Suppose aliens dematerialize all bicycles, motorcycles, and that ilk, along with all accessories, businesses, and installations directly related to them. The aliens then erase all depictions, descriptions, and memories of such vehicles. Everyone wakes up tomorrow with no knowledge of the existence of two-wheeled vehicles. How long would it take for bicycles and motorcycles to become as common as they are now?
Sounds like a job for Bicycle Repair Man…
Because of all of the new devices (Segway, Airwheel, Hoverboard, etc.), it seems to me like we just hit the cutoff point where if you tried to invent the bicycle, everyone would just be like, “What? PEDAL to MOVE? Are you CRAZY!!?”
20 years ago, it might have sprung up again. Today, I think it would be doomed.
Do skateboards or in-line roller-skates still exist? Someone would generalize from that in pretty short order.
All the ex-cyclists would have to wonder… “why the hell do I have these calves, and how come I’m in such good shape if I’ve never exercised?”
Yes, skateboards and inline roller skates still exist. To make it interesting, I’m going to add that unicycles are gone. (The step from a unicycle to a penny-farthing is just too easy.)
Maybe the exercise industry would invent it. As far as sitting on a seat and using pedals against a resistance. From there, it might inspire someone to consider a moving device.
Speed demons might try two wheel vehicles as a way to get more speed with less weight and rolling resistance. Land speed records in various displacement classes are hotly contested.
I’ll also be unfair to the hypothesis and note that Steam Rollers still exist, and are essentially “two wheeled vehicles.”
But my real thought is…there are tens of thousands of would-be inventors out there, throwing pieces and parts together in all sorts of weird combinations.
(Like a shoe-horn…the kind with teeth…)
Sooner or later, someone would have cut a four-wheeled toy wagon in half, to make two two-wheeled carts, and the light bulb goes on.
I think probably less than 50 years but it is not easy to guess.
The thought that it is easy to balance a steered two wheeled vehicle is extremely counterintuitive. The mechanism by which a bicycle remains upright is even now not fully understood, although a number of the factors that contribute are known.
There is simply no easy continuum to go from any existing invention to the leap that a two wheeled vehicle will be stable and useful.
I am not an expert in the history of the invention of the bicycle. However my understanding is that the intermediate step was the invention of the hobbyhorse where a person sat astride a two wheeled vehicle with their legs out to either side, pushing off. Presumably the inventor of that vehicle assumed that balance would not be a difficulty because of the rider’s legs to either side. And then presumably they discovered that the vehicle once steerable, was remarkably easy to balance. The fitting of a drive train probably then came without requiring any great leap of imagination.
I think that the bicycle would be reinvented but it is probably a question of how long before somebody happens to think of the “hobbyhorse” idea (perhaps as a child’s toy). I think that once that step had been taken and it was suddenly found that a two wheel vehicle was easy to balance, the bicycle - with some small differences compared to today’s bicycles - would follow fairly rapidly. How long it would take for somebody to happen to invent the hobbyhorse I think is very difficult to judge.
Without any knowledge of previous bike history, inventors might come up with various other solutions to the same problem. Early designs might require some further thought and development.
With some further design work, this improved model may emerge.
(Pictures taken from here.)
Are we positing that four-wheel (and more) vehicles continue to exist?
Then we’d be talking about how long it would take someone to say “There’s a market for a vehicle that’s cheaper than any of these, takes up less space on the road and is easier to park and store”, just as the original bikes developed from people thinking “There’s a market for a vehicle for people who can’t afford to keep a horse and carriage”. The difference now is that, presumably, engineering skills and equipment and industrialised production also exist, which is what delayed the development of the original two-wheelers. So probably a fairly short sort of time.
Assuming the aliens haven’t obliterated the notion of 2-wheel stunts with cars, we may see someone come up with a car that’s optimised for doing this, eventually morphing into the motorcycle, then someone will have the silly idea of making a motorcycle for poor people that’s pedal-powered like a pedal boat.
It took a little more than a hundred years to get where we are now (at least as per motorcycles) so I’m betting 25-100 years. Still having cars and possible some three-wheelers should give us a bump-start.
No fueling or charging required? It’s still a great deal.
It will get invented quickly, and it’s Green! Huge seller for a while, then most people stop using them altogether.
Why would people stop using them? Nothing we know of can do as well, as easily and cheaply.
I have always associated the invention of the bicycle to the childhood activity of rolling hoops. That activity demonstrated the gyroscopic principle that keeps a bicycle upright.
Or was that association only in my mind?
If rolling hoops really inspired bicycles, and since no one rolls hoops anymore (do they?), it might take a while, or it might never happen at all.
We’d have them back in a matter of years. I give it three months of design and then some months or years to put them back into mass production.
The gyroscopic trick is extremely well known. If not to the common man, then at least to the engineers who would be building the bikes. That’s not much of a hurdle.
Furthermore, there are parts of the world where bikes outnumber cars because of poverty and road conditions. When these people wake up with no way to get to work, you can bet there will be a market to provide the cheapest vehicle possible as quickly as possible. The first guy to reinvent the bicycle will have an unbeatable edge on every competitor.
I large areas of the world they are a principle means of transportation. Remove them from cities in China, India, etc and there will be a huge demand for cheap, reliable transportation for the masses. Some form of bicycle is going to fill that void rather quickly.
I don’t know that Chinese people still rely on bicycles as a primary means of transportation. China has changed a lot in recent years!
But in some other parts of the world, I think it’s still true.