Other riders in new Major Taylor biography

[carlfogel@comcast.net]

The library just coughed up "Major" by Todd Balf, a new biography of
Major Taylor that has some interesting details about other riders.

***

Louis Munger, a highwheeler racer and later safety bicycle
manufacturer, hired Major Taylor as a houseboy and then promoted
Taylor as a promising racer. In 1886, Munger repeated part of Thomas
Stevens's world ride, pedaling a highwheeler from San Francisco to New
York.

Well, not exactly pedaling--the "roads" of the era were so wretched
that Munger mostly walked:

"Like seemingly the rest of America, he [Munger] had read about
Stevens's journey 'over the Sierras, through the snow sheds, andd
across the great desert.' Munger wasn't as poetic in describing his
ordeal. 'It was largely a hike,' he confessed years later, though he
did gamely try."

--p.16

Munger's 111-day "ride" was 7 days slower than Stevens's journey. The
two cities are about 2600 miles apart as the crow flies, so Munger and
Stevens were averaging about 30 miles a day on--er, with their
highwheelers.

***

Another rider, Floyd McFarland, is described as a dishonest, vicious
son of a *****, given to fixing races and putting elbows into the
faces of other riders.

Here's a picture of McFarland after he retired and became a promoter:
http://i32.tinypic.com/6gj1mv.jpg

Floyd's upside-down drop handlebar is a sure sign of moral turpitude.

What appears to be a monster strut for supporting the nose of the
saddle is visible, well in front of the seat post hidden by Floyd's
leg. The frame pump attachment is odd-looking, too. Floyd wears one
gaiter or spat on his right ankle to keep his trousers clean.

The photo's intriguing caption says that it was taken not long before
Floyd was killed, which leads to this "charming" detail:

"Floyd McFarland, who had attempted to resurrect the sport as a
promoter, died well before the others. He was at the Newark Velodrome,
superintending the place, when an enraged client plunged a screwdriver
into his skull. They had been heatedly arguing over the placement of
the vendors' signs when the disagreement turned violent. Few people
knew he was a giant of racing when they saw his obituary. His
reputation as a charming businessman had trumped his notoriety as a
bullying competitor. His funeral on April 21, 1915, was one of the
largest in New Jersey history. 'Mac was a villain,' an obituary writer
began, 'but a very likeable one.'"

--p.246

You know how those charming New Jersey businessmen are always getting
ice-picks--

Er, they're always getting screwdrivers shoved into their skulls in
the course of heated argu--

Er, the course of ordinary business discussions.

Maybe it's a good thing that the keyboards of RBT are far apart.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

[Robert Perkins]

carlfogel@comcast.net wrote:
> The library just coughed up "Major" by Todd Balf, a new biography of
> Major Taylor that has some interesting details about other riders.
>
> ***
>

I always hear about Major Taylor. Are there any other must-read cycling
history books, in your opinion?

-- Rob

[datakoll]

RON BODY PART ?

[carlfogel@comcast.net]

On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 09:29:18 -0400, Robert Perkins
<robert.perkins@hotpop.com> wrote:

>carlfogel@comcast.net wrote:
>> The library just coughed up "Major" by Todd Balf, a new biography of
>> Major Taylor that has some interesting details about other riders.
>>
>I always hear about Major Taylor. Are there any other must-read cycling
>history books, in your opinion?
>
>-- Rob

Dear Rob,

Short answer: All of them!

Unfortunately, that approach leads to an expensive and time-consuming
hobby (or so I hear).

Slightly longer answer: skip to the end of this post.

Longer answer . . .

Browse your library, which may have some cycle books, including the
ones that I'm about to mention. If not, inter-library loan is cheap,
but it often comes up empty or takes forever.

Much quicker than inter-library loan is www.bookfinder.com. Used and
new books can arrive in three days. But be warned: heavy use of
www.bookfinder.com can warp your values. You may end up thinking that
$115.15 is a reasonable price for a used copy of the 1997 "Cycle
History 8: Proceedings of the International Cycle History Conference."
(After all, that $115.15 includes shipping, so it's really quite a
bargain . . .)

The quickest, cheapest places to find cycle books is online for free
at Google Books and the Gutenberg project:
http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Here's a really nice online book that you won't find there:

http://www.sil.si.edu/smithsoniancontributions/HistoryTechnology/pdf_lo/SSHT-0024.pdf

That's the Smithsonian bicycle collection with explanatory text,
scanned to a PDF. It's much more detailed than the Smithsonian site.
My tattered copy came from the Okmulgee Public Library, which was
stupid to sell it. (The babe on the cover is a Smithsonian magazine
employee, riding an 1884 Star--you were wondering about the bike,
weren't you?)

***

There are several kinds of cycle histories:

--biographies of racers (Major Taylor, Lance Someone-or-other) or
industry figures (Colonel Pope)

--personal accounts of riders (Thomas Stevens and "Karl Kron" and
Frank Lenz write about riding their highwheelers thousands of miles)

--histories of famous races or kinds of racing (Tour de France,
Paris-Roubaix, 6-day racing, land-speed records)

--cycling from a scientific point of view (Sharp's 1896 "Bicycles &
Tricycles" and editions of "Bicycling Science" from 1982 onward)

--histories of bicycles (books about bicycles rather than about
bicyclists, such as Berto's "Dancing Chain," Ritchie's "King of the
Road," Herlihy's "Bicycle: The History")

***

Sadly, biographies about racers like Major Taylor don't mention much
of technical interest to RBT. There are a details about the bicycles,
but biographies are about people, not machines. Racing biographies may
be more interesting to posters who like RBR.

Major Taylor is a special case. Taylor attracts biographers for two
reasons: he was black and he was American, which are rare qualities
for a famous bicycle racer. The writers have the obvious hook of race,
plus the convenience of a subject with material in English.

I expect that biographies of Merckx, Coppi, Bartali, and other
European racers would be interesting, but few have been translated.

As far as technical details go, even biographies that do try to
include technical details are likely to be dull. Famous racers rode
safety bicycles. After about 1892, safety bicycles pretty much look
alike, with only subtle differences--inch-pitch rather than half-inch
chain, tubulars on wooden rather than metal rims, toe-clips rather
than clipless, more and more sprockets.

For example, Major Taylor is actually a wildly different racer in that
he rode a special kind of shaft drive bike early in his career, a
design that was supposed to be more efficient than the standard bevel
gear shaft drive.

But Balf just mentions this shaft drive business in passing, getting
it wrong, claiming that the Sager (he mis-spells it Sanger) used a
beveled gear.

The technical level Balf's book can be seen on page 20, where he says
that someone named "J.K. Starling" invented the Rover safety bicycle
(most people believe it was John Kemp Starley) and claims that Dunlop
just glued some garden hose to his son's tricycle wheels to invent the
pneumatic tire (the tires were actually painstakingly hand-made out of
linen, canvas, and sheets of 1/32" rubber).

