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The first reference to a two-wheeled vehicle driven by one rider was a toy-like
simple machine, with just two wheels attached to a rigid wooden frame. The rider
would sit on the frame and drag using his feet, moving forward.
While it is not precisely known who invented this, Médé de Sivrac, a French
Craftsman, is often credited to have first come up with this design.
There were a couple of strong issues with this tool. It lacked stability, as the
moment the rider lifted both of his legs, it started falling over. Along with this,
there was difficulty in turning. The rider had to lift the front wheel and drag it to
turn, many times this required, stepping out, turning and then using it.
1820s – Velocifere
The important modification here was the addition of simple joints to make the
front wheel steerable. As the speed had increased, a backrest was also added for the
rider comfort.
Still the ride was quite bumpy. Also, we still had feet on the ground.
The credit for inventing the first true bicycle—one which could be ridden with both
feet off the ground—is given to a Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrik Macmillan.
Macmillan attached two levers on either side of the frame near the position of legs.
While one end was on the frame, the other end carried a short lever (known as a
treadle) which in turn carried pedals. The rider would simply oscillate pedals and
the complete mechanism would rotate the rocker fixed on the rear wheel. This was
given the name Velocipede.
Check the velocipede image carefully. You will notice the presence of small black
color pieces in the center, near the frame. These have threads attached and go up to
the hand bars. As the speed was increasing, this was the first model to have brakes
—since dragging by feet was not a good thing to do.
Although Macmillan’s Velocepede was the first true bicycle, which enabled the user
to traverse without putting his feet on the ground, it failed on commercial grounds.
Not a single product was sold. Probably because oscillating the feet was much more
troublesome than rotating it as in the designs that came later.
For the next four decades, there wasn’t much strong development and innovation
in the design. A French blacksmith, Pierre Michaux, is credited with coming up
with a new design which had pedals for the first time instead of treadles. The pedal-
crank system was attached to the front wheel.
Michaux’s Velocipede was similar to the present day working of children’s tricycles.
There was one more piece of innovation that needed to happen:
Despite the use of suspension, the iron-rimmed wooden wheels offered enough
shocks to the user that Michaux’s Velocipede was nicknamed the “Bone Shaker”.
So the distance travelled can be increased in two ways—either increase the number
of revolutions per unit time or increase the diameter of the wheel. (It was difficult
to do both as the weight of the wheel would increase too much.) Keep this piece of
information in mind.
While driving bicycle we don’t just need longer distance, but also torque—rotating
force, which will give us the necessary traction to propel forward.
There occurs an optimum RPM at which the force applied is maximum. For human
legs, this comes around to be around 50 RPM.
Great! Now, at that time it was not justified to rotate (or pedal) the front wheel at
that high RPM since it resulted in very large shocks and made the ride highly
uncomfortable.
So we had only one option to increase the speed - increase the diameter!
The increased circumference of the wheel gave longer distance in one revolution.
This led to the increase in speed, but some problems also came up.
1870s to 1900s was the era of these high wheelers. It was a commercial success.
The high wheeler gave a normal speed of up to 20 miles per hour, which was way
ahead of the previous designs. The problems that arose with the higher speed were
due to its size. The center of gravity was very high and closer to the front wheel.
Powering as well as turning the front wheel led to decrease in stability. Even a
small pebble or sudden brakes could make the rider fly off
As you could see from the picture, the size of front wheel came down and instead of
the direct power transmission, chains and sprockets were used. The ratio of
sprocket sizes enabled higher possible RPM.
Soon a series of additional small but important changes came up. Both wheels
became equal in size, pneumatic tires, bells, tangential spokes instead of radial
spokes and other features emerged, making the bicycle more stable and strong.
La búsqueda de un vehículo humano, estable, rápido y energéticamente eficiente
nos ha llevado a un largo camino. Veamos cómo empezó todo.
Si bien no se sabe con precisión quién inventó esto, a menudo se le atribuye a Médé
de Sivrac, un artesano francés, haber creado este diseño por primera vez.
Un funcionario alemán, el barón Karl von Drais, estuvo buscando alternativas a los
caballos por un tiempo. Luego se le ocurrieron modificaciones a la máquina de
juguetes e inventó lo que se conoce como el hobby horse o Draisene o
Velocifere. Fue capaz de alcanzar una velocidad de reloj de hasta 15 km / h.
La modificación importante aquí fue la adición de juntas simples para hacer que la
rueda delantera sea orientable. A medida que la velocidad había aumentado,
también se agregó un respaldo para la comodidad del jinete.
Aún así el paseo fue bastante accidentado. Además, todavía teníamos los pies en el
suelo.
El crédito por inventar la primera bicicleta verdadera, una que podría ser montada
con ambos pies sobre el suelo, se otorga a un herrero escocés Kirkpatrik
Macmillan.
Macmillan colocó dos palancas a cada lado del marco cerca de la posición de las
piernas. Mientras un extremo estaba en el marco, el otro llevaba una palanca corta
(conocida como pedal) que a su vez llevaba pedales. El ciclista simplemente
oscilaría los pedales y el mecanismo completo giraría el balancín fijo en la rueda
trasera. Así se le dio el nombre de Velocipede.
Para entender el mecanismo utilizado ver la siguiente figura:
A pesar del uso de la suspensión, las ruedas de madera con montura de hierro le
ofrecieron suficientes golpes al usuario, por lo que el Velocipede de Michaux fue
apodado el "Agitador de huesos".
Hagamos un experimento
Así que solo tuvimos una opción para aumentar la velocidad: ¡aumentar el
diámetro!