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As usual, I find hardly a quibble with Nicholas' splendid outline and interpretations here. I would only add that there was a collapse of the industrialized bicycle industry in the second half of the 1890s. Unscrupulous financial speculators floated stock offerings that constituted an irrational bubble. When the bubble burst, cycling lost much of its cachet as an activity of proper society, in part, I would suggest, because many society types were taken in by the fraud. (Lawson and Hooley were the most notorious. After the crash, after the bottom fell out, after the market was thinned, a different class of machine was available at a lower price. One of Hercules' innovations was hire purchase, further lowering the threshold. But not in the 1880s - 1890s. Cheers, David Patton Washington, DC [Sent from my iPhone (with a tiny keyboard) on the Metro ...] On Nov 19, 2012, at 1:19 PM, "Oddy, Nicholas" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Dunno why this topic seems to be so unpopular, it is one of the most important that cycling history can offer! > > Anyway; development of the rear driven 'safety' is a slow process, not overnight. It is closely linked to tricycle design, itself developing from attempts to degender the high bicycle. The process is therefore one that takes something over 10 years. Lawson is unfairly treated by linear technological histories, his 1879 machine had all the elements of later ones, but the market response was very negative and it would have been a brave maker who tried to enter it having seen the reaction to Lawson. It has to be remembered how limited the bicycle market was in the 1870s and 80s, there was no need for a 'safety bicycle', nor one that was ungendered once wire wheel tricycles had filled this niche. It took someone who believed a different design form could take on the high bicycle on its own terms and had enough of a grasp of publicity to do this, it happened to be Starley, but I'd suggest that the Humber Cripper tricycle of 1884 offered such an obvious pattern that Starley was lucky, a similar or better machine would have been offered by another maker (both Humber and BSA were quick off their marks) which could have adopted the same sales strategy. The design's flexibility took a comparatively long time to be realized, for instance it took another three years before anyone considered the machine as offering potential for a female market that did not want to compromise its dress (which did not exist, it had to be created). I'd strongly recommend anyone researching the period to look to primary, rather than secondary sources, there are vast numbers, mainly unused by so-called cycling historians who keep regurgitating the secondary ones that are often secondary in all senses of the word! > > The working class bit is fascinating. A 12 bob machine in the 1890s would have been a second-hand crock probably of the Velocipede period and I'm not sure how many would want to be seen on one. A 'low grade' machine at this period was £12 new and second-hand prices reflected the fact. I think that Wells''Wheels of Chance'(1896) gives a fairly good impression of the problematic that working class cyclists faced riding second-hand machines of considerably less antiquity and more expense at this period, while a raft of cynical cartoons and articles entitled 'Where 'arry Buys His Crocks' and other such appeared in the cycling press. Things start to change after 1897 and prices for new machines fall fairly rapidly, by the early 20th century a low grade machine was retailing at about £6, a price it retains until the War. There is some interesting material regarding the second hand market that appears in the Scottish cycling press in c1901 where reference is made to the lowest end of the second hand trade going to working class purchasers, notable because it is not disparaging. I commented in my article in 'Cycling and Society' on the spread of the second-hand trade after the design form of machines stabilises in c1900, making it difficult to differentiate old and new, while, of course, the motor car attracted all attention on the roads and effectively shielded cycling from the public attention it enjoyed in the previous decade, a book such as 'Wheels of Chance' would have been unthinkable ten years after it was published. The first UK machine that was deliberately aimed at working class cyclists and priced accordingly was the Hercules of 1928. > > Nicholas Oddy > > -----Original Message----- > From: Cycling and Society Research Group discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andrew Wager > Sent: 19 November 2012 15:15 > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: Nineteenth Century Bicycle Evolution[Scanned-Clean] > > Historians use an awful lot of hindsight and because of the inadequacies of the sources, they often misinterpret the course of history. I'm effectively using the historical marketplace to judge the success of innovations in the development of the bicycle. The "ordinary" with direct drive onto a very large spoked front wheel had great success in the marketplace for a period and there was considerable modification of that basic design. The history of the "safety" bicycle, with two roughly equal wheels, with the rear one driven by a chain from the central crank was not dissimilar. Its success in the marketplace demonstrated the utility of its design which formed a platform for a considerable amount of modification and development. I'm not disputing the process by which a given design was developed, but what I still find it difficult to understand is the process by which new innovative design came into the marketplace and effectively displaced a previously successful design. I guess the argument about the recumbent is similar although it doesn't dominate the marketplace to the extent of replacing other designs in the same way that the safety bicycle replaced the ordinary.The details of that step-change transition are no doubt somewhere to be found somewhere in the historical record but I've neither come across them directly nor located any secondary sources that document that change in a satisfactory way. 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