But half the fun of reading about bicycle history is figuring out the
mistakes. Balf wrote a biography about Major Taylor, not a book about
Taylor's bike or other bicycles of that era.

If you want curious details about about bicycle technology that isn't
fairly familiar to you from what you ride every day, you have to look
back further at the highwheeler and velocipede era, whose racers are
too obscure for much biography.

For example, Les Bowerman's 10-page article (more like 20-page, given
two full columns per page) "John Keen--The Life of Cycling Pioneer" in
Cycle History 4 Boston 1993 has far more technical detail about Keen's
bikes than any Major Taylor biography has about Taylor's bikes, since
Bowerman's article is about a famous highwheeler racer who invented a
number of features (many of which were duds).

Like the Taylor biographies, Goddard's "Col. Pope and His American
Dream Machines" is really about Pope and his company (which ended up
making cars), not about the details of the actual Pope bicycles, which
included both highwheelers and early safety bicycles.

But again, it would be wrong to blame Goddard for writing about his
subject. Just as Balf wrote a biography of Taylor, who happened to
ride bicycles, Goddard wrote a biography of a Pope,, who happened to
run a bicycle factory. Neither biographer cared much about the details
of the bicycles.

***

Personal accounts by riders who weren't racers tend to be heavy going.

When highwheelers came out, people who rode them around the world,
across America, or all over Switzerland could write books that sold
well.

But such books tend to have very little cycle history per page, since
the same guy rides the same bike 10,000 miles on the East Coast or the
same bike gets carried around half the world. You can find a few
technical details and a little bicycle history, but such books tend to
be travel reports--interesting, but not too much about bicycles.

They're also damned thick and expensive, but luckily they're started
turning up free online. You can browse them and see how you like them.

Around the World on a Bicycle Vol. 1 Thomas Stevens on a highwheeler
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5136

Around the World on a Bicycle Vol. 2 Thomas Stevens
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13749

Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle "Karl Kron" on a highwheeler
http://books.google.com/books?id=lJ9qHJaG5xkC&printsec=titlepage

The world tour of Frank Lenz on a Victor safety bicycle ended when he
was murdered, but you can browse his reports to "Outing" magazine by
going here and searching for Lenz:

http://search.la84foundation.org/search?q=lenz&Author=&Keywords=&btnG=Search+LA84&sort=date%3AD%3AL%3Ad1&output=xml_no_dtd&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&client=default_frontend&proxystylesheet=default_frontend&filter=0&getfields=*&proxyreload=1&partialfields=Subject%3Aouting&c=outing

Less famous accounts can be found by searching in Google Books,
restricting the search to the subject of cycling and limiting the
years to 1870-1900:

http://books.google.com/books?as_q=&num=10&lr=&as_brr=0&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_libcat=0&as_brr=0&lr=&as_vt=&as_auth=&as_pub=&as_sub=%22cycling%22&as_drrb=c&as_miny=1870&as_maxy=1900&as_isbn=

***

A more appealing kind of cycle history focuses on races, such as the
Tour de France or Paris-Roubaix.

Histories of a particular race (or kind of racing) are often more
interesting than biographies of a single racer or personal accounts of
thousands of miles on a bicycle.

One advantage of the history of a bike race is that the author can
collect lots of interesting anecdotes about dozens of racers, instead
of doggedly trying to make Major Taylor's umpteenth weekend event
interesting or telling you about yet another day that was about the
same as the last two hundred days as the author grimly pursued his
round-the-world goal.

Another advantage of the history of a bike race is that the book is
more likely to go into details about rules, conditions, and equipment
than a biography of a single racer that spends whole chapters on the
racer's childhood, parents, wife, children, and retirement.

You can find hundreds of books about famous bicycle races, many of
them beautifully illustrated and already sitting on your library's
shelves.

Amazon lists 7,856 books for "Tour de France":

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/103-8558342-2357452?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=%22tour+de+france%22&x=7&y=20

Before you give up in despair in the face of that mammoth list of
books, notice that Amazon lets you search inside many books, meaning
that you can view a page or two. Peek at the first book or two on the
Amazon list and see if the excerpt or the surprise-me page appeal to
you.

I have the McGann book, "The Story of the Tour de France," which has
interesting details about the early Tour--flats, cheating, bizarre
rules, politics, dozens of racers, weird anecdotes, descriptions of
the tactics:

http://www.amazon.com/Story-Tour-France-Bill-McGann/dp/1598581805/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1205713271&sr=1-2

Use the search-inside option and see if it appeals to you.

"Racing the Wind" by Cecil Cripps is an excellent, detailed book about
riders pursuing land-speed records, full of technical details and
bizarre anecdotes.

***

Purely technical books about bicycles will often include quite a bit
of history. Sharp's 1896 "Bicycles & Tricycles" has 565 illustrations.
You can skip a lot of it (endless equations and theory) and read the
parts about the odd designs that catch your eye:

http://books.google.com/books?id=gFMN3-srupsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=inauthor:archibald+inauthor:sharp&as_brr=1&ei=qK8vR5ezL4GktAPMvqiwCQ

"Bicycling Science" is the same sort of book and has been through
several editions. It appeared in the 1980s, so you get quite a bit
more modern material than Sharp offers. Here's the limited Google
preview:

http://books.google.com/books?id=0JJo6DlF9iMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=bicycling+science&lr=&as_brr=0&ei=eb3dR6rLJ5vEswO1muTnAQ&sig=M8WVX2mBRMbcY6YeUX_BASEDyHI

***

That brings us to cycle history books. They're not biographies,
personal accounts, histories of famous races, or technical books about
the physics of bicycling, though they often include such topics.

They're just histories of bicycles.

After a dozen or so, you'll realize that they tell pretty much the
same story:

1) From 1800~1820 the hobby-horse mania grips Europe--no pedals, just
push along on two wheels connected by a crude frame. The big technical
advance is the steering tiller.

2) From 1820~1865 the dark ages follow the hobby-horse mania, which
collapsed when people decided that they didn't want to risk rupturing
themselves by pushing a heavy pair of wagon wheels over bad roads.
During the dark ages, tricycles and quadricycles flourished, but
two-wheeled contraptions languished.

3) From 1865~1870, the velocipede flourishes. Bicycling revives when
someone attaches pedals to the front wheel of a hobby-horse, allowing
you to actually _ride_ the damn thing.

4) From 1870~1890 is the highwheeler era. Wire wheels replace wagon
wheels. Rubber tires make speed possible. The velocipede's front wheel
with the pedals grows enormous because that offered higher gearing,
while the rear wheel shrinks to save weight and make mounting easy.

Lots of oddball "safety" highwheelers are designed, with gearing to
allow smaller front wheels, small wheels in front and large wheels in
back. But the basic highwheeler ruled the bicycling ruler for about
twenty years, with riders taking headers as part of life.

5) In 1885, nephew John Starley designs the Rover rear-wheel
chain-drive bicycle, basing it on a tricycle and aiming to make an
exceptional hill-climber (he wasn't actually thinking about safety).
Similar rear-wheel chain-drive bicycles had been tried earlier, but
didn't catch on. Starley gets lucky, the Rover starts to sell, and the
the safety bicycle era ensues.

6) From 1890 to the present, chain-drive safety bicycles rule. They
did quite well from 1885 to 1890 on solid and cushion tires, but when
Dunlop's pneumatic tire became available, they wiped out the
highwheelers in a year or two. The safety bicycle boom collapsed by
1900, with most companies going out of business, but the safety
bicycle was here to stay.

7) Since 1900, not much has happened in bicycling in terms of
technical innovation.

:-)

More seriously, bicycle innovation has been mostly a matter of
refinement or of resurrecting forgotten schemes that finally catch on.
For example, several kinds of clipless pedal (with float) were
invented, sold, and abandoned by 1900.

Any bicycle history book will go through those eras, some in more
detail than others, but they all tell basically the same story.

For example, Frank Berto's "The Dancing Chain" covers bicycles up to
1900 on pages 21-40, with lots of very good illustrations and text.
The next 300 pages or so are a detailed history of derailleur
development, with the effects of that history thrown in.

It's hard to choose between Pryor Dodge's "The Bicycle" and David
Herlihy's "Bicycle: The History"--they're both full of beautiful
photos, often in color. (The only sensible solution is to buy both.)

There are lots of other bicycle history books on my shelves, most of
them out of print, many of them deserving.

If you have to pick just one book for bicycle history, go to
www.bookfinder.com and get Andrew Ritchie's "King of the Road: An
Illustrated History of Cycling". It's a large softcover with hundreds
of black and white photos up through 1970 and with excellent text by a
very thorough and well-respected bicycle historian.

Here are a two lists of bicycling books, many of them histories:

http://members.aol.com/bicyclemus/bike_museum/PHBList.htm

http://www.paloaltobicycles.com/books/history.html

Here's a list of the hard-core high-priced bicycle history stuff, for
people who get excited about whether Macmillan's 1839 velocipede is a
fraud:
http://www.pedalinghistory.com/PHconf.html

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

[r15757@aol.com]

On Mar 16, 7:38 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:

> Similar rear-wheel chain-drive bicycles had been tried earlier, but
> didn't catch on. Starley gets lucky, the Rover starts to sell, and the
> the safety bicycle era ensues.

What is the cite for that tidbit Carl?

[carlfogel@comcast.net]

On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:28:16 -0700 (PDT), r15757@aol.com wrote:

>On Mar 16, 7:38 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>
>> Similar rear-wheel chain-drive bicycles had been tried earlier, but
>> didn't catch on. Starley gets lucky, the Rover starts to sell, and the
>> the safety bicycle era ensues.
>
>What is the cite for that tidbit Carl?

Dear Robert,

Most bicycle histories will mention such rear-wheel chain-drive safety
bicycles as the 1869 Meyer-Guilemet, the 1876 Shergold, the 1879
Lawson Bicyclette (also known as the Crocodile), tbe 1884 Humber, the
1884 McCammon, and Rucker's 1884 Marvel.

(The Rover was actually in prototype, so to speak, in 1884, but 1885
is the usual date because that was the version with normal handlebars
instead of weird indirect steering--imagine a handlebar sticking up
out of the middle of the top-tube that connected to the distant front
wheel.)

The best source would be Ritchie's "King of the Road," pages 121-130,
which shows most of these early rear-wheel chain-drive safeties.

You can also see them in Dodge, Herlihy, Adams, Palmer, Caunter, and
Woodforde.

What confuses people is that the Rover was the one that succeeded, but
it's a pain to keep writing that it was "the first commercially
successful dwarf-safety rear-wheel chain-drive bicycle."

So people tend to think that nephew John Starley came up with the
rear-wheel chain-drive idea in 1885, when in fact he was working on it
(along with a host of others) in 1884 and such bicycles had already
been built without any real commercial success since 1869.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

[r15757@aol.com]

On Mar 17, 12:32 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:28:16 -0700 (PDT), r15...@aol.com wrote:
> >On Mar 16, 7:38 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>
> >> Similar rear-wheel chain-drive bicycles had been tried earlier, but
> >> didn't catch on. Starley gets lucky, the Rover starts to sell, and the
> >> the safety bicycle era ensues.
>
> >What is the cite for that tidbit Carl?
>
> Dear Robert,
>
> Most bicycle histories will mention such rear-wheel chain-drive safety
> bicycles as the 1869 Meyer-Guilemet, the 1876 Shergold, the 1879
> Lawson Bicyclette (also known as the Crocodile), tbe 1884 Humber, the
> 1884 McCammon, and Rucker's 1884 Marvel.
>
> (The Rover was actually in prototype, so to speak, in 1884, but 1885
> is the usual date because that was the version with normal handlebars
> instead of weird indirect steering--imagine a handlebar sticking up
> out of the middle of the top-tube that connected to the distant front
> wheel.)
>
> The best source would be Ritchie's "King of the Road," pages 121-130,
> which shows most of these early rear-wheel chain-drive safeties.
>
> You can also see them in Dodge, Herlihy, Adams, Palmer, Caunter, and
> Woodforde.
>
> What confuses people is that the Rover was the one that succeeded, but
> it's a pain to keep writing that it was "the first commercially
> successful dwarf-safety rear-wheel chain-drive bicycle."
>
> So people tend to think that nephew John Starley came up with the
> rear-wheel chain-drive idea in 1885, when in fact he was working on it
> (along with a host of others) in 1884 and such bicycles had already
> been built without any real commercial success since 1869.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Carl Fogel


Ah, very interesting. And then there are a few who believe the chain-
drive bike was actually conceptualized by da Vinci, as a random
drawing of one was found in one of his student's notebooks.

