In his autobiographical novel Cakes and Ale, Maugham describes taking lessons on a “safety bicycle” in the 1880s or so. Is this what we call a “bicycle” today? From his description I can’t see any features that differ from a bicycle today. Was there an early “unsafe” bicycle?
Single speed, “gearing” was the size of the front wheel. Bigger wheel=faster speed but harder to pedal from a stop. Also, since the seat was on top of the front wheel, you were way above the ground and a long fall if you tipped over.
Basically, yes, though there have been some improvements in the last century or so.
“Ordinary” bicycles of the time were the above-mentioned Penny-Farthing.
Here is a comparison of the typical Penny-Farthing and a Rover Safety Bicycle (the first commercially successful of the type).
I recall too reading that an early bicycle was simply that - shaped like a modern bike, but wiith just the two wheels. You used your feet on the ground to go, and apparently no brake.
It would be my educated guess that a “safety bicycle” in those days would be the name given a normal bike shaped like today’s, that also had brakes like the illustration above. Brakes would be important the faster a bike would go…
(And braking too hard on a penny-farthing would probably have interesting consequences) I saw on instagram recently a restored footage of an old race between penny-farthings. Fortunately in a velodrome and they got up to some serious speeds.
That is a kid’s (or I suppose an adult can ride one) dandy horse, not what is meant by a “safety” bicycle, which were marketed as such much later (starting around ~1870s) and are basically pretty close or identical to what we would call a normal bicycle— so not a penny-farthing, in particular. Don’t know how many might have been sold without brakes, but note that people ride fixed-gear bicycles with no brakes today…
ETA I flipped through the chapter on safety bicycles in an old Sturmey’s handbook, and it looks like most came with brakes as standard equipment, though not 100%.
It seems that at least some penny-farthings were also marketed using the word “safety”, by the way, like the Devon Safety.
I’ve been riding fixed-gear bikes for nearly 60 years now, I’ve never been on one without brakes. Lack of hand-brakes is pretty common among them, but they still have brakes - you pedal backward to engage them.
I suppose it’s possible there are some out there entirely without brakes, I just haven’t encountered any.
The unsafe part of penny farthings was that there was nothing preventing the rider and bike from pivoting forward over the front wheel’s axle if the rider leaned too far forward or braked too hard.
I’m just tickled to learn I’m not the only one reading Somerset Maugham.
I was assuming “safety” was a way of saying it had brakes, “This thing’s a lot safer, because you can actually stop it without using a brick wall.”
I saw a movie a few years ago where the good guy was a bike courier in Manhattan, and the bike was really fixed gear - when he pedalled backward the bike went backward (as he did in one scene when the bad guy started to chase him, then yanked up the front wheel and spun 180°) The downside of course the pedals don’t “coast” they turn with the back wheel. I assume its a preference for some cyclists. IIRC it had the same caliper brakes as most geared bikes. Those bikes in the picure appear to have something that presses down on the tire, something I’ve seen on scooters laterly (but, the back wheel). As a kid I had the 1-gear bike where pedalling backward was the brake.
I think you’re talking about single-speed bikes, not fixed gear. A fixed-gear bike has a cog in the back that is directly connected to the wheel and therefore the pedals. If you pedal backwards on it, the wheel goes backwards (which is impossible if you are moving forward with any speed). There’s no such thing as coasting, because the pedals will move if the wheels do. You can slow down by putting force against the pedals, but the pedals will still be moving forward.
The kind of brakes where it slows down the wheel if you pedal backwards are called coaster brakes. Those are incompatible with a fixed-gear bike.
If I may:
How did you mount or dismount a penny farthing? It seems an egregious failure on my part to sport the avatar I do and not know this answer.
There’s the hard way and the easy way. The hard way is much faster.
Real way.
You put one foot on that little step near the back, push it like you’re riding a scooter, then climb up once it’s moving and you have your balance. Dismounting is the same in reverse.
Thanks to you both!
It was a preference for bike couriers in Manhattan (is there such a thing anymore?). I read an interview with one who said that he’d done racing, and hill climbs, and off-road racing, and downhill racing, and downhill off-road racing, and the one he found most thrilling and liked best was bicycle-courier in Manhattan…
I’ve seen people but brake on the rear wheel of a fixie to help them stop, but it’s certainly not standard issue.
I thought they were the same thing, and TIL that they’re not, thank you.
In fact I was going to comment on that point. My first bike when I was a little kid was single-speed, and I have a distinct recollection of braking by applying steady backward pressure on whichever pedal was most conveniently positioned. Of course it only had a brake on the rear wheel. My next two bikes, a three-speed and then a ten-speed, had caliper brakes on both wheels.
I’m not sure if you meant “put brakes on the rear wheel” or “butt brake” (as in sit your ass on the wheel to slow it down). Both are possible, although the former is probably more comfortable.
You’re correct in saying this contraption wasn’t a safety bike, but it does seem to have been a precursor that adults actually rode. I have a picture somewhere that I’ll add to the thread later. I think this came before the penny-farthing.