Campagnolo's revolutionary new gearing system from 1946 | Hacker News Reader

Campagnolo's revolutionary new gearing system from 1946

cyclingtips.com

>The very founder of the Tour de France bicycle event himself, Henri Desgrange, deplored such technology. “I still feel that variable gears are only for people over forty-five,” he said. “Isn’t it better to triumph by the strength of your muscles than by the artifice of a derailleur? We are getting soft. Come on, fellows.”

In my teen-age years in 198x USSR i, like pretty much everybody there back then, had a fixie because "sport" bicycle with gears cost double (64 vs. 130 rubles with engineer salary being 200), and i envied the lucky few "sport" owners especially when i had to cycle my fixie uphill :). Now living in US I was really surprised how fixies became the trend as supposedly being superior to the gears.

At the mere cost of destroying your knees…

Or the lives of other users of the commons.

Citation needed.

Not necessarily "better", just different.

There is no one bike that will excel in all conditions. If you live somewhere relatively flat then trading off the flexibility for the reliability, low cost and light weight of a dérailleur free gearing system might be worth it.

Same goes for hub gears. You trade heavier weight and efficiency for not having the gear box exposed.

Personally I like the rang of a compact crank and a double up front when on tarmac or gravel and a 1x when on single track but that's just me.

It's a fashion statement, nothing more than that. Like a towel, when a man has a fixed gear bicycle others will immediately assume the presence of expendable income, a recent model iPhone, a loft apartment and a high bandwidth connection.

I'm told fixed gear bicycles are very fun to ride as well

It's like the difference between driving a manual transmission versus driving an automatic. You're way more connected to the machine, especially when you're out in the country where it's quiet, because fixed gears are a lot quieter than normal bikes.

There are a lot of cliches people use to describe it, but you just kind of have to experience it to get it.

It's the difference between driving a regular car and one without a gearbox, brakes and clutch, in other words, not something suitable for use in traffic.

What makes you think riding a fixed gear bike is unsuitable for traffic?

Bikes without brakes are illegal in traffic where I live, and rightly so, I'm a long time bike enthusiast and these fashion statements are downright dangerous, both to the rider as well as to other users of the roads.

That it even needs to be pointed out that operating any vehicle without brakes is unsuitable for traffic is a bit strange to me, but there you go.

I think riding with brakes is illegal pretty much everywhere. Also, most of the fixed gear bikes I've seen do have brakes. Only the most purpose built track frames don't have brake mounts, for example I own an ex-keirin NJS frame without brake mounts, bottle mounts, etc.

I tried using a clamp on brake with it so I could ride it on the road, but I didn't feel comfortable since I don't think the fork was really designed for those forces, so it's now a track-use bike only.

Also, if a man passes you on a climb with a fixed gear bike, you should assume that they could do it faster on a geared bike.

That won't happen because I'll be doing it faster on a geared bike ;)

So confident it's almost cute.

The irony is that a version of this exists today: Lance Armstrong teased Chris Froome's larger rear cassette (Froome used lower ratios on climbs to maintain a higher pedaling cadence)

While this is amazing, I keep wondering, why - even though in the 1940s - they didn't come up with the idea of a chain tensioner to compensate for different sprocket sizes. Instead they used this wheel suspension quick release mechanism which needed to be operated while driving, which just seems insane.

Weren't chain propelled systems a thing in other machines back then and a chain tensioner a known solution? Or were they just not suitable for a bike back then for some reason? Does anybody know something about this?

It's because there was no freewheel. A chain tensioner only works well when there is driving force applied in one direction, not the other. Put any force backward into the pedals (e.g. to slow down) and the tensioner will be forced to its most slack position (or broken off).

Ok, this makes perfectly sense and is actually quite easy to understand. Thanks from a mechanical noob.

The article describes it as four sprockets on a freehub. One would hope that cyclingtips.com would get that fairly material detail correct.