Robert

[carlfogel@comcast.net]

On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:17:39 -0700 (PDT), r15757@aol.com wrote:

>On Mar 17, 12:32 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>> On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:28:16 -0700 (PDT), r15...@aol.com wrote:
>> >On Mar 16, 7:38 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>>
>> >> Similar rear-wheel chain-drive bicycles had been tried earlier, but
>> >> didn't catch on. Starley gets lucky, the Rover starts to sell, and the
>> >> the safety bicycle era ensues.
>>
>> >What is the cite for that tidbit Carl?
>>
>> Dear Robert,
>>
>> Most bicycle histories will mention such rear-wheel chain-drive safety
>> bicycles as the 1869 Meyer-Guilemet, the 1876 Shergold, the 1879
>> Lawson Bicyclette (also known as the Crocodile), tbe 1884 Humber, the
>> 1884 McCammon, and Rucker's 1884 Marvel.
>>
>> (The Rover was actually in prototype, so to speak, in 1884, but 1885
>> is the usual date because that was the version with normal handlebars
>> instead of weird indirect steering--imagine a handlebar sticking up
>> out of the middle of the top-tube that connected to the distant front
>> wheel.)
>>
>> The best source would be Ritchie's "King of the Road," pages 121-130,
>> which shows most of these early rear-wheel chain-drive safeties.
>>
>> You can also see them in Dodge, Herlihy, Adams, Palmer, Caunter, and
>> Woodforde.
>>
>> What confuses people is that the Rover was the one that succeeded, but
>> it's a pain to keep writing that it was "the first commercially
>> successful dwarf-safety rear-wheel chain-drive bicycle."
>>
>> So people tend to think that nephew John Starley came up with the
>> rear-wheel chain-drive idea in 1885, when in fact he was working on it
>> (along with a host of others) in 1884 and such bicycles had already
>> been built without any real commercial success since 1869.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Carl Fogel
>
>
>Ah, very interesting. And then there are a few who believe the chain-
>drive bike was actually conceptualized by da Vinci, as a random
>drawing of one was found in one of his student's notebooks.
>
>Robert

Dear Robert,

Alas, the familiar old da Vinci claim has been discredited:

"Leonardo da Vinci has been credited with having sketched a bicycle in
1492 in the Codex Atlanticus. However, that drawing has been proven to
be a forgery, added at the time of the volume's restoration in the
1960s."

--Berto, "The Dancing Chain," p. 11

Similarly, the alleged 1839 Macmillan treadle velocipede, which
appears in practically every bicycling history, is now treated with
extreme skepticism, to put it politely.

Much of the old history that has been debunked still survives because
the debunking often appears in either the Cycle History conferences,
whose proceedings are outlandishly expensive, or in more modern
bicycle histories, which have far more pictures and pages, but which
still cost enough to make anyone think twice.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

[fred.garvin@yahoo.com]

On Mar 18, 7:17*pm, r15...@aol.com wrote:
> On Mar 17, 12:32 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:28:16 -0700 (PDT), r15...@aol.com wrote:
> > >On Mar 16, 7:38 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>
> > >> Similar rear-wheel chain-drive bicycles had been tried earlier, but
> > >> didn't catch on. Starley gets lucky, the Rover starts to sell, and the
> > >> the safety bicycle era ensues.
>
> > >What is the cite for that tidbit Carl?
>
> > Dear Robert,
>
> > Most bicycle histories will mention such rear-wheel chain-drive safety
> > bicycles as the 1869 Meyer-Guilemet, the 1876 Shergold, the 1879
> > Lawson Bicyclette (also known as the Crocodile), tbe 1884 Humber, the
> > 1884 McCammon, and Rucker's 1884 Marvel.
>
> > (The Rover was actually in prototype, so to speak, in 1884, but 1885
> > is the usual date because that was the version with normal handlebars
> > instead of weird indirect steering--imagine a handlebar sticking up
> > out of the middle of the top-tube that connected to the distant front
> > wheel.)
>
> > The best source would be Ritchie's "King of the Road," pages 121-130,
> > which shows most of these early rear-wheel chain-drive safeties.
>
> > You can also see them in Dodge, Herlihy, Adams, Palmer, Caunter, and
> > Woodforde.
>
> > What confuses people is that the Rover was the one that succeeded, but
> > it's a pain to keep writing that it was "the first commercially
> > successful dwarf-safety rear-wheel chain-drive bicycle."
>
> > So people tend to think that nephew John Starley came up with the
> > rear-wheel chain-drive idea in 1885, when in fact he was working on it
> > (along with a host of others) in 1884 and such bicycles had already
> > been built without any real commercial success since 1869.
>
> > Cheers,
>
> > Carl Fogel
>
> Ah, very interesting. And then there are a few who believe the chain-
> drive bike was actually conceptualized by da Vinci, as a random
> drawing of one was found in one of his student's notebooks.
>
> Robert- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Al Gore's great grandfather invented the bicycle.

[r15757@aol.com]

On Mar 18, 7:48 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
> On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:17:39 -0700 (PDT), r15...@aol.com wrote:
> >On Mar 17, 12:32 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
> >> On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:28:16 -0700 (PDT), r15...@aol.com wrote:
> >> >On Mar 16, 7:38 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>
> >> >> Similar rear-wheel chain-drive bicycles had been tried earlier, but
> >> >> didn't catch on. Starley gets lucky, the Rover starts to sell, and the
> >> >> the safety bicycle era ensues.
>
> >> >What is the cite for that tidbit Carl?
>
> >> Dear Robert,
>
> >> Most bicycle histories will mention such rear-wheel chain-drive safety
> >> bicycles as the 1869 Meyer-Guilemet, the 1876 Shergold, the 1879
> >> Lawson Bicyclette (also known as the Crocodile), tbe 1884 Humber, the
> >> 1884 McCammon, and Rucker's 1884 Marvel.
>
> >> (The Rover was actually in prototype, so to speak, in 1884, but 1885
> >> is the usual date because that was the version with normal handlebars
> >> instead of weird indirect steering--imagine a handlebar sticking up
> >> out of the middle of the top-tube that connected to the distant front
> >> wheel.)
>
> >> The best source would be Ritchie's "King of the Road," pages 121-130,
> >> which shows most of these early rear-wheel chain-drive safeties.
>
> >> You can also see them in Dodge, Herlihy, Adams, Palmer, Caunter, and
> >> Woodforde.
>
> >> What confuses people is that the Rover was the one that succeeded, but
> >> it's a pain to keep writing that it was "the first commercially
> >> successful dwarf-safety rear-wheel chain-drive bicycle."
>
> >> So people tend to think that nephew John Starley came up with the
> >> rear-wheel chain-drive idea in 1885, when in fact he was working on it
> >> (along with a host of others) in 1884 and such bicycles had already
> >> been built without any real commercial success since 1869.
>
> >> Cheers,
>
> >> Carl Fogel
>
> >Ah, very interesting. And then there are a few who believe the chain-
> >drive bike was actually conceptualized by da Vinci, as a random
> >drawing of one was found in one of his student's notebooks.
>
> >Robert
>
> Dear Robert,
>
> Alas, the familiar old da Vinci claim has been discredited:
>
> "Leonardo da Vinci has been credited with having sketched a bicycle in
> 1492 in the Codex Atlanticus. However, that drawing has been proven to
> be a forgery, added at the time of the volume's restoration in the
> 1960s."
>
> --Berto, "The Dancing Chain," p. 11

I believe Berto has the first part slightly wrong, as the drawing has
always been ascribed to one of Leonardo's students and not to the man
himself (credit for the idea of course going to Leonardo). And while I
believe we can be pretty confident that the drawing was a 20th C.
rather than 15th C. doodle, I'm not sure anything was truly 'proven'
one way or the other. Do you know what Berto means by that? Did they
test the ink? I don't have a copy of Berto's book on hand but I'd like
to get it some day.

