Speaking of brakes and cables . . .

You're a bike company in a competitive market.

You need something new, something nifty to catch the eye, something to
make the techo-freaks reach for their wallets when they see your ad.

So you come up with a radical new brake lever that uses a cable!

But Bowden cable with a housing hasn't been invented yet.

So you use a bell-crank to change the direction of the pull:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2la8qkn.jpg

True, the cable works a nearly useless rear spoon brake on a fixie
instead of a more useful front brake, but no one had figured out how
to improve the simple front lever-arm spoon brake yet.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

wrote:
You're a bike company in a competitive market.

You need something new, something nifty to catch the eye, something to
make the techo-freaks reach for their wallets when they see your ad.

So you come up with a radical new brake lever that uses a cable!

But Bowden cable with a housing hasn't been invented yet.

So you use a bell-crank to change the direction of the pull:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2la8qkn.jpg

True, the cable works a nearly useless rear spoon brake on a fixie
instead of a more useful front brake, but no one had figured out how
to improve the simple front lever-arm spoon brake yet.

doesn't that infringe some Shimano patent?

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:18:38 -0600, AMuzi wrote:

wrote:
You're a bike company in a competitive market.

You need something new, something nifty to catch the eye, something to
make the techo-freaks reach for their wallets when they see your ad.

So you come up with a radical new brake lever that uses a cable!

But Bowden cable with a housing hasn't been invented yet.

So you use a bell-crank to change the direction of the pull:
http://i46.tinypic.com/2la8qkn.jpg

True, the cable works a nearly useless rear spoon brake on a fixie
instead of a more useful front brake, but no one had figured out how
to improve the simple front lever-arm spoon brake yet.

doesn't that infringe some Shimano patent?

Dear Andrew,

You might expect Shimano to hog the credit, but Colonel Pope thwarted
them by carefully patenting the improved front-brake version in 1894:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=YfN...age&q=&f=false

Cheers,

Carl Fogel