It also mentions the rider having to pedal backwards to shift the chain among the sprockets. That would not be possible on a fixed hub without slowing to a stop and reversing. One suspects that would rather negate any benefits of this system over a flip-flop wheel.

The freehub was not invented for another 30 years. But I see that the Cambio Corsa did have a freewheel (similar idea). I was wrong to think it used four fixed gears. So indeed it could have used a chain tensioner!

Video showing it in action (skip to the middle): https://youtu.be/MQe0fLEQ2jY

I think there's a mixup between two things here. A _freehub_ contains both the cassette body and the _freewheel_. The former has been invented in the 1930s and popularized by Shimano in the late 1970s [1], the latter has been around since the 19th century [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freehub

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freewheel

Just a link skipping to the gear change: https://youtu.be/MQe0fLEQ2jY?t=165

Yeah, I kind of let that one slide since it makes no difference from the standpoint of somebody trying to change gears while simultaneously not dying :-)

And let's be honest: it's entirely possible that the author has never changed a cassette or freewheel or seen a freewheel if they have. I'm almost 40, and I've only ever seen freewheels on pretty old 10 and 12 speeds (that's 2x5 and 2x6. Not a modern 1x drivetrain). And only because I volunteered at a place that fixes up bikes.

At the risk of this turning into an episode of Connections with James Burke playing out in text, why was there no freewheel at that point in time yet?

There was, the article mentions the cyclist having to pedal backwards in order to allow the chain slack to be taken up when gearing 'up' (smaller sprocket). That would be impossible without a freewheel, unless they mean to say 'exert some pressure backwards' rather than backwards pedaling, I don't see how a fixed linkage would be compatible with this system, it would behave terribly bad during a gear change because the system would always be under tension.

Freewheels were in use in the tour since 1936 at least, and possibly even earlier:

https://hizokucycles.bigcartel.com/single-speed-history

A cycling historian could clear up whether freewheels were allowed in racing during that time period. They were forbidden in the original Tour of France. Variable gearing already existed, in enclosed gear hubs, and remained a preferred choice for non competition cycling for at least into the earl 1970s.

Worldwide, enclosed-gear hubs are STILL vastly more popular than derailleur-style gearing implementations, btw.

They're part of what we might call the divide between "cycling" and "riding a bicycle." The cycling hobby is mostly about go-fast or go-far for its own sake, but in much of the world a bicycle is just transportation. In those places, you trade away efficiency or speed or weight in favor of the "it just works forever" bulletproof-ness that the enclosed hub provides.

Indeed, my daily driver is a Sturmey Archer AW from 1963. But I must say, contemporary derailleur systems with indexed shifting work pretty darn well.

They need maintenance that sealed-hub bikes can mostly do without, though.

My road bike has SRAM eTap on it. It's beautiful, sleek, and shifts perfectly almost every time. BUT that performance starts to suffer if I let the drive train get dirty, especially if I let gunk accumulate on the jockey wheels.

Your Sturmey can be ridden without such concerns. I mean, I'd never be able to keep up on my group rides on it, but for a general use bicycle it's probably superior.

I built a three speed road bike, and its downfall was riding with others due to the low ratio. When you're riding solo, you can ride at the right speed for a gear. But in a group, others are choosing your speed for you. Also, I like having a few more gears after mile 30 or 40.

Oops, not low ratio. I meant wide spacing.

Given a totally free choice, I'd love to try building up a racing frame with a modern hub gear. All those moving parts exposed to road grime, gone.

Well you can do it if you have the money. They're slightly less efficient than a regular cassette and derailleur, but if you're not racing it probably doesn't make much difference.

https://www.rohloff.de/en/products/speedhub

The gravel sub-genre has spawned a few frames built for the Pinion drive gearing solution (located in the bottom breaker area, like a central ebike motor, started by car gearbox engineers). Arguably that could be considered the next level of hub gears.

I have only personally had two serious failures of a bicycle transmission system, and both were on a rather new high end Rohloff hub. One was a mechanical failure (seal failure causing an oil leak). The other was a complete e-shifting failure caused by the most excellent engineers at Bosch’s failure to allow the shifting system to operate independently of the ebike drive.