The interesting complication here in my opinion is Leonardo's Codex
Madrid which contains chains, gears, coaster brakes.

> Similarly, the alleged 1839 Macmillan treadle velocipede, which
> appears in practically every bicycling history, is now treated with
> extreme skepticism, to put it politely.

As in, it never existed?

> Much of the old history that has been debunked still survives because
> the debunking often appears in either the Cycle History conferences,
> whose proceedings are outlandishly expensive, or in more modern
> bicycle histories, which have far more pictures and pages, but which
> still cost enough to make anyone think twice.

Well, when your audience numbers in the tens of hundreds you gots to
jack up your prices.

Robert

[carlfogel@comcast.net]

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:37:43 -0700 (PDT), r15757@aol.com wrote:

>On Mar 18, 7:48 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>> On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:17:39 -0700 (PDT), r15...@aol.com wrote:
>> >On Mar 17, 12:32 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>> >> On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:28:16 -0700 (PDT), r15...@aol.com wrote:
>> >> >On Mar 16, 7:38 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>>
>> >> >> Similar rear-wheel chain-drive bicycles had been tried earlier, but
>> >> >> didn't catch on. Starley gets lucky, the Rover starts to sell, and the
>> >> >> the safety bicycle era ensues.
>>
>> >> >What is the cite for that tidbit Carl?
>>
>> >> Dear Robert,
>>
>> >> Most bicycle histories will mention such rear-wheel chain-drive safety
>> >> bicycles as the 1869 Meyer-Guilemet, the 1876 Shergold, the 1879
>> >> Lawson Bicyclette (also known as the Crocodile), tbe 1884 Humber, the
>> >> 1884 McCammon, and Rucker's 1884 Marvel.
>>
>> >> (The Rover was actually in prototype, so to speak, in 1884, but 1885
>> >> is the usual date because that was the version with normal handlebars
>> >> instead of weird indirect steering--imagine a handlebar sticking up
>> >> out of the middle of the top-tube that connected to the distant front
>> >> wheel.)
>>
>> >> The best source would be Ritchie's "King of the Road," pages 121-130,
>> >> which shows most of these early rear-wheel chain-drive safeties.
>>
>> >> You can also see them in Dodge, Herlihy, Adams, Palmer, Caunter, and
>> >> Woodforde.
>>
>> >> What confuses people is that the Rover was the one that succeeded, but
>> >> it's a pain to keep writing that it was "the first commercially
>> >> successful dwarf-safety rear-wheel chain-drive bicycle."
>>
>> >> So people tend to think that nephew John Starley came up with the
>> >> rear-wheel chain-drive idea in 1885, when in fact he was working on it
>> >> (along with a host of others) in 1884 and such bicycles had already
>> >> been built without any real commercial success since 1869.
>>
>> >> Cheers,
>>
>> >> Carl Fogel
>>
>> >Ah, very interesting. And then there are a few who believe the chain-
>> >drive bike was actually conceptualized by da Vinci, as a random
>> >drawing of one was found in one of his student's notebooks.
>>
>> >Robert
>>
>> Dear Robert,
>>
>> Alas, the familiar old da Vinci claim has been discredited:
>>
>> "Leonardo da Vinci has been credited with having sketched a bicycle in
>> 1492 in the Codex Atlanticus. However, that drawing has been proven to
>> be a forgery, added at the time of the volume's restoration in the
>> 1960s."
>>
>> --Berto, "The Dancing Chain," p. 11
>
>I believe Berto has the first part slightly wrong, as the drawing has
>always been ascribed to one of Leonardo's students and not to the man
>himself (credit for the idea of course going to Leonardo). And while I
>believe we can be pretty confident that the drawing was a 20th C.
>rather than 15th C. doodle, I'm not sure anything was truly 'proven'
>one way or the other. Do you know what Berto means by that? Did they
>test the ink? I don't have a copy of Berto's book on hand but I'd like
>to get it some day.
>
>The interesting complication here in my opinion is Leonardo's Codex
>Madrid which contains chains, gears, coaster brakes.
>
>> Similarly, the alleged 1839 Macmillan treadle velocipede, which
>> appears in practically every bicycling history, is now treated with
>> extreme skepticism, to put it politely.
>
>As in, it never existed?
>
>> Much of the old history that has been debunked still survives because
>> the debunking often appears in either the Cycle History conferences,
>> whose proceedings are outlandishly expensive, or in more modern
>> bicycle histories, which have far more pictures and pages, but which
>> still cost enough to make anyone think twice.
>
>Well, when your audience numbers in the tens of hundreds you gots to
>jack up your prices.
>
>Robert

Dear Robert,

As far as I know, no modern bicycle historians give any credence to
the Da Vinci "bicycle" drawing. You can get some of the details on the
internet:


http://www.cyclepublishing.com/history/leonardo%20da%20vinci%20bicycle.html

http://www.bikereader.com/contributors/Brick/leonardo.html

http://users.aol.com/PryorDodge/Leonardo_da_Vinci.html

Early bicycle history is littered with what seem to be fakes cooked up
many years later for reasons of national pride.

The only contemporary evidence for the Macmillan 1839 rear-wheel
treadle drive is a short newspaper article, which does not name
Macmillan and which specifically refers to hand cranks, which makes
most bike historians suspect a tricycle. The Macmillan claim first
appeared in a tangled mess of jealous counter-claims about fifty years
after its alleged existence, as detailed in "Bicycle: The History" by
David Herlihy.

Similarly, the claims (including pictures) of pre-von-Drais
hobby-horses in France and Italy are almost all dismissed now as,
well, untrue.

As Berto mentions, the Comte de Sivrac apparently never existed, much
like his celerifere (or hobby-horse), whose picture often appears in
early bike histories.

As for Italy, Berto points out that the Milan ordinance banning
velocipedes in 1811 turned out to be a 1950s forgery. He's just
summarizing what was detailed in various scholarly papers in the
International Cycle History Conferences.

If you look at Berto, Herlihy, McGurn, and Dodge, to name four authors
of bicycle histories since 1990 (when the Cycle History Conferences
began to look into such things), you'll find that the Da Vinci
drawing, the pre-von-Drais hobby-horses, and the Macmillan machine are
all either ignored or else treated as probable hoaxes.

