The Lost Cyclist

[davekingedits]

I'm currently in the middle of David Herlihy's The Lost Cyclist, the story of the disappearance of Frank Lenz as he was cycling around the world in 1892. Lenz was riding a Victor pneumatic-tired safety. In fact, one purpose of his ride, besides fame and fortune (he was chronicling it for Outing magazine, his sponsor), was to prove the effectiveness of those new-fangled pneumatic tires.

Thing is, Herlihy mentions several time that Lenz packed an extra "inner tube" on his person, and had a trunk full of "tires and tubes" shipped ahead of him.

In 1892, we would have been talking about a single-tube tire, right? Is Herlihy wrong about this? Or was Victor ahead of its time?

David

 

[sam]

They made inter tubes for sew-up glue on tyres.These were the same as single tube tires but you had to sew the tire before you glued it to the rim.

 

[Andrew Gorman]

There were several styles of pneumatic tires available, and one's with separate tubes actually predate the singletube tire. For more information than anyone really needs, check out the first several chapters of
Best in the long run what? goodrich pneumatic tires

http://books.google.com/ebooks/reader?id=iT10lNLC7fYC&printsec=frontcover&output=reader
Pretty much ANY new advance in bicycles was originally patented before 1900.

 

[davekingedits]

Thanks. I've still clearly got a lot to learn.
David

 

[pelletman]

 

[Andrew Gorman]

Thanks for those catalog pages!

 

[davekingedits]

Yes, thank you, pelletman. That's fascinating. Some of the "thorough tests of the last year" were undoubtedly performed by Lenz, riding the thing across the country. (I don't think he reach China until 1893.)

By the way, Hurlihy's book mentions that Lenz had a custom-made back wheel with sprockets of different sizes on either side of the hub. He could change gears by flipping the wheel over. Has anyone encountered that elsewhere?

David

 

[pelletman]

I have on later bikes, but have never seen it that early.