Vintage snark from 1889

August 6, 2024 3:04 AM

Cycling art, energy and locomotion: series of remarks on the development of bicycles, tricycles, and manmotor carriages by Robert P Scott begins with mathematical analysis of gearing, brakes and wheels, while part two is "designed to amuse rather than to instruct the reader, and intended as a reward to those who have struggled through the foregoing pages". His sarcastic commentary on the odd patented designs that lead up to the development of the modern safety bicycle is timeless.
posted by autopilot (6 comments total)

I found the book thanks to jessamyn's post The mother of all public domain art search engines and hope that everyone else gets as much enjoyment as I did from the author's mocking of so many bad patents.

Picking a favorite is so hard. These are quality shade:

Messrs. Hull and O'Kear find that it is better to steer with the feet and propel the machine by the arms. The rider is peering anxiously forward as though somebody was ahead of him, and he appears rather disconcerted from some cause ; which makes us think the picture has been taken from real life.

Another manumotor carriage. Had the inventor ever attempted to climb some of the hills to be seen in Maryland, I fear he would have sacrificed his ambition, let the idea go unheralded to the world, and saved his patent fee.

All early tandem showing the true sociability of the same ; observe the peaceful harmony of the city gentleman, with chimney-pot hat, and the sombreroed cow-boy. [...] You will have to make that front man do some work, Simon, or you will fall behind the band-wagon in spite of your fly-wheel.

Mr. White has at least provided some way to stop, and also to "walk with the vehicle," if he should so desire, which we think he probably would.

posted by autopilot at 3:10 AM on August 6 [2 favorites]

Great stuff. The Internet Archive has the much more technical and less snarky Bicycles and Tricycles: An Elementary Treatise on their Construction, of similar vintage. It's interesting to see how much of the basic engineering of bikes had been worked out before 1900. It's also full of very weird human-powered vehicles.
posted by adamrice at 6:45 AM on August 6 [1 favorite]

First, we made bicycles, then we made them safe to ride, and then we invented cars which made it dangerous to ride bicycles again.
posted by tommasz at 12:25 PM on August 6 [2 favorites]

Thanks for this, what a great find! I immediately sent around all the snarky bits to a fellow cycling friend of mine (appreciate you pulling out so many great ones in the post links), who's also been enjoying part one a great deal.

Does anyone have a similar treatise to recommend that might include more modern takes on the mechanics and engineering?
posted by daelin at 2:19 PM on August 6

Daelin--

This is a pretty amazing explainer of the physics of cycling. It doesn't really go into the engineering, which is a subject of almost fractal complexity. This is a book on the history of bike components that I've wanted to get for a long time but haven't.
posted by adamrice at 3:05 PM on August 6 [1 favorite]

Thanks, adamrice - that page is indeed an amazing explainer!
posted by daelin at 9:53 AM on August 7