Of course, earlier histories can hardly be blamed for repeating in
good faith what looked like the truth. Ritchie's 1974 "King of the
Road" could only say that "A newly discovered drawing by Leonardo da
Vinci apparently shows a bicycle-like machine, which it be fascinating
to examine when a new edition of his work is published soon."

The drawing that Ritchie includes of the alleged pre-von-Drais
hobby-horses are impressive examples of scholarly care: the captions
say that they are "Celeripedes of about 1800; drawn in 1869." The lack
of any contemporary sources led to the discovery that the supposedly
well-known Comte de Sivrac wasn't known at all and that at best
four-wheeled carriages had been confused with bicycles, while at
worst--well, hoaxes are a part of literature and history.

Ritchie's account of the alleged Macmillan machine is extremely
detailed and careful and exactly what a conscientous historian would
turn out before the authenticity of the claim was called into
question. But once doubts are raised about the Macmillan machine,
Ritchie's good-faith comments become fascinating reading--red flags
are raised in almost every paragraph, but they're red flags only if
you know that the story was probably concocted much later, as Herlihy
explains.

When Michaux (probably) puts pedals on a hobby-horse in the 1860s and
creates the true velocipede, photography and popularity in the form of
ads and catalogues put history on a much firmer basis. Indeed, it's
usually best to take specific dates in bicycle histories with a grain
of salt--the best sources are dated catalogues, which rarely get the
year wrong.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

[M-gineering]

? wrote:

>> Much of the old history that has been debunked still survives because
>> the debunking often appears in either the Cycle History conferences,
>> whose proceedings are outlandishly expensive, or in more modern
>> bicycle histories, which have far more pictures and pages, but which
>> still cost enough to make anyone think twice.
>

http://www.cyclepublishing.com/history/leonardo%20da%20vinci%20bicycle.html

--
/Marten

info(apestaartje)m-gineering(punt)nl

[carlfogel@comcast.net]

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:28:25 -0700 (PDT), fred.garvin@yahoo.com wrote:

>On Mar 18, 7:17*pm, r15...@aol.com wrote:
>> On Mar 17, 12:32 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:28:16 -0700 (PDT), r15...@aol.com wrote:
>> > >On Mar 16, 7:38 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>>
>> > >> Similar rear-wheel chain-drive bicycles had been tried earlier, but
>> > >> didn't catch on. Starley gets lucky, the Rover starts to sell, and the
>> > >> the safety bicycle era ensues.
>>
>> > >What is the cite for that tidbit Carl?
>>
>> > Dear Robert,
>>
>> > Most bicycle histories will mention such rear-wheel chain-drive safety
>> > bicycles as the 1869 Meyer-Guilemet, the 1876 Shergold, the 1879
>> > Lawson Bicyclette (also known as the Crocodile), tbe 1884 Humber, the
>> > 1884 McCammon, and Rucker's 1884 Marvel.
>>
>> > (The Rover was actually in prototype, so to speak, in 1884, but 1885
>> > is the usual date because that was the version with normal handlebars
>> > instead of weird indirect steering--imagine a handlebar sticking up
>> > out of the middle of the top-tube that connected to the distant front
>> > wheel.)
>>
>> > The best source would be Ritchie's "King of the Road," pages 121-130,
>> > which shows most of these early rear-wheel chain-drive safeties.
>>
>> > You can also see them in Dodge, Herlihy, Adams, Palmer, Caunter, and
>> > Woodforde.
>>
>> > What confuses people is that the Rover was the one that succeeded, but
>> > it's a pain to keep writing that it was "the first commercially
>> > successful dwarf-safety rear-wheel chain-drive bicycle."
>>
>> > So people tend to think that nephew John Starley came up with the
>> > rear-wheel chain-drive idea in 1885, when in fact he was working on it
>> > (along with a host of others) in 1884 and such bicycles had already
>> > been built without any real commercial success since 1869.
>>
>> > Cheers,
>>
>> > Carl Fogel
>>
>> Ah, very interesting. And then there are a few who believe the chain-
>> drive bike was actually conceptualized by da Vinci, as a random
>> drawing of one was found in one of his student's notebooks.
>>
>> Robert- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
>
>Al Gore's great grandfather invented the bicycle.

Dear Fred,

That's actually just about what happened.

A few people in Italy, France, and Scotland wanted their country to
have the honor of inventing the bicycle, so they made stuff up.

As usual, the made-up stuff fooled everyone for a while, but
eventually it all began to unravel.

That's why you won't see much about pre-von-Drais hobby-horses in
France or Italy, Macmillan's alleged bicycle, or the da Vinci drawing
in recent bicycle histories.

Those three areas are now either treated as outright frauds (Berto's
plain-spoken approach), shown in great detail to be extremely
implausible (Herlihy's treatment of the Macmillan affair), or else
tactfully dismissed like this:

" . . . claims that he [da Vinci] put them all together [bits and
pieces of technology] in the form of a bicycle have been proven to be
unfounded."

--"On Your Bicycle," Jim McGurn, p. 11

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

[fred.garvin@yahoo.com]

