Cycling art, energy, and locomotion

by Robert P. Scott

But to revert to our cycle hobbyist in particular. A friend of the writer’s, a prominent man, intelligent in all other things, once proposed to pull all the Chicago street-cars by having a man in each, continually winding a spring, said spring to drive the car; and he knit his brow in half offence at the suggestion that there would be less danger of the wheels slipping if the spring-worker would get out and pull by the front platform.

No one can readily believe how common such ideas as the above spring method are till they scour the patent-office records, or talk to the cycle hobbyist. Intelligent men often remark “how powerful” a certain machine must be “with that long lever,” when the lever is hung to be worked from the short end; and how often we have heard them condemn the thirty-inch safeties as being slow, on account of the small wheel. Even to cycle-riders not aspiring to the high degree of hobbyists it was a matter of surprise, when the old Kangaroo came out, that it pushed harder when geared to the sixty than others geared to fifty.

“Big wheel, big speed,” seems to be indelibly written in the mind of the cycle hobbyist; but we will forgive him all such little inconsistencies if he will only let us continue to believe that there is no innate power in a gear wheel.

I once knew a successful manufacturer who geared up a sausage-cutter to double speed, and then down again to the same, and he believes to this day that it runs easier on account of these four gear wheels. I have often thought that the cycling fraternity would not have cared much whether it did or not, if he had only made it large enough to take in a few cycle hobbyists.

“Pull a bicycle from the rim,” and you have power only equalled by the pinch-bar. Did anybody notice the half-page advertisement of a prominent English maker a few years ago, of the tricycle that pulled from the rim (probably not endorsed by the said maker, it being merely contract work for an outsider)? and have any of our American readers ever seen the old bone-shaker wheel with the cross-bar on the hub? (See cut.) For years they were used in England with the benighted idea, in the minds of many, that they thereby gained in power. One of these wheels of eight-day size is suspended in front of a building in Coventry (or was a few years ago), used as a sign. This wheel “pulls by the rim,” at least so I was quite often informed, not always by reputable English makers, but by riders, who mostly see these great principles (?) first.

Old bone-shaker wheel.

The error appertaining to all such ideas is generally the result of confusing external with internal forces. We must have the hub of a wheel connected to the rim in some substantial manner, so that both will revolve rigidly together; further than this the manner of connecting them can matter but little so far as transmission of power is concerned. All that is necessary is that the hub shall not revolve within the rim independently and thereby cause a lack of firmness.

Another sample of the hobbyistic idea is promulgated in the following from The Cyclist in a recent issue.

“A NEW BRAKE.

“Mr. ——, of ——, has patented a good idea. On the other side of the forks from the regulation plunger he introduces another spoon connected with the front under the arch of the fork, provision being made for the mud-guard. On moving the lever, both brakes act in unison, thus duplicating the resistance with the same power required to work the brake in its single form.”