Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2018 November 1

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November 1

Why was the bicycle invented so recently?

Dear All,

Humanity has had wheeled transport for several thousand years, and the bicycle is perhaps the most efficient form of human-powered transport ever designed. Certainly it would have been hugely useful for the 90% or so of that time in which humans hadn't invented combustion/steam engines, so why wasn't it (or something similar) invented until the 19th century? A bicycle is basically wheels connected to pedals somehow, everything else is changeable. You could have gears, but they aren't necessary. Likewise with tyres, and even the number of wheels. Wouldn't pedal-powered carts have been very useful in lots of ancient towns/cities? What was holding it back? Prokhorovka (talk) 23:05, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Actually, the velocipede (1791) slightly predates the steam railway locomotive (1803). Imagine an early 19th century road - the good ones in towns might have been cobbled, but the majority were just badly rutted tracks. Now think about trying to cycle over cobblestones with iron shod tyres, or going down a hill without brakes apart from your feet. Vulcanised rubber wasn't invented until 1839 and it took some time to adapt the new material to make solid tyres and brake pads. Although you say that gears are unnecessary, pedalling a bicycle with the cranks acting directly on the front wheel hub produces very slow forward movement, hence the enormous front wheel of the penny-farthing. Alansplodge (talk) 23:27, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

"A bicycle is basically wheels connected to pedals somehow" - but do you know how? With the frame and a seat and all? I don't think I could explain it. Relatedly, could you draw a bicycle from memory? It's surprisingly difficult! Adam Bishop (talk) 23:53, 1 November 2018 (UTC)

Interesting challenge. I think I could, if I could draw at all. The latter element is going to be a confounding variable, I'm afraid. --Trovatore (talk) 18:31, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

An automobile is just a bunch of explosions in a box, pushing a rod and turning a wheel. You can describe any sufficiently advanced technology with a sentence that has an incredulous tone, and that doesn't mean that it was easy to invent. The bicycle required a confluence of a wide range of engineering and technology advances to make it viable, that evolved over several centuries to its current state. The process of invention is a complex, messy thing, and the familiar is obvious only because it is familiar. That is, a bicycle only looks easy to make because you've always had a bicycle. People living in the 1600s wouldn't necessarily think so. --Jayron32 18:26, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

I think you need another essential element (besides just wheels and pedals) for any successful pedal-powered vehicle: a way of steering. Rigid wheels only work on animal-drawn vehicles. Besides, without a steering bar/wheel, a bicycle is unstable. - Lindert (talk) 00:00, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Wouldn't pedal-powered carts have been very useful in lots of ancient towns/cities? Yes they certainly would have! All that would have been needed was the stuff mentioned above, plus tension-spoked wheels, lightweight chassis and seat construction (metal tubes, sheet metal, foam rubber, etc), very smooth road surfaces, and a lack of hills. Incidentally, have you tried propelling even a modern quadracycle (with no freight) on smooth asphalt? Even when the wind isn't against you, it's hard work. A four-seat quadracycle starts to make sense, but then you need four people of the right height and with the requisite muscles who all want to make the same journey at the same time. And there's rarely any space for freight. -- Hoary (talk) 00:16, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Until rubber was available for cushioning the ride, bikes would have been extremely uncomfortable. Matt Deres (talk) 12:21, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Building a bicycle in such a way that the rider can easily balance on it is surprisingly subtle. We have an article on bicycle dynamics.

How does a bike stay upright? You might say because the wheels act as gyroscopes, and you'd be right, sort of. But it's a big sort of. The gyroscopic effect doesn't stabilize you directly at all; gyroscopes don't work that way. What happens is that when you start to tilt, the gyroscopic effect causes your front wheel to turn in that direction. That works together with your forward motion to provide a force contrary to the tilt. This all has to work together in finicky ways, and I believe it was worked out by endless trial and error before it was ever really understood theoretically. --Trovatore (talk) 18:39, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Make a note for anyone who cracks time-travel: take your bike with you when you go back to the Battle of Hastings, and freak-out the natives. |Lugnuts]] ^{Fire Walk with Me} 18:16, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

As suggested below, riders on bicycles wouldn't likely strike much fear in the hearts of the natives, as warriors on horses could easily outrun them, spear the riders, and trample them. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:36, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

logically, the reason it was not necessary to invent the bicycle earlier is related to its main competitor, the horse.DOR (HK) (talk) 16:13, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Are you saying big horse conspired to prevent the invention? Nil Einne (talk) 18:17, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Vigevano's war carriage

To the extent that The Open Conspiracy exists, perpetual motion machines are said to be impossible, sure. And I just discovered that article when searching on open conspiracy. Given Well's interests and writings it sounds like an interesting read. Speaking of cranks, we have an article on them Crank (mechanism) and in it is this gem: "The Italian physician Guido da Vigevano (c. 1280−1349), planning for a new crusade, made illustrations for a paddle boat and war carriages that were propelled by manually turned compound cranks and gear wheels (center of image)." So the basic idea of human-powered wheeled transport was conceived centuries ago even if not developed until recently. Speaking of developing inventions in a timely manner, I need to complete my own of course (and get back to my very talented artistic girlfriend who is calling me at the moment). -Modocc (talk) 21:39, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

I think the single most significant factor preventing the development of the bicycle in earlier centuries was the absence of smooth roads. Also, lightweight and strong tubular building components—I think that would be the second most important missing ingredient in the puzzle. A very heavy bicycle on an uneven road would be impossible to pedal. It would be easier to walk. Bus stop (talk) 23:51, 4 November 2018 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, reports I've seen on Google say that the bicycling craze which rose in the 1880s led to a demand for better roads, and that this paved the way (!) for the automobile. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 00:23, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Roads Were Not Built for Cars. --Carbon Caryatid (talk) 18:12, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

Well, roads built before cars were not built for cars. It, however, would be hard to argue that the Autobahn or the Interstate Highway System was built for some other purpose than to move about automobiles efficiently. They certainly aren't optimized for horses or bicycles or walking. --Jayron32 02:52, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Baseball Bugs, see Good Roads Movement if you've not already. Nyttend (talk) 05:13, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

Bikes have served a useful niche once horses became impractical within the city limits(and I don't really understand why my younger sister maintains hers in her pasture, but that's a horse of a completely different color). Bamboo can be used for lightweight frames, see Bamboo bicycles and I bet a determined inventor could have built a suitable cranked cart centuries ago. But why would they have bothered or been motivated to when they had the four-legged horses or donkeys to do the work rather than strenuously working their own two legs any distance over rough terrains? Heck, even today avid cyclists are few unless they live in crowded cities and some people cannot even be bothered with walking these days because now we got two-day shipping to one's doorstep. Honestly, I think DOR (HK) and Nil Einne nailed it. As fate would have it, big horse conspired to suppress the working class. :-) --Modocc (talk) 00:49, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

For the record, we have a wide-ranging article on the History of the bicycle as well as one on the Bike boom(s). --Carbon Caryatid (talk) 18:12, 6 November 2018 (UTC)