On Mar 19, 1:36*pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 05:28:25 -0700 (PDT), fred.gar...@yahoo.com wrote:
> >On Mar 18, 7:17*pm, r15...@aol.com wrote:
> >> On Mar 17, 12:32 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>
> >> > On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:28:16 -0700 (PDT), r15...@aol.com wrote:
> >> > >On Mar 16, 7:38 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>
> >> > >> Similar rear-wheel chain-drive bicycles had been tried earlier, but
> >> > >> didn't catch on. Starley gets lucky, the Rover starts to sell, and the
> >> > >> the safety bicycle era ensues.
>
> >> > >What is the cite for that tidbit Carl?
>
> >> > Dear Robert,
>
> >> > Most bicycle histories will mention such rear-wheel chain-drive safety
> >> > bicycles as the 1869 Meyer-Guilemet, the 1876 Shergold, the 1879
> >> > Lawson Bicyclette (also known as the Crocodile), tbe 1884 Humber, the
> >> > 1884 McCammon, and Rucker's 1884 Marvel.
>
> >> > (The Rover was actually in prototype, so to speak, in 1884, but 1885
> >> > is the usual date because that was the version with normal handlebars
> >> > instead of weird indirect steering--imagine a handlebar sticking up
> >> > out of the middle of the top-tube that connected to the distant front
> >> > wheel.)
>
> >> > The best source would be Ritchie's "King of the Road," pages 121-130,
> >> > which shows most of these early rear-wheel chain-drive safeties.
>
> >> > You can also see them in Dodge, Herlihy, Adams, Palmer, Caunter, and
> >> > Woodforde.
>
> >> > What confuses people is that the Rover was the one that succeeded, but
> >> > it's a pain to keep writing that it was "the first commercially
> >> > successful dwarf-safety rear-wheel chain-drive bicycle."
>
> >> > So people tend to think that nephew John Starley came up with the
> >> > rear-wheel chain-drive idea in 1885, when in fact he was working on it
> >> > (along with a host of others) in 1884 and such bicycles had already
> >> > been built without any real commercial success since 1869.
>
> >> > Cheers,
>
> >> > Carl Fogel
>
> >> Ah, very interesting. And then there are a few who believe the chain-
> >> drive bike was actually conceptualized by da Vinci, as a random
> >> drawing of one was found in one of his student's notebooks.
>
> >> Robert- Hide quoted text -
>
> >> - Show quoted text -
>
> >Al Gore's great grandfather invented the bicycle.
>
> Dear Fred,
>
> That's actually just about what happened.
>
> A few people in Italy, France, and Scotland wanted their country to
> have the honor of inventing the bicycle, so they made stuff up.
>
> As usual, the made-up stuff fooled everyone for a while, but
> eventually it all began to unravel.
>
> That's why you won't see much about pre-von-Drais hobby-horses in
> France or Italy, Macmillan's alleged bicycle, or the da Vinci drawing
> in recent bicycle histories.
>
> Those three areas are now either treated as outright frauds (Berto's
> plain-spoken approach), shown in great detail to be extremely
> implausible (Herlihy's treatment of the Macmillan affair), or else
> tactfully dismissed like this:
>
> " . . . claims that he [da Vinci] put them all together [bits and
> pieces of technology] in the form of a bicycle have been proven to be
> unfounded."
>
> --"On Your Bicycle," Jim McGurn, p. 11
>
> Cheers,
>
> Carl Fogel- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Funny, but not only did Al's Great Grandfather's great lie unravel,
Al's lie is unravelling, too. They said so today on NPR, which of
course makes it official.

[r15757@aol.com]

On Mar 19, 12:36 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:

> " . . . claims that he [da Vinci] put them all together [bits and
> pieces of technology] in the form of a bicycle have been proven to be
> unfounded."
>
> --"On Your Bicycle," Jim McGurn, p. 11

In fact fully functioning bicycles have been built in recent decades
using Leonardo's 'machine elements,' just to show that it could be
done. Strictly speaking, McGurn's statement is false.

Robert

[r15757@aol.com]

On Mar 19, 1:34 pm, M-gineering <ikmotgeens...@m-gineering.nl> wrote:
> ? wrote:
> >> Much of the old history that has been debunked still survives because
> >> the debunking often appears in either the Cycle History conferences,
> >> whose proceedings are outlandishly expensive, or in more modern
> >> bicycle histories, which have far more pictures and pages, but which
> >> still cost enough to make anyone think twice.
>
> http://www.cyclepublishing.com/history/leonardo%20da%20vinci%20bicycl...

They make it surprisingly easy to play devil's advocate on this one.
Profs. Pedretti and Galuzzi make the claim that the ink was tested and
found to be 20th c. stuff, yet they mysteriously can produce no
documentation when it is requested and can not even recall who did the
testing when asked. Way to go guys.

Leonardo bicycle hoax most noteable for continued lack of proof.

[carlfogel@comcast.net]

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:38:27 -0700 (PDT), r15757@aol.com wrote:

>On Mar 19, 1:34 pm, M-gineering <ikmotgeens...@m-gineering.nl> wrote:
>> ? wrote:
>> >> Much of the old history that has been debunked still survives because
>> >> the debunking often appears in either the Cycle History conferences,
>> >> whose proceedings are outlandishly expensive, or in more modern
>> >> bicycle histories, which have far more pictures and pages, but which
>> >> still cost enough to make anyone think twice.
>>
>> http://www.cyclepublishing.com/history/leonardo%20da%20vinci%20bicycl...
>
>They make it surprisingly easy to play devil's advocate on this one.
>Profs. Pedretti and Galuzzi make the claim that the ink was tested and
>found to be 20th c. stuff, yet they mysteriously can produce no
>documentation when it is requested and can not even recall who did the
>testing when asked. Way to go guys.
>
>Leonardo bicycle hoax most noteable for continued lack of proof.

Dear Robert,

Not much more proof was needed, since the added "bicycle" was sketched
in with a visibly different material on the faint impression of two
original quarter-circle diagrams.

That is, there's a drawing of the quarter-circles on another page,
either a bleed-through or a facing recto-verso smudge.

Either way, such images show up, mirror-imaged, on another page.

Somebody turned this mirror-image into two wheels and adds an
improbable bicycle (with a rigid front end, you'll fall over before
you pedal your suspiciously modern rear-wheel chain drive very far).

If you're familiar with old manuscripts, no further explanation is
needed, but here's an easy to understand bleed-through example from
the First Folio of 1616:

Nice clear portrait of Shakespeare:

http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?TextID=firstfolio&PagePosition=3

Mirror-image bleed-through to next blank page:

http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?TextID=firstfolio&PagePosition=4

Pencil in a dagger above one eye on the bleed-through, and you've
proved that Shakespeare was actually Marlowe.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

[Michael Press]

In article
<2e4fa43b-af1f-46db-9bbb-6afd1422cfcb@i12g2000prf.googlegroups.com>,
r15757@aol.com wrote:

> On Mar 19, 1:34 pm, M-gineering <ikmotgeens...@m-gineering.nl> wrote:
> > ? wrote:
> > >> Much of the old history that has been debunked still survives because
> > >> the debunking often appears in either the Cycle History conferences,
> > >> whose proceedings are outlandishly expensive, or in more modern
> > >> bicycle histories, which have far more pictures and pages, but which
> > >> still cost enough to make anyone think twice.
> >
> > http://www.cyclepublishing.com/history/leonardo%20da%20vinci%20bicycl...
>
> They make it surprisingly easy to play devil's advocate on this one.
> Profs. Pedretti and Galuzzi make the claim that the ink was tested and
> found to be 20th c. stuff, yet they mysteriously can produce no
> documentation when it is requested and can not even recall who did the
> testing when asked. Way to go guys.
>
> Leonardo bicycle hoax most noteable for continued lack of proof.

I cannot make out what claim lacks proof. I've concluded
that anything is easily proved. The work is in disproving stuff.

1 = sqrt(1) = sqrt((-1).(-1)) = sqrt(-1).sqrt(-1) = - 1.

--
Michael Press

[carlfogel@comcast.net]

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:43:21 -0700 (PDT), r15757@aol.com wrote:

>On Mar 19, 12:36 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>
>> " . . . claims that he [da Vinci] put them all together [bits and
>> pieces of technology] in the form of a bicycle have been proven to be
>> unfounded."
>>
>> --"On Your Bicycle," Jim McGurn, p. 11
>
>In fact fully functioning bicycles have been built in recent decades
>using Leonardo's 'machine elements,' just to show that it could be
>done. Strictly speaking, McGurn's statement is false.
>
>Robert

Dear Robert,

Strictly speaking, his statement is true.

