(The Rider is John Mayall, who
made the first road record, by
riding (as shown in cut) from
London to Brighton, 53 miles,
in one day, February, 1869.)
So rapid has been the march of improvement in cycle-making during the last seven years that the approach to fixity and uniformity of pattern—all bicycles now looking alike to the casual glance—has almost lost to us one of our most charming senses, the sense of delighted surprise. The most ingenious efforts of our master mechanics, accomplishing what would have been impossible only a short time ago, are now received as matters of course. The crude conditions and mechanical product of no more than ten years ago are rarely recalled; the vast majority of riders do not even know about them. The strength, lightness and beauty of the later bicycle have come out of long and toilsome and costly evolution, in which many have fallen by the way, and reward has not always been according to real merit. The careful student of the principles of cycle construction—the making of “a poem of steel”—cannot appreciatively examine the details in the advance shown in this year’s models without being glad that he is permitted to see such achievements. It is one thing to push and misuse the bicycle, another to ride it with intelligent care, another to understand it, another to love it and to honor the long cumulative skill which has made it possible and practical. The rabid seeker for extreme and radical novelties in type, form and modes of propulsion may care little for the niceties of mechanical accomplishment and may declare that the standstill has been reached. But this pessimistic and blasé view is unwarranted, for undoubtedly many of the most perfected and nearest perfect details now in vogue will be used on the cycle of the future, regardless of its general type.
THE TENDENCY TO FIXITY.
As in a number of past years, the art of cycle-making in 1898 exhibits distinct signs of two irresistible tendencies. One is toward fixity of type; the other is toward reversion to type. Fixity of type means the condition when—although there may be several widely different patterns of bicycle in use, as there always are of other wheeled vehicles—all of one pattern are substantially alike, varying only in trivial details, the product of all makers bearing the same appearance to the casual eye, however varying in real quality. When that time comes bicycles will resemble cut nails in being staple, standard, uniform and all alike. Such a time has not yet arrived, and it is not necessary to try to name the date in the new century when it will arrive; nevertheless the signs of its approach are unmistakable.
THE TENDENCY TO REVERSION.
Reversion to type—a well-known phrase of the scientific evolutionist—means here a return to earlier and once-discarded forms of construction. Very few notice the process, yet it constantly goes on. The inquirer for novelties often has the old presented to him and is satisfied, supposing he is looking on a new up-to-date production; it is a common experience to find alleged new devices brought out and rapturously received by the quidnuncs which the veteran instantly recognizes as among the things he saw tossed, years ago, into the refuse of the scrapheap.
That unhappy and irrepressible person, the “born inventor”—one of whom, like the “sucker,” is born every minute—is perpetually doing this in cycle matters, because the cycle is so much in the public eye that it draws him as the lamp flame draws the moth; he cannot keep away from it. Twenty years ago, at the very beginning of the bicycle in this country, he was eagerly on hand with his multiple-speed, mile-a-minute contraption; he has been doing the same ever since, and is just as industriously as ever reinventing the old folly; the Patent Office is flooded with his lumber. This, however, is repetition rather than reversion.
Reversion to old forms comes about for several reasons. We must always remember that the bicycle, like the piano, the violin and some other things which could be cited, belongs to nobody. Nobody invented it; it is the product of many minds, and has been wrought out by a long and gradual evolution, in which every step, freaky ones excepted, has been suggested and tested by practical use. Hence a device may be abandoned in the hope of escaping the inevitable drawback which besets all earthly things; or a device may be dropped because it cannot be made well enough or easily enough in the existing state of the art; or the conditions of public demand, or the state of the roads, or the caprice of fashion may change. Changes also come about to gratify the craving for novelty, and when the list of possibles comes to its end the maker goes back to or toward the beginning again, like the preacher who tips over his barrel of sermons and starts in afresh on the other end.
