cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16133154
Link to original Tweet: https://x.com/DavidZipper/status/1795048724021862898
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16133154
Link to original Tweet: https://x.com/DavidZipper/status/1795048724021862898
You could've invented Karl Drais original velocipede pretty much any time after the invention of the (hollow) wheel, it is not a complicated machine by any means, and it still took us around 3700 years to do it.
Albeit, powered bicycles have been around for a good while, they just usually had 2-strokes. In the world of e-bikes there's some arguably nifty innovation coming out now that power can be a solved issue for reasonable distances, like bicycle CVTs.
Who will invent ball bearings though? I would think with dogshit manufacturing precision plain bearings worked like shit. (But I would like to know more
)
Don't really need those for the original velocipede any more than you do an old timey wagon, spindle or trunnion system works fine.
EDIT: I once got to rode a replica and it just had a spindle for the wheels and you really did notice they're kind of loose but it's pretty much whatever, you always have one foot touching the ground anyways, it still works out to be a lot faster than walking at about the same energy if you have some sort of solid ground that isn't cobblestone.