Mr. Livingston of St. Louis takes the locomotive double-rod chainless driving of the 1896 Twentieth Century and the Dayton of this year, and improves on it in his own way. Instead of driving his pinion by a chain and so running it forward, he makes a spur gear of it, so that the motion is reversed from that of the pedals. As the two connecting-rods to the wheel are worked by this pinion, he is compelled to pedal backward, or else run the bicycle itself backward. Presumably, he intends the former, and is not disturbed by the prospect; but as this mode of pedalling would involve an excessively vertical action it is not probable that this particular chainless will ever be seen on the road.
Going back sixteen years, we find Mr. Amess, a Canadian, turning the first Columbia model into a lever-driving wheel, as shown in the cut. His patent claims only speeding up and vertical position, and does not allege safety from headers, very properly. For not only was his contrivance clumsy and subject to great friction on the sliding fulcrum, but added weight where weight would be dangerous; moreover, as a careful examination will show, the mode of driving had no tendency to hold down the back wheel.
A NOTION OF 1881.
Only a year ago, Mr. Harrison, an Englishman, patented a lever contrivance with oscillating fulcrum, in combination with planet gearing. Every disadvantage of lever-driving attached to this, and he also took up again our old acquaintance the much-heralded elliptical sprocket, which had its trial in this country some years before. Substantially this device was at the National Show, November, 1896.
At that Show was the Alert, a chainless using substantially the “chain disk or cam,” just patented by a Swede and said to have been sold (a few countries excepted) for $600,000. It is an L-lever pivoted at the crank bracket, the forward arm carrying the pedals, and the upper arm drawing by a cord upon a sort of snail cam or scroll on the rear axle; the driving is on each side necessarily, and there is no back pedalling. The leverage is changeable by shifting up or down the place of attachment of the cord to the upright lever arm.
A year before this, another Englishman patented a device for chainless driving by a lever with sliding fulcrum at the rear of the wheel; the lever was to be pivoted to a wheel with internal spur teeth meshing with a pinion on the axle, and the device was on both sides.
Five years ago Mr. Mahoney of this city patented a contrivance as [shown in the cut]. He overlooked such considerations as enormous width of tread and the fact that his driving wheel was not central in the frame. He premised that, “as a general thing, a bicycle rider has a reserve supply of strength which he cannot use to advantage in running the ordinary bicycle, from the fact that he cannot make his feet go fast enough to get a speed from the bicycle proportionate to his strength.” Having thus announced the discovery that twice two are five, Mr. Mahoney described his invention by which “a person may drive the machine very rapidly without making his feet move very fast.” If Mr. Mahoney had not been bent on inventing something, he might have perceived that speeding up ad libitum could be had by omitting his gears and using a front sprocket large enough. Later inventors have seen more clearly. For instance, only a few months ago, Mr. Papperdykes of New Haven “patented” a bicycle warranted to carry a rider a mile in seven and a half revolutions of the pedals, thus giving outlet to the reserve supply of strength mentioned by Mr. Mahoney. There is a train of gears, combined with sprockets and chain, making a gear ratio of 8,448 inches. This is as the story was told, since we have not seen the patent; but there was an error in expression The equivalent circumference of wheel is 8,448 inches and the diameter 2,680 inches, or 224 feet, as nearly as can be figured, making an equivalent wheel only forty feet smaller than the great Ferris wheel of the World’s Fair. Here is a little object lesson in gear ratio as heretofore explained; the actual wheel was to be 28 inches, while it was to run per each pedal revolution as far as a directly connected wheel of 224 feet would run. Such a construction might be a little heavy, but there would be a difficulty with it in practice; it would probably require ten or twelve horse-power to drive, while a bicycle rider has only one man-power. A like difficulty prevents our flying with the birds, for wings could be easily made and attached.
What could anybody expect to accomplish by carrying a long chain from the usual front sprocket to an extra sprocket below the saddle, from which a second chain ran down to the rear sprocket? Yet the writer encountered precisely this fixed-up contrivance in the street, and surveyed it with feelings which forbore utterance. Or consider the very recent patent of Mr. Scott of Philadelphia, as shown in the cut. He knew that an electric motor for driving the wheel would be delightful for a lazy rider; so he put one on behind, in what is evidently a good place for it. A motor must have current; so he put a small dynamo on the diagonal tube to supply it. Then, to make that go, he had only to put a large band wheel in place of the front sprocket and belt it on, and the deed was done. Granting that there would be no electrical difficulty in transmitting energy from one point to the other, this contrivance would simply waste a considerable power which might be carried directly to the wheel; but Mr. Scott does not know this, and he felt he had a call to invent something.