(The latter is such a severe design error that I think no one should purchase the Bosch+Rohloff system until or unless it gets fixed. Use something else. An ebike is not a car, and it should be operable as a rider-powered bicycle even in the event of an electrical fault.)

This is the thing that seemed most crazy to me. They are actually adjusting the wheel in the dropout whilst zipping along in a scrunched over position. Seems like if you messed up couldn't the axle pop out of the dropout with horrendous results?!

Likely, if they didn't include some equivalent of "lawyer tabs" on the dropout. Compared to the general level of risk-taking of doing things like competitively descending Galibier or Tourmalet on wooden rims that added risk is probably a rounding error.

My father had one of those bikes when he was 20. He told me that he never managed to switch gear uphill like pros. He always had to stop, switch gear and start again. So it was not easy to master.

Dropouts without chain tensioning slot were simply unheard of at the time and if you happen to be the inventor of the quick release it's not really surprising that you make it a key element of the shifting process.

I was wondering for a while about the purpose of the teeth on the axle/dropout, because clearly with bearings between cogs and axle there's no way to force the wheel forwards pulling on the chain (you force the wheel backwards for higher tension by applying a little braking force), but the teeth on the axle are what makes the movement in the dropout symmetric, so your wheel will remain aligned to the frame center line. Really clever!

> Furthermore, from our calculations, this is the most advanced a racing bicycle will ever be or can ever be. The very nature of the 1/8″ wide sprockets means four is the maximum one freehub can carry.

Ah, the "640k ought to be enough for anybody" of the bicycling world. These days you can get 13 speed on the back derailleur alone -- not even taking into account the front derailleur.

yup - even Campagnolo's own EKAR is 1x13

That was written to be tongue in cheek. This is not actually copy written in the 1940s.

> this is to be enjoyed and imagined, not taken for fact. Read with a speedy wartime radio advert voice.

one of the more recent developments is combining a rear derailleur with a internal gear hub (both electronically and wirelessly shifted) and a single front chainring. some upsides, some downsides, but definitely something to watch.

Actually, internal gear hubs predate the derailer system, but in the past 20 years IGHs have gotten much better and are making a come back.

The biggest issue is the complexity, weight and poor efficiency compared to a derailleur. And also fewer and unevenly graded gears, though that's probably less true with Pinion hubs.

It's not that hard to avoid shifting under heavy load (higher-end IGHs shift fine under some load). And on a commuter bike, being able to shift gears at a standstill is great.

Edit: you completely changed the content of your message and my reply doesn't make a lot of sense now.

Both Rohloff and Shimano have been making pretty sturdy internal gear hubs for a long time, efficiency is fantastic. Ditto for the venerable Sturmey Archer internal gear hub, which goes back to the dark ages.

Efficiency sucks for the continuous variable kind, like the Enviolo and other variations on that theme.

With the Shimano 8 and 11 speed hubs you can tell that some gears have a poor efficiency, it's really noticeable!

Apparently the Pinion and Rohloff fare better: https://bikeshed.johnhoogstrate.nl/bicycle/drivetrain/shiman...

I have a Shimano 8 here, which gears do you notice this with? I'd love to see if I can replicate that.

The gear #4 is really bad especially in comparison with the #5 (the 1:1, direct-drive gear).

Ok, thank you!

I think Sturmey Archer is no more except in name so don’t expect quality from new SA stuff.

I find the shifting in the IGHs to be super annoying because it destroys your cadence. You have to stop peddling, then shift, then start peddling again. Weight/efficiency are also definitely noticeable.

Complexity is a weird thing. For the vast majority of owners the most you'll need to do is change the oil every 10k kilometers, but for the unlucky ones that do need it serviced, that requires shipping your hub across the world.