Leonardo did not put thee pieces together to make a bike, the drawing
is unworkable (a rigid front wheel that cannot steer will not go far
with a chain drive), and the drawing was faked.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

[r15757@aol.com]

On Mar 19, 11:20 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:43:21 -0700 (PDT), r15...@aol.com wrote:
> >On Mar 19, 12:36 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>
> >> " . . . claims that he [da Vinci] put them all together [bits and
> >> pieces of technology] in the form of a bicycle have been proven to be
> >> unfounded."
>
> >> --"On Your Bicycle," Jim McGurn, p. 11
>
> >In fact fully functioning bicycles have been built in recent decades
> >using Leonardo's 'machine elements,' just to show that it could be
> >done. Strictly speaking, McGurn's statement is false.
>
> >Robert
>
> Dear Robert,
>
> Strictly speaking, his statement is true.
>
> Leonardo did not put thee pieces together to make a bike, the drawing
> is unworkable (a rigid front wheel that cannot steer will not go far
> with a chain drive), and the drawing was faked.

Hmm. Strictly speaking, no. Of course all evidence points to the
drawing being fake. However, there is no proof that Leonardo did not
make a bicycle. The only thing that has ever been proven in that
regard is that it was indeed possible for him to do so.

Robert

[carlfogel@comcast.net]

On Thu, 20 Mar 2008 07:14:58 -0700 (PDT), r15757@aol.com wrote:

>On Mar 19, 11:20 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>> On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:43:21 -0700 (PDT), r15...@aol.com wrote:
>> >On Mar 19, 12:36 pm, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>>
>> >> " . . . claims that he [da Vinci] put them all together [bits and
>> >> pieces of technology] in the form of a bicycle have been proven to be
>> >> unfounded."
>>
>> >> --"On Your Bicycle," Jim McGurn, p. 11
>>
>> >In fact fully functioning bicycles have been built in recent decades
>> >using Leonardo's 'machine elements,' just to show that it could be
>> >done. Strictly speaking, McGurn's statement is false.
>>
>> >Robert

>> Dear Robert,
>>
>> Strictly speaking, his statement is true.
>>
>> Leonardo did not put thee pieces together to make a bike, the drawing
>> is unworkable (a rigid front wheel that cannot steer will not go far
>> with a chain drive), and the drawing was faked.
>
>Hmm. Strictly speaking, no. Of course all evidence points to the
>drawing being fake. However, there is no proof that Leonardo did not
>make a bicycle. The only thing that has ever been proven in that
>regard is that it was indeed possible for him to do so.
>
>Robert

Dear Robert,

There is also no proof that Leonardo did not make a bicycle with an
Ergo shifter, later stolen by Campagnolo.

I'll leave you to argue such logic with yourself.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

[r15757@aol.com]

On Mar 20, 10:56 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:

> There is also no proof that Leonardo did not make a bicycle with an
> Ergo shifter, later stolen by Campagnolo.
>
> I'll leave you to argue such logic with yourself.

Interestingly Leonardo's invention of the wheel lock and other
ratcheting mechanisms not all that different from the stuff inside the
shifters.

Note: I do not believe Leonard da Vinci invented the bicycle. I
believe the drawing in question is a 20th C. creation. But Leonardo's
work on chains and gears and other potential bike parts is intriguing,
and it is just plain strange that the two professors in question have
given a story about having the ink tested by a lab which fails to
check out.

Robert

[carlfogel@comcast.net]

On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 12:27:56 -0700 (PDT), r15757@aol.com wrote:

>On Mar 20, 10:56 am, carlfo...@comcast.net wrote:
>
>> There is also no proof that Leonardo did not make a bicycle with an
>> Ergo shifter, later stolen by Campagnolo.
>>
>> I'll leave you to argue such logic with yourself.
>
>Interestingly Leonardo's invention of the wheel lock and other
>ratcheting mechanisms not all that different from the stuff inside the
>shifters.
>
>Note: I do not believe Leonard da Vinci invented the bicycle. I
>believe the drawing in question is a 20th C. creation. But Leonardo's
>work on chains and gears and other potential bike parts is intriguing,
>and it is just plain strange that the two professors in question have
>given a story about having the ink tested by a lab which fails to
>check out.
>
>Robert

Dear Robert,

Sorry, my fault if I misunderstood your position.

There's nothing really strange about the lack of confirmation of an
ink test showing that the drawing is a fake.

In fact, it's typical. For obvious reasons, museums and libraries
often stonewall embarrassing questions of authenticity after allowing
initial testing.

The library with the Leonardo codex answers questions about the matter
with a present-tense claim that it doesn't do such tests or give out
such information, plus a cheerful reminder of the hours that the
library is open (when you will not be allowed to examine the codex):

"In fact, Pedretti confirmed in a phone call the same day that he was
told all this by Prof. Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Science Museum
in Florence, who reportedly had read the news in the airplane but not
noted the source. The test was 'nuclear something,' as Pedretti put
it. To the dismay of Lathière, Ravasi refused to comment, although his
library keeps the Codex Atlanticus[4]:"

"'The library does not conduct research nor give information of the
kind that you request. The library is open Monday through Friday from
9 till 17:30 o'clock. Cordiali saluti.'"

http://www.cyclepublishing.com/history/leonardo%20da%20vinci%20bicycle.html

In other words, the library doesn't do such tests or talk about such
things _now_. It isn't worth pursuing the question about whether the
library regrets doing such tests earlier. Unless there's been a recent
change, the library simply refuses to allow let anyone examine or test
the drawing:

"Since 1968 when the Ambrosiana Library denied Pedretti the permission
to work on the original manuscript of the Codex Atlanticus, he has not
given too much importance to that sketch."

"After several refusals of the Ambrosiana Library to open official
inquires, Lessing comments: "'I'm more and more convinced of the
forgery of the sketch because of this "omertá' - mafia word for
silence - 'of the Ambrosiana's management. They do not want to fulfil
my requests, nor supply proof of the antiquity of the sketch. I think
if they had some positive results of carbon-date analysis that places
the sketch to 500 years ago, they would broadcast it.'"

"Alessandro Vezzosi - currently the foremost authority on Leonardo in
Italy and also director of the Museo Ideale of Vinci - is sure of the
forgery - 'To me the Ambrosiana's silence is a symptom of
embarrassment of having been had for more than 25 years'."

http://www.terraditoscana.com/default.aspx?lpg=travelog_storie&obj=petrelli_leonardo

Cheers,

Carl Fogel