STEAM, ELECTRICITY, SPRINGS, AND COMPRESSED AIR AS MOTORS.
This heading is not entirely germane to the subject of man-motor locomotion, but we will take advantage of the fact that in all mechanical motors that will ever be applied to bicycles and tricycles there will have to be an auxiliary apparatus for the feet. This is obvious, since in any break-down the rider will need some means of getting home. As the ocean steamers retain some apologies for sails, so the cycler will have to retain his foot-power mechanism in any machine he might adopt for individual transportation, though the main motor power be steam or electricity, one of which may finally be adopted in cycles. That every rider will care for this extraneous assistance is doubtful, as the element of exercise would be eliminated to a great extent. For practical uses aside from exercise, as in the transaction of business, etc., other motors than that of human energy would be a boon in the present cycle, but they would never be used to the exclusion of the legs. Already many experiments have been made, some quite successful, both in steam and electricity, but the steam I think affords the greater prospect of success, because the necessary conditions are naturally more nearly complete. Whatever motor is used, it will be necessary to have supply-stations at intervals along the road, which would require but little effort to establish for steam, since oil and water can be obtained almost anywhere now, and positive arrangements could easily be made to have the necessary supplies kept at all the cross-roads stores. All that is required is that some one shall put a practical steam bicycle upon the market, with all parts as light as possible and with oil for fuel. The main principles have all been worked out separately, and what we need now is a combination of the most improved methods and a go-ahead man to push the business.
Electricity is as yet too indefinite in its development, in this direction, to encourage the hope that it can, at present, be made available. The only prospective means of utilizing it as a road-motor is by the use of secondary or storage batteries, which would require dynamos scattered along the road for recharging them; but the slightest thought will show that this expensive arrangement is hardly a possibility considering the enormous distances and length of roads, especially in this country.
We have only to mention compressed air and springs, in order to dispose of them; the former does not promise much, and as to the latter, all efforts in that direction which have come under the writer’s notice have been quite nonsensical.