What's New Is Old

Davis is home to a homeless bicycle museum. The California Bicycle Museum was formed recently after the university in 2001 bought a collection of bicycles dating back to 1823 that was owned by a rancher near Modesto. The museum is seeking a permanent place to display these bicycles, but in the meantime they are on temporary display in the community center adjoining Central Park, open during the times of the Farmers’ Market.

We finally made it to the exhibit today and were quite impressed by the collection, which ranges from the 1823 draisienne with no pedals (you sat over the frame and pushed it along) to the latest design in streamlined human-powered vehicles with a full fairing. What struck me was how little bicycle design has changed in the past century. Once the safety bicycle came along in the 1880s and pneumatic tires were added shortly after that, the bicycle looks quite modern. One of the bikes in the collection was a track bike used by the great American racer of a century ago Major Taylor, illustrated above. The lines of the bike resemble any track bike of today, though the wheelset was made of wood and he trained on a particularly massive set of wooden rollers (as seen below the bike in the illustration).

Of the evolution of bikes in the twentieth century Frank Berto in The Dancing Chain writes:

…around 1908 there was a fork in the road: English cyclists took the right fork and would pedal their three-speed epicyclic hub for the next 40 years. French cyclists took the left fork and rode their derailleur gears right up to the present. American cyclists fell down a hole in the road and continued to pedal single-speed coaster brake bicycles for the next 60 years.