I'm hoping that their growing popularity improves the technology and makes them cheaper. I tour bikes as a hobby and make pretty okay money, but I still can't justify the price point of a Rohloff system.

yes, i meant combining an IGH with a rear derailer (instead of a front derailer). afaik there's only one supplier of those currently (and the system is a bit half-baked, i.e. no DI2 compatibility for reusing the existing shifters).

It's not a particularly recent idea, I believe Brompton has been doing that for decades. And it fills a very specific niche.

On most bikes I don't really see the point.

Either you want the convenience of an internal gear hub and you have plenty of options that offer a pretty wide range. For instance the Nexus/Alfine 8 feels plenty enough for a commuter bike even if you live in a hilly place. If you're rich you can go with an Alfine 11, Rohloff, or Pinion.

Or you don't want the weight/cost/inefficiency, nowadays you can get affordable and reliable 1x10 or 1x11 groupsets. And of course on a proper road bike you'll still want a double chainring.

that combination system i've been talking about is for proper road bikes.

> And of course on a proper road bike you'll still want a double chainring.

why? the IGH replaces the front double chainring. weight and price might be a bit higher but it's probably more robust, less maintenance and you can shift under full load.

https://cyclingtips.com/2020/07/this-rear-hub-has-2x-wireles...

I wasn't aware!

Still, I'll believe it when I see it at amateur cycling clubs. At pro-level I don't think anyone would take the performance hit (even though they claim it's compensated) just to avoid having a front derailleur.

For gravel, cyclocross or even casual road biking, if a double chainring really bothers you, then 1x12 groupsets exist.

Edit: https://www.rosebikes.com/rose-backroad-classified-2x11-2696...

Nice bike but the price bump compared to the other electric-shifting models is pretty steep!

The Brompton system is ... weird. Owing to the fact that the bike folds and the length of the chain line changes dramatically when you fold it, a traditional parallelogram linkage derailleur wouldn't work.

Instead, they have a crazy custom thing that runs the chain through a little pivoting fork that shifts the chain left and right on the two speed freewhatever[0]. The six speed adds the three speed internally geared hub. You can also get one or the other alone.

I believe they developed that combination when the supply of 5 speed hubs that fit their highly non-standard read hub spacing dried up.

I have a two speed Brompton and love it, but their engineers are next-level crazy in the best possible way.

[0] I wouldn't even care to guess. Everything they do is insane.

Well, if you do go to 13, you are not taking into account any front derailleur. True for both the wire-operated tredici as well as the hydraulic trece.

'Cambio Corsa' -> exchange while on the course, in case you were wondering. The lack of idler gears is the interesting part because that makes this a very efficient system. Once it is in a particular gear there is no difference between just having the one gear other than a little bit of extra weight. Derailleurs with idler gears were already in use in the TDF long before this. The lack of a detent before the rear wheel can drop out would give me the willies about operating this system at any speed, you are supposed to peddle forward while changing the gear to a smaller gear ratio (larger rear gear), and backwards when gearing 'up' to maintain constant chain tension.

Modern idlers are quite efficient, but back then the materials science that allowed both a light weight idler wheel yet strong enough and friction free to be 'in play' all the time wasn't really there yet, derailleur itself had been invented decades ago. But that didn't take all that long though, a few years later technology had caught up.

See:

https://www.velonews.com/gear/road-gear/how-tour-de-france-e...

Which I think is a much better article on the subject.

https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site/who_invented_the_derail...

Also back in the day, bicycles didn't have the freehub on the read wheel, so going downhill meant you always had to turn pedals to match wheel speed, no exception, you couldn't just stop and idle like today.

Proud owner of a Campagnolo groupset on a custom made bicycle, wanted it for heritage reasons.

This is how track bikes work. It's quite a shock the first time you go to a velodrome if you've never ridden one before.

also proper fixie/messenger bikes. I used to use one when commuting in London, due to low price it was relatively unattractive to bike thieves and it was very simple to maintain - no brakes, no gears (you had to skid/backpedal to stop quickly)

Yeah, I rode one for years when I was younger but stopped due to issues with my knee. I ride a dutch style bike with an internal hub on the rear these days, but do miss how the track bike is so light and fluid once you're used to it. It becomes like an appendage instead of being a bike you ride.

