whose egalitarian views got him into trouble with both his aristocratic peers and the authorities. A supporter of the failed German Revolution of 1848, he had previously spent several years in exile in Brazil, survived an assassination attempt in 1838, and been very much a persona non grata in high society. Despite these factors, this one-time civil servant and professor of mechanics was prolific in his inventions, which included a meat grinder that is still used today, a typewriter, a machine to record piano music on paper, a stenotype machine and a quadricycle. It was the Draisine, however, for which he is most remembered because it set in motion a series of inventions that would eventually culminate in the modern bicycle. Drais never saw a penny as a civil servant he wasnt allowed to patent his invention and the government pension he received was stripped away by the Royalists in the aftermath of the revolution. He died penniless in Karlsruhe in 1851.