FIG. 184.—MODERN “SAFETY.”
The most important of all modern improvements on the bicycle was perhaps the pneumatic tire. This was not originally designed for the bicycle, but was patented in England by R. W. Thompson in 1845 and in the United States May 8, 1847, No. 5,104. Its application to the bicycle was made in 1889 by Dunlop, United States patent No. 435,995, Sept. 9, 1890, and 453,550, June 2, 1891. It furnishes not only an elastic bearing which cushions the jar, but also makes a broader tread that renders cycling on the soft roads of the country at once practical and delightful. The chainless wheel, which connects the axle of the pedal crank with the axle of the rear wheel by a shaft with bevel gears, is the most recent form exploited by the manufacturers, but it is doubtful whether it presents any points of superiority over the chain type. All of the parts of the bicycle have come in for a share of attention at the hands of inventors, differential speed gears and brakes having received especial attention. The Morrow hub brake, which applies friction to the rear wheel hub by back pressure on the pedal, is a popular modern form. The first back-pedal brake is shown in United States Pat. No. 418,142, to Stover & Hance, Dec. 24, 1889.
Among the many modifications of the bicycle as used to-day may be mentioned the drop frame, which has made cycling possible for ladies, the tandem, for two riders, the sextet or octet, carrying six or eight riders and resembling a centipede in movement and an express train in speed: the ice velocipede, in which two runners are combined with a spiked driving wheel, and the hydrocycle, or water velocipede, in which the drive wheel, formed with paddles, is used to propel a buoyant hull through the water.
In point of speed there seems to be no limit to the bicycle. In a test made on the Long Island Railroad in the summer of 1899 between a wheel and an express train, the bicyclist, riding on a plank road between the rails and protected behind the train by a wind break, covered a mile in 574⁄5 seconds, and while going at top speed of more than a mile a minute, overtook the train, was caught by his friends on a rear platform and pulled on board, bicycle and all. This is the first instance on record of overtaking and boarding an express train going at the rate of sixty-four miles an hour, and yet it is said that the rider (Murphy) was not doing his best.
Nearly 5,000 patents have been granted on velocipedes and bicycles. Most of them were for bicycles which, as improved to-day, are not only as fleet as the birds, but almost as countless in numbers. It is estimated that in 1889 the total product of bicycles in this country reached 200,000 machines annually. In 1892, after the general adoption of the pneumatic tire, a great increase followed, which has grown from year to year until in the year 1899 a conservative estimate for the output in the United States is 1,000,000 wheels annually, worth from thirty to fifty million dollars. Each bicycle tire takes about two pounds of pure rubber, or four pounds to the wheel. The annual output in wheels consequently consumes about 4,000,000 pounds, or 2,000 tons of rubber. Ten years ago there were not more than twenty-five legitimate manufacturers of bicycles in the United States. In 1897 there were over 200 concerns in the business. It is estimated that there are to-day between 150 and 155 regular manufacturers, exclusive of the mere assemblers of parts. The Pope Manufacturing Company, which occupies the leading place, employed in 1888 about 500 hands. To-day their shops give employment to 3,800 workmen, which furnishes a significant object lesson as to the importance and growth of the industry.
The Automobile.—Gliding silently along our city streets without the customary accompaniment of the clatter of the horse’s hoofs, the automobile suggests to the average observer a very recent invention. This is, however, not the case. The automobile is older even than the locomotive, and is, in fact, the early model from which the rail locomotive was evolved. As early as 1680 Sir Isaac Newton proposed a steam carriage in which the propelling power was the reactionary discharge of a rearwardly directed jet of steam. Cugnot, in 1769, built a steam carriage, which is still preserved in the museum of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris. Hornblower also in the same year devised a steam carriage. Watt’s patents of 1769 and 1784 contemplated the application of his steam engines to carriages running on land. Symington in 1770, and Murdoch in 1784, built experimental models. In 1787 Oliver Evans obtained a patent in Maryland for the exclusive right to make steam road wagons. Nathan Read in 1790 also patented and built a steam carriage.
Of these, Cugnot represents the pioneer in the heavier forms of self-propelled vehicles, but the steam carriage which best deserves to be regarded as the prototype of the modern passenger automobile is that of Trevithick, in England, who may also be considered as the father of the locomotive. On Christmas eve, 1801, this steam carriage made its experimental trip along the high road carrying seven or eight passengers. The next day the party, with Trevithick in charge of the engine, visited Tehidy House, the home of Lord Dunstanville. They met with an accident, however, and the carriage turned over. It was placed under shelter, and while the party were at the hotel regaling themselves with roast goose and popular drinks, the water in the engine boiled away, the iron became red hot, and nothing combustible was left either of the carriage or the building in which it was sheltered. On March 24, 1802, Trevithick and Vivian obtained a British patent, No. 2,599, on this device, and another carriage was built, and in the spring of 1803 started a run from Camborne to Redruth, but it stuck in the mud. It was popularly known as Capt. Trevithick’s “Puffing Devil.” It was subsequently reconstructed in London and run upon the streets of that city. [Fig. 185] presents an illustration of the first steam automobile. The cylinders and pistons were enclosed within the fire box in the rear. Clutches (called striking boxes) on the axle of the front gear wheel allowed either running wheel to move independently of the other in turning. A pair of small front steering wheels was arranged to turn about a vertical axis and was manipulated by a handle bar. A brake was provided for in the specification, as were also variable gears for changing speed, and an automatic blower for the fire. The carriage had an elevated coach body mounted on springs, and the running wheels were of large size, adapted to the higher speed and lighter uses of passenger traffic.
FIG. 185.—TREVITHICK’S STEAM CARRIAGE, 1801.