For anyone unfamiliar the reason they're popular with messengers and such is in urban traffic it becomes very smooth and simple to keep pace with the cars surrounding you. And some people just ride them because they like doing the skid stop or bar spins or such. These days messengers favor hot rod e-bikes though because they're just dramatically faster and that directly corresponds to more income.

Tried the same in Norway, the hills absolutely destroyed me haha. Going up was hard because of no gearing. Going down was even harder, a struggle of working against the pedals to not spin too fast.

Didn't they get banned or there was a campaign to ban them after someone was killed by someone riding a fixie, in London?

You're probably thinking of Charle Alliston who killed someone on Old St and got 18 months for it - to be road legal, fixed-gear bikes must still have a front brake, and have at least since the fifties, A fixed gear counts as a back brake but you must have two for redundancy.

This. Most cyclist fatalities in London are caused by Heavy Good Vehicles illegally overtaking and then turning and therefore trapping the poor cyclist in the blind spot. Nothing to do with the wheel hub design or bicycle braking system.

Charlie Alliston should have been using a front brake, but a few things got lost in the media frenzy:

- More pedestrians are killed by motor vehicle than bikes in London BY FAR

- More cyclists are killed by motor vehicles than bikes in London BY FAR

- More motorists are killed by motor vehicles than bikes in London BY FAR

It was incredibly depressing to watch people spend so much attention on one (pretty rare!) case rather the real sources of road danger in the city.

On top of that, the associated pollution kills far more people, contributes to climate change, and causes tons of respiratory illness.

It's not news when dog bites man. And based on Wikipedia, it seems that men bite dogs more often than cyclist kill other people in accidents.

This was mostly a fashion thing though, super dangerous and illegal in traffic to boot. You really shouldn't drive a fixed gear bicycle in traffic unless you have at least one and better yet two additional brakes. But according to purists that spoils the lines of their bikes, apparently fashion trumps safety.

Yeah. Apparently, it's pretty common to lock your rear leg when sitting down after a sprint. This is... not advisable on a track bike, and one of the things that needs to be trained out of riders in the track class.

I think they did have a freewheel however. Here's some footage from 1946:

https://youtu.be/k0AUknbBZ3U

Freewheel was a thing by the 1890s.

Given the UCI's normal pace of innovation it's somewhat surprising that pro cyclists aren't still stuck with this.

Two words: disc brakes.

I'm pretty sure that they don't run disc brakes because they are too heavy

Also disc brakes can give you brake fade. I have a hydraulic disc with a 203mm rotor, and even that huge disk sometimes fades on long descents.

The advantage of disc brakes on the medium to high end consumer road bike, however, is that you wear out the cheap and consumable pads and rotor, not the rims on what might be a $2000-by-itself 700c wheelset.

the large bike manufacturer sponsors of the pro teams of course want their team to ride the equipment that they're selling to consumers as the current and next model year. or at least something that very closely resembles it and sells for $2500+ at retail. look at how many trek carbon fiber madones were sold to enthusiastic amateurs during the peak armstrong years.

I'll take brake fade over rim brakes overheating the tubular glue and my tire rolls off, which has happened in the past on several occasions in pro races. Even on clinchers that stay attached to the rim, I've had rim brakes get kinda fady on long descents. It's not the same as disc fade (probably because the causes are different), but a bit unnerving nonetheless.

I've had a rim fail during braking on a descent, that was one experience I really do not want to repeat. Fortunately it all ended well but you can imagine my surprise. Since then I religiously check the wall thickness of the rims every time I change tires on the two bikes that I still have that has rim brakes, one very old tenspeed and a Koga 'Twintysix' tandem.

you raced pro? Far out! Did you have a mechanic handling your tire gluing, or were you doing it yourself. If you did it yourself was it worth the hassle? I say this as someone who spent an hour this morning cleaning a chain with two different solvents, a brush, and an ultrasonic bath just so I could dip it in boiling wax in the hopes that I won't have to clean it so much in the future, so I'm not making fun of how you spend your bike maintenance time.

