scans from bike book

On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 01:39:05 -0700, wrote:

On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:30:29 -0700, wrote:

On 6 Dec 2007 14:45:39 -0800, (Donald Gillies)
wrote:

A Muzi writes:

wrote:
Weight weenies, eat your hearts out:
http://i10.tinypic.com/87m2g3t.jpg
Eight pounds fourteen ounces is 4.034 kg. I've seen another reference
to this lightweight wonder, but can't find it.

Could there be a misunderstanding someplace? Looks like a reasonably 8-9
pound frameset in carbon steel tube.
For a complete bike of that style, with steel bars and crank, wide
tires, carbon steel frame, under nine pounds seems improbable.

Well, the bike frame might have been very small and flexy. If that is
the case, I can easily see someone welding together a 4 lbs
frame/fork. Wooden rims could weigh about 1.5 lbs (700 grams), tires
could be almost arbitrarily thin, just by using fine cloth and
skimping on rubber, maybe 1 lbs total, in those day all tires were
tubular. Then you need hubs, cranks, bars, stem, and saddle. If that
was 4 lbs, I get a weight of 10.5 lbs ~ pretty close to the claimed
wait of 8 lbs 14 oz.

- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA

Dear Don & Andrew,

Still no luck finding the article that I half-remember about the light
bike, but groveling through the NYT and Outing magazine is tedious and
their searches often miss things.

The ultra-light bike was probably made just for the exhibition,
meaning that the manufacturer had no intention of actually selling the
thing, much less having anyone get on it and see how far it could be
ridden before it broke.

A) It will turn out that I'm mis-remembering the article.

B) I'll find that it was the frame alone, not a complete bicycle.

C) Someone will have written a different article, explaining that the
8 lbs 14 oz was a mis-print for eighteen pounds and fourteen ounces
(or 14 lbs 8 oz).

D) I'll never find anything and give up.

E) I'll stumble over unrelated points of interest, like this article
in which Murphy details his mile-a-minute ride, apparently an earlier
version of the better-known article. It mentions lots of things left
out in the pages that I found, so I was quite startled when I realized
that my extensive searching a few months ago never turned the damn
thing up:

http://www.phys.uri.edu/~tony/bicycl...li/lirrsky.htm

Maybe this guy hadn't put that page up on the internet when I was
looking:

http://www.phys.uri.edu/~tony/

He looks like a promising recruit for RBT.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

F) Found it in "Bicycling Science," 2nd edition, Rowland and Wilson,
figure 10.16 on page 267. But it's just the same picture, credited to
"Riding High." So I saw the 8 lb 14 oz claim and picture reproduced
there years before I bought the original book it was taken from.

Unfortunately, I still half-remember seeing something about the
ultra-light bike at the show, which isn't mentioned in "Bicycle
Science," so I have to grovel through the NYT archives, having found
nothing in "Outing" magazine.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

Aaargh!

I should have looked closer at "Riding High" instead of running off to
the internet to search for details of the lightweight Tribune.

The photo and caption that I scanned are on the right-hand side of the
right-hand page 125. The text on that page doesn't seem to mention the
bike.

But the left-hand page 124 says:

"But we were talking about lightness. The limit in this seems to have
been reached at the National Bicycle Exhibition at Madison Square
Garden in February, 1895, where a Tribune bicycle weighing eight
pounds, fourteen ounces was shown to an almost unbelieving public. It
was a full size adult bicycle in every respect, with 28-inch wheels
and a 43 3/4-inch wheel base, and had been thoroughly tested by an
average-weight rider. For some reason unknown at this time, this
featherweight never attained the popularity it would seem to have
warranted."

So it was a full-size, rideable bike at 8 lbs 14 oz. Despite the
allegedly thoroughly testing, I'd be afraid to ride anything that
light very far.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 01:06:30 -0600, A Muzi
wrote:

wrote:
An older book arrived yesterday, Arthur Judson Palmer's "Riding High."
Published in 1956, it has over 250 photos and can be found used at
www.bookfinder.com.
-snip-
Weight weenies, eat your hearts out:
http://i10.tinypic.com/87m2g3t.jpg
Eight pounds fourteen ounces is 4.034 kg. I've seen another reference
to this lightweight wonder, but can't find it.
-snip-

Could there be a misunderstanding someplace? Looks like a reasonably 8-9
pound frameset in carbon steel tube.
For a complete bike of that style, with steel bars and crank, wide
tires, carbon steel frame, under nine pounds seems improbable.

Dear Andrew,

Aha!

After all the other fuss, I'll put my find here.

No, no mistake, full bicycle, 8 lbs, 14 ounces. People picked it up
and held it, and the maker claimed that it had been ridden and tested.

Here's where the drawing that I scanned from "Riding High" originally
appeared:

http://www.printsoldandrare.com/autos/015auto.jpg

The caption reads, "THE EIGHT POUND FOURTEEN OUNCE TRIBUNE BICYCLE."

No, you can't read the caption in the link--I wrestled with my
library's microfiche reader. The fat-tired thing on the left is "THE
MOTORCYCLE"--you can just see the tiny engine at the rider's knee.

The drawing appeared on the cover of the Scientific American, Feb.
9th, 1895.

Here are the details from page 86:

"The curiosities of the show [the 1st National Bicycle Show at Madison
Square Garden] included several light wheels [the term then meant
entire bicycles], and we illustrate a real wonder in this line, an 8
pound 14 ounce Tribune bicycle, shown by the Black Manufacturing
Company, of Erie, Pa. It is full size throughout, having 28 inch
wheels and a 43 1/2 [misquoted as 3/4 in "Riding High"] inch wheel
base. It is only on taking it in the hand that its lightness can be
realized. It has 13 ounce [~370 gram] M. & W. tires; the tubing is No.
26 gauge (0.016 inch thick) and steel forgings are used for all frame
joints. The full number of spokes are used for the wheels, 28 for
front and 32 for rear wheel. It has been thoroughly tested by an
average weight rider and is doubltess the lightest full sized wheel
ever made, being a veritable tour de force. Regular racing wheels are
made as light as 15 pounds in weight."

The ~370 gram tires were probably like our modern tubulars, with the
weight including the inner tube.

So the Tribune bicycle really was that light, but my eyebrows are
still raised as high as yours.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel