Hi Andrew,
I'd just add that the benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing. Take any object in your house or garage or garden shed - how would you think it might develop? Nicholas is quite right here - evolution in this sense is very much an analogical thing. We might say the evolution of technology is Lamarckian as we do actually learn and put that into the 'evolution'.
Things are never straightforward and neither is their 'evolution'. The weapons used by US troops in Vietnam were the best for the job as regarded by army proving grounds. Unfortunately, the proving grounds looked for accuracy in a long distance and were in quite dry conditions. Meanwhile the North Vietnamese had AK 47s which could generally hit a barn door if you aimed and hoped. However the AK 47 was the better weapon, in that it could be dropped, waterlogged but fired. The M 16 could misfire - a lot - to do with the type of bullets it used and its sensitivity to humidity. Rather a factor in Vietnam. Then because it was so accurate, its stopping power was less - the Kalashnikov was so inaccurate because its bullets wobbled. But because they wobbled they made for greater 'stopping power' i.e. a big hole. In a jungle you want something to work, all the time. And in close range. You never need to shoot long distances accurately, or at least, if you do, you're not involved in jungle warfare.
My point with this somewhat arcane example is different things might work, but it really depends on the circumstances in which they were used, economic conditions. and all sorts of other variables. I've worked a lot in technology and specifically Human-Computer Interaction. The development of mobile phone technology in Europe, and the rise of Ericsson and Nokia to be world players, was very dependent on the EU pushing forward a unitary GSM standard for mobile telecommunications.
It's not enough to think of the artefact in isolation. Small and seemingly insignificant factors from your perspective may have been deciding factors. For example I think it is Levi Strauss who talks about the very liberating aspect of the plastic water container in Africa. Before this, there would be clay pots used, which were quite valuable. However with the plastic water container, women could wait at the well, and leave the water containers in the queue and go and do other things. If they are stolen it is no great calamity. In a way it was revolutionary in women's lives.
I myself worked a bit in the internet, web and early mobile communications. I remember using a Nokia Communicator in 1997 from Finland to telnet (an old protocol) into my account in the computing lab in the UK. I remember thinking that this was revolutionary. I also remember myself and my colleagues just trying to imagine what these devices would do if combined with locational information and sensory abilities. I organised workshops at that time in that kind of theme. We still have not seen the full ramifications of this technology.
My punchline - it's easy to ironicise the lack of, or wrong develpment; you are always looking with the benefit of hindsight. Also, the strongest/best technology does not always come to the fore - such as with the M 16. As well as technological developments, you have to consider the political/legal/logistical/(your factor inserted here) framework in which these things are developed and which might shape them as much as technological concerns.
But anyway you raise very interesting questions so good luck solving this conundrum!
alan munro
On 18 Nov 2012, at 01:03, Oddy, Nicholas wrote:
> Interesting topic, but the development of the safety seems a bit irrelevant to it and is such a huge and controversial one I'd recommend avoiding it unless you want to make it the subject in its own right. Chain technology was pretty primitive even in the early 1880s and most makers thought in terms of levers. If you discount the likely fraud of the Meyer-Guilmet machine of 1908, which is claimed to be 1870, all the rear wheel drive velocipede bicycles of that period (and there were a fair number), used levers. The drive was heavy and inefficient. The wooden (or metal) spoked compression wheel begins to lose efficiency above about 36 inches because of its weight and structure. The high bicycle, on the other hand, exploits the technology of wire wheels to their best advantage given a male market whose primary interest was speed. The tension wire wheel's origins have been very much forgotten in most histories, but it was the invention of Meyer in 1879 who almost immediately realised its potential to increase speed through its size using the direct drive of the velocipede bicycle, thus the wire wheel and direct drive were bedfellows. Meyer high bicycles were first raced in early 1870 and by the middle of the year the velocipede bicycle was run off the track. With solid tyre technology the wire wheel performs better the larger it is and direct drive has the least number of points of friction at a time of pain bearings. This made the machine faster than any other. Moreover the high riding position and need to 'master' the machine were very attractive to the particular market bicycles enjoyed. Harry Lawson did produce a chain drive to rear wheel safety in 1879, following his earlier lever drive version. Both failed to make any impression on the market, as would any other 'safety' design that could not guarantee higher speeds than the high bicycle. Even when Starley introduced the Rover, its success was touch and go, relying on very rapid early improvements coupled with thoughtful marketing, in particular staged races between Rovers and high machines. The Rover and its ilk were in fact no faster and considerably less responsive than high machines in normal use, but by putting gorillas on them they could be geared higher and run faster. Where the difference came was in the application of the pneumatic tyre, this works best on wheel sizes in the c26-28 inch region, while its effects are less marked on larger wheels; moreover it was expensive and was most economically made in smaller, standardised sizes. Once the pneumatic was established after 1888, the high machine was doomed. Inspite of its less manly riding position, the pneumatic rear-drive safety went a lot faster, even in normal conditions. All a part of a complex mix of social and technological determinants and certainly nothing to do with evoloution. Bicycles are the product of human agency, every part of them a product of conscious thought. Evoloution is a natural process in which conscious thought plays no part.
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> Nicholas Oddy
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> From: Cycling and Society Research Group discussion list on behalf of Andrew Wager
> Sent: Sat 17/11/2012 22:57
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> Subject: Nineteenth Century Bicycle Evolution[Scanned-Clean]
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> I'm doing postgraduate research at University of Leicester and am interested in the development of cycling as a leisure activity among the working classes in the late nineteenth century. I'm trying to understand why it took so long to develop the "safety bicycle". This appeared on the scene, probably in the Stanley show in 1885. There were a number of evolutions culminating in the "ordinary" which preceded the "safety bicycle". With hindsight, this latter seems a trivial engineering exercise. All the technology was well in place before the 1880s - spoked wheels, chain drive, etc. It is difficult to understand why all this was not in place many decades before. There has been some recent research in understanding a workable model that represents the stability of a bicycle, and this seems to imply that the evolutionary development of the bicycle was not trivial. This may explain why it took so long to get from the "hobbyhorse" to the "safety bicycle". I'd be very interested to discuss this matter with anyone who has a view on the subject.
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