I raced with pros. :-) But apologies if my wording was misleading, I was never good enough for the big show. I did, however, glue my own tires. It wasn't that much of a hassle, really. Cover the rim, let it dry, cover it with another coat, coat the tape on the tire with glue, let it all dry overnight again. The trick is to not be in a hurry, which pro mechanics might not have the luxury. Hence, I've never had a tire come off. It's been ages since I've done it (quit racing a while ago), but I bet it doesn't take an hour to do a set of tires. I had also been doing it since the early 80s, so lots of practice.

They do run disc brakes because it's been forced on everybody. The weight is irrelevant when you already have to find ways to make the bike heavy enough to meet the minimum limit.

"The weight is irrelevant when you already have to find ways to make the bike heavy enough to meet the minimum limit."

Exactly, and the minimum weight limitation comes from :-)

Bicycle gear shifting technology has come a long way since then, with very reliable, even electronic systems. But we're still messing with dirty, grubby chains that need to be maintained properly and are worn out after 5000km at best. I think that the bicycle drivetrain is quite rife for disruption. Someone has yet to solve the problem of efficiency - a new drivetrain is supposed to have less than 1% power loss. But a new concept could really change the entire industry, and it's quite a big industry.

Totally agree. Drive belts are becoming a thing more and more, which I would deem to be a disruption. Far less maintainence is needed, no oil involved, no chain links, they last way longer than chains etc.

But these obviously only work on single speeds or enclosed-gear hubs. For derailleur-style gearing a change away from chains with the properties you described would actually really be a good thing, although I do not see it coming. With regards to power loss, chains get better and better, though.

They also only work with frames that have been specially designed to allow fitting a belt, as I understand it. Chains can be easily broken and joined in the shop (or even on the roadside), but not so with belts, so the frame must come apart to get the belt going through the rear triangle, which substantially complicates frame building and design.

I don't mean to suggest this tradeoff isn't worthwhile to people who want clean, low-maintenance bicycle drivetrains for working or commuting, but the extra cost of manufacturing makes it harder to persuade cost-conscious consumers.

These days you have Veer who offer a split belt that unlike the closed loop Gates belt can also be used with closed frames. But they still need to be manufactured to a specific length, unlike chains which are sold one size easily adjusted to all.

This is true and a good point, but: It is hopefully only a matter of time until belts can also be joined and opened. Veers split belt [1] system already does this, hopefully this becomes more common, so the need for a belt specific bike-frame disappears.

- [1] https://www.veercycle.com/products/split-belt-pro

Edit: As pointed out in another comment, the fixed size of a belt remains though, unlike with a chain.

Absolutely! For commuter bikes, a belt drive is fantastic in it being very clean and low maintenance. And it's amazing how smooth the ride feels compared to a chain drive. But as you said, it's either single speed or has a gear hub with less efficiency.

And for touring as well -- nothing like completely eliminating chain lube and cleaning equipment from your panniers. Plus, drive belts last something like 10-20k miles, so the price difference quickly pays off. Plus you don't have to worry about anything snagging on and breaking a derailleur, and belts work better in cold conditions, too.

I see them as the drivetrain equivalent of disc brakes -- sure, rim brakes are still around. But the tradeoffs are so worthwhile that you effectively can't buy a high-end bike with rim brakes any more (disclaimer: I know that certain touring bikes come with cantis by default, but they're rarer and rarer each year).

The only difference I see is that internal shifter hubs can cost 5-10% efficiency compared to derailleurs. In the commuting and touring communities, that's no big deal -- it's comparable to dynamo loss, which is considered a totally acceptable tradeoff for always-on lights in those communities.

