Examples may be cited almost at random and without care for chronological order. A mild case was that of the Hunt patent, December, 1890. Mr. Hunt was aware “that a chain is often used to transmit power from the pedals to the wheel,” but he proposed “a frictional gearing connection.” His device was the same mode of chainless driving as on the [Humber chainless] of today—that is, by an intermediate wheel, but with a difference; his drive-wheels on the wheel axle and crank axle had toothed or corrugated edges, and his intermediate had a rubber band or tire on its rim. “It will be evident (he says) to the student of this bicycle that the corrugations on the peripheries of the drive-wheels K and M will take firm hold of the rubber band of the intermediate wheel N and thus prevent any possibility of slipping; in this way an easy, regular motion will be produced.” He also claims that this connection, while being firm enough, will also be elastic, with “yielding characteristics.” What really is evident is that if his device succeeded in driving the bicycle at all, the rubber band would retain its integrity at least fifteen minutes.
The same notion reappeared, a year ago, in the patent of Mr. Langbridge, an Englishman, who proposed chainless driving by two spur gear wheels carried on the seat-post tube and meshing with one on the pedal axle; “a pneumatic-tired friction wheel,” borne on stays in the triangle below the saddle, was to work on the tire of the rear wheel near its top, and this frictional contact would impart “the same, or practically the same, velocity” as that of the friction wheel itself. This was a conservative way of stating it, for “practically” is a rather flexible term.
THE “SWEEPER” IDEA.
In 1893 a Hartford man patented a bicycle fitted with a large cylinder, borne on either side below the wheel centre, for compressed air. Having previously filled these, either by a foot pump, which takes the place of the usual pedals, or by a curious rotary hand pump carried under the upper tube, the rider climbed to his place, opened a convenient throttle valve and sped along gayly. On a down grade he could use the momentum to repump air, getting brake effect by so doing, or he could use the air pressure to work a brake direct; as the gas tanks carried two little wheels on spiral springs underneath them, the rider could step off and leave the whole construction upright, leaning down on one of these stop-wheels.
Five years ago Mr. Gundelach of this city patented “a convenient gear mechanism by which the machine may be speeded high on a good road and may be changed to a low speed for hill climbing.” He placed a series of spur gears with pinions thereon in a frame, the last of them working on the rear wheel by sprocket and chain; when the rider came to a tough hill or a piece of bad road he had only to get off and carefully loosen the shaft so as to make a shift for power on the familiar method of the coned pulley in machine shops and he was all right; a flywheel on the shaft, for equalizing motion and for using the reservoir of power which some imagine is contained in flywheels, was not omitted. The public seem to have respected Mr. Gundelach’s patent rights.
In 1890 Mr. Toense of Cleveland patented a man-power combined with a pair of hydraulic cylinders. The rider began by climbing to a high seat, which sank under him and thus thrust back the piston of a horizontal pump, which gave the wheel a forward impulse by a rack and pinion. As the seat sank, it moved L-shaped levers, and thus lifted the piston in a vertical hydraulic cylinder; then the rider pushed down on the treadles, “at the same time raising himself in the seat,” and the piston just raised was pushed down, giving the wheel another impulse. “The driving wheel is thus acted upon alternately by the two driving cylinders, one acting when the seat descends and the other when the treadles are forced down.” This may seem a little obscure, but we have never had opportunity to see the device.
Mr. Hansel, of Zeitz, in Germany, only recently rediscovered and patented the idea of driving by the rider’s weight. There are two saddles, each on its post, arranged to slide up and down see-saw fashion, and geared, no matter precisely how, to a very big pulley belted to a very small one on the rear wheel, the gear ratio being evidently enormous. The rider gets up on the seat which is at the top, slides down with it, thus starting the wheel; then he is to hop off that to the other seat (which has meanwhile gone up) and so on. Expressive silence may be left to “muse the praise” of this invention.
Mr. Osborne of Brooklyn recently offered a carpet sweeper belted to the front wheel, which “will thrust aside small objects, such as nails, tacks, glass, sharp stones and the like, and leave a free path for the passage of the wheels of the bicycle.” This we respectfully refer to the Department of Street Cleaning.