But in the racing community, chains will probably stick around for a long time, at least until internal hubs lose that efficiency loss. There's just too much to lose in that 5-10% for racers, even if it's totally worth it for me.

I recall reading about https://www.ceramicspeed.com a few years back, which sounds a bit like what you're describing, but I've no idea how much it has/hasn't taken off.

I've seen this, but while I muchly appreciate the creativity and engineering effort, it doesn't seem sturdy enough to be practical. Also, it's huge and still very exposed. It might even in its current incarnation be feasible on a road bike, but surely not on an MTB or gravel bike which may become dirty and muddy. The website seems not to have been updated since 2019, so I assume development is at least on a hiatus, if it hasn't ceased at all: https://www.ceramicspeed.com/en/cycling/d3

I found a link from 2021 essentially saying they've gone nowhere since 2019.

https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/ceramicspeed-driven-opens-u...

It’s not going to happen. Bicycle drivetrains are a very simple system and the engineering is very mature. The trade offs of alternative systems are well understood and have been for decades. Most innovation these days is finding ways to reduce the cost of well understood means of improving efficiency, eg reducing mass.

I was looking at one of these[1], which is both more complex and heavier. I liked the idea of it being potentially lower maintenance though, and just the cool factor of having something unusual.

1. https://www.prioritybicycles.com/products/the600

With a chain case that fully encloses the chain to keep it clean together with an oil bath to keep it lubed, a conventional bicycle chain can last almost forever. But as it's been done in the past, this approach adds quite a bit of weight and makes getting off the rear wheel to repair flats and replace tires much harder. If there's a way to keep the good parts of this and address the shortcomings, it would be real progress.

In addition, if you have an old Sturmey Archer hub, it automatically lubricates the chain by leaking oil.

I've thought about how to make a modern practical chain case.

A company called "Dana" made crank-mounted 10-speed internal transmissions for bikes in the 60's and 70's. They also had a 3-speed that was more popular. I had an opportunity to work on one in the early 80's, similar to the one pictured in Fred DeLong's seminal book on bicycle repair. It weighed a ton and was extremely labor intensive.

Granted, we have access to better materials today, but the cost/complexity cannot compete with the weight, simplicity, and rapid repairability of chain+derailleurs.

> chains that need to be maintained properly and are worn out after 5000km at best

IMO this is a big industry for mainly because cheap bicycles are available at large scale.

You can buy one at any shopping mall for a very low price, and a lot of users will prefer cheap vs durable/fast/light/advanced/fancy. As a sign of this, a ton of bicycles have very crappy brakes, little to no gear management, dynamo lights that have abysmal efficiency in exchange for no battery management.

This part of the market will only be disrupted by cheaper technology, and I'm not sure it will happen anytime soon.

Enthusiast market is more open to disruption and accept better designs, though a significant slice of it does maintenance themselves and it's tougher to sell them complex and/or hard to handle parts for only marginal effects (we see that in the tubeless vs classic tires for instance)

I just waxed my chain this morning. I hear it makes you way less prone to picking up road grit. Will report back.

Why aren't chains sold with wax on them?? This is so much better!!

Gino Bartali, mentioned in the article, has the most amazing back story.

He used his bike training to smuggle secret documents for the Italian Resistance and was awarded Righteous Among the Nations for helping Jews escape the Nazis.

Like many he stayed quite about his wartime exploits and was only recognised for them after his death.

A quite remarkable man.

Thanks for the pointer, I did not know about that. From his wiki page:

"The good is done, but it is not said. And certain medals hang on the soul, not on the jacket".

My two favorite largely unknown cycling stories from history are (1) this one and (b) the story of Major Taylor.

I'm in the middle of The Fastest Man in the World about Taylor right now. It's a gripping read, and it does a lot to tie in the politics of the era, what the bicycle boom meant for New York before the advent of the personal car, and the wider ripple effects of the bicycle boom such as on the Free State of the Congo.

My fun fact about Taylor is this: In November 1898 he set a world record 1/4 mile time at 22.2s averaging 40.5 mph. The earliest land speed record by a car that I could find (on wikipedia so I'm not that thorough) was set by an electric car(!) on Dec 18 1898 at 39.245 mph. So he threw down a gauntlet and a month later cars failed to pick it up. A hero in the war on cars.

> and was only recognised for them after his death.

Yeah, that was a painful day when you considered yourself a Coppist ;) "damn, turns out the other guy was even more awesome!"

I always thought of myself as a big Coppi fan too.

When you look at riders like Bartali, Coppi or Monsieur Jacques the only thing I can conclude is that these guys led more “interesting” lives back then.

I own a late 40s Italian bicycle equipped with Cambio Corsa. It's now a display piece because I don't want to maintain the glued on tubular tires or risk breaking something irreplaceable. However in the past I have taken it out on a couple short, flat rides to test the system, enough to make a couple observations about using it.

When changing gears, it doesn't feel like there is much risk of the wheel slipping forward out of the dropouts. The dropouts themselves are angled up and back, which helps prevent that. Also, when changing gears you are sitting back, putting weight on the seat and changing the weight distribution of the bike to favor the rear. This also counteracts the tendency of the wheel to come forward. The action of the chain only pulls the axle forward in the dropouts when shifting to a lower gear (higher tooth count cog on the freewheel, closer to the wheel spokes). There isn't much risk of "overshifting" the chain to a point where it will pull the axle out of the dropouts, simply because the chain would just contact the spokes or a spoke protector and slide back down into gear (unless something is really broken).

Also, you can see from the photos in the article how differently the dimensions of racing bicycle frames were fitted to riders back then. Modern racing bikes tend to have a lot of seatpost extension and longer handlebar stems, which shift the rider's weight forward on the bike. A simplified explanation is that this improves aerodynamics and certain handling characteristics, at the cost of requiring the rider have better core strength and flexibility. In contrast, the photos in the article show typical mid-20th century bicycle fit, with much less seatpost extension and shorter stems. Compared to modern racers, Coppi and Bartali sit father back, with their butt closer to the top tube. This puts the Cambio Corsa system in closer reach and the weight distribution has a more stable, rearward bias. The action of reaching back to change gears would feel treacherous and destabilizing on a modern racing bike, but would be a bit more comfortable on the bikes of the time.

This is all said with the big caveat that I have never ridden my Cambio Corsa bike in a long distance or competitive scenario. Undoubtedly it's still a challenging system to master. I can imagine the extreme difficulty of operating it on the unpaved, bumpy climbs typical of that era.

Edit: Here is a link to scans of the original patent drawings for the Cambio Corsa. It shows the mechanical details- click on the "Pages" tab to see all the scanned pages of the patent.

https://www.disraeligears.co.uk/site/french_patent_899402_-_...

Pardon the climb nerd-out, but about that historical photo that claims to show Bartali climbing Galibier in the 1948 Tour de France: the horizon line in the background doesn't strike me as any you could see on the Galibier ascent. And according to that year's stage plan, Galibier was the first climb of the day and you'll have a hard time finding any spot in the climb were the rider would climb left to right through a view like that with the morning from that angle.

My favorite modern shifting tech is SRAM's Force 22 Yaw front derailleur. Well ok, index shifting is there too.

Yaw rotates the front derailleur cage slightly as you shift rings. This keeps the cage inline with the chainline and makes for a quiet FD with no trimming necessary.

It's supposed to be Force 22 specific but I have SRAM SL700 2x10 and Shimano 105 10s cranks on that bike. I installed it but then had my LBS adjust it.

It is the first FD I've ever had that I like.

> Early indications suggest the highly complex and somewhat controversial system consists of two levers mounted on the rear of the frame. The longer of these two levers operates the rear wheel quick-release retention mechanism. The shorter lever guides the bicycle chain across a revolutionary four sprocket cluster on the rear freehub.

An interestingly early example of a dangerous “dark UI”.

Yet another website to add the user-scalable=0 sin bin

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