Author: David V. Herlihy Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 9780300104189 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 496
Book Description
The nineteenth century's "mechanical horse" offered an exciting new world of transportation for all and ushered in an era of changes that resonates to the present day, changes cataloged and described in a fascinating history of an engineering marvel.
Author: Jody Rosen Publisher: Random House ISBN: 1448192250 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 270
Book Description
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2023** 'Full of delightful anecdotes and interviews and fascinating historical tales' Mail on Sunday A panoramic portrait of the wonderous vehicle whose passenger is also its engine. A toy, a tool, a liberator, or complete nuisance: the bicycle has been many things to many people over the decades, yet it endures as the most popular form of transport in the world. How has such a simple machine achieved so much? Combining history, travelogue and memoir, Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous vehicle from its invention in 1817 to its present-day renaissance as a 'green machine'. Readers meet unforgettable characters: women's suffragists who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas, astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity. By examining the bicycle's past and peering into its future, Two Wheels Good forms a joyful ode to an engineering marvel of global importance. 'Funny, precise, surprising' Adam Gopnik 'Love for two-wheeled transport runs through every sentence' Economist 'Wry, rich, deeply researched' Patrick Radden Keefe
Author: Robert L. McCullough Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262552493 Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
How American bicyclists shaped the landscape and left traces of their journeys for us in writing, illustrations, and photographs. In the later part of the nineteenth century, American bicyclists were explorers, cycling through both charted and uncharted territory. These wheelmen and wheelwomen became keen observers of suburban and rural landscapes, and left copious records of their journeys—in travel narratives, journalism, maps, photographs, illustrations. They were also instrumental in the construction of roads and paths (“wheelways”)—building them, funding them, and lobbying legislators for them. Their explorations shaped the landscape and the way we look at it, yet with few exceptions their writings have been largely overlooked by landscape scholars, and many of the paths cyclists cleared have disappeared. In Old Wheelways, Robert McCullough restores the pioneering cyclists of the nineteenth century to the history of American landscapes. McCullough recounts marathon cycling trips around the Northeast undertaken by hardy cyclists, who then describe their journeys in such magazines as The Wheelman Illustrated and Bicycling World; the work of illustrators (including Childe Hassam, before his fame as a painter); efforts by cyclists to build better rural roads and bicycle paths; and conflicts with park planners, including the famous Olmsted Firm, who often opposed separate paths for bicycles. Today's ubiquitous bicycle lanes owe their origins to nineteenth century versions, including New York City's “asphalt ribbons.” Long before there were “rails to trails,” there was a movement to adapt existing passageways—including aqueduct corridors, trolley rights-of-way, and canal towpaths—for bicycling. The campaigns for wheelways, McCullough points out, offer a prologue to nearly every obstacle faced by those advocating bicycle paths and lanes today. McCullough's text is enriched by more than one hundred historic images of cyclists (often attired in skirts and bonnets, suits and ties), country lanes, and city streets.
Author: Tony Hadland Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 026252970X Category : Transportation Languages : en Pages : 583
Book Description
An authoritative and comprehensive account of the bicycle's two-hundred-year evolution. The bicycle ranks as one of the most enduring, most widely used vehicles in the world, with more than a billion produced during almost two hundred years of cycling history. This book offers an authoritative and comprehensive account of the bicycle's technical and historical evolution, from the earliest velocipedes (invented to fill the need for horseless transport during a shortage of oats) to modern racing bikes, mountain bikes, and recumbents. It traces the bicycle's development in terms of materials, ergonomics, and vehicle physics, as carried out by inventors, entrepreneurs, and manufacturers. Written by two leading bicycle historians and generously illustrated with historic drawings, designs, and photographs, Bicycle Design describes the key stages in the evolution of the bicycle, beginning with the counterintuitive idea of balancing on two wheels in line, through the development of tension-spoked wheels, indirect drives (employing levers, pulleys, chains, and chainwheels), and pneumatic tires. The authors examine the further development of the bicycle for such specific purposes as racing, portability, and all-terrain use; and they describe the evolution of bicycle components including seats, transmission, brakes, lights (at first candle-based), and carriers (racks, panniers, saddlebags, child seats, and sidecars). They consider not only commercially successful designs but also commercial failures that pointed the way to future technological developments. And they debunk some myths about bicycles—for example, the mistaken but often-cited idea that Leonardo sketched a chain-drive bike in his notebooks. Despite the bicycle's long history and mass appeal, its technological history has been neglected. This volume, with its engaging and wide-ranging coverage, fills that gap. It will be the starting point for all future histories of the bicycle.
Author: Dorling Kindersley Publishing Staff Publisher: ISBN: 9780241226117 Category : Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
Jessica Hart has never forgotten Matthew Landley. After all, he was her first love when she was fifteen years old. But he was also her school maths teacher, and their forbidden affair ended in scandal with his arrest and imprisonment. Now, seventeen years later, Matthew returns with a new identity, a long-term girlfriend and a young daughter, who know nothing of what happened before. Yet when he runs into Jessica, neither of them can ignore the emotional ties that bind them together. With so many secrets to keep hidden, how long can Jessica and Matthew avoid the dark mistakes of their past imploding in the present?
Author: Carlo Mari Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030505634 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 148
Book Description
Through a historical analysis of the bicycle industry, this book explores how the bicycle was developed, manufactured and marketed, from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the present day. The author highlights the contributions made by the bicycle industry to marketing as it is understood today, tracing key innovations in product development and marketing. Addressing a gap in the literature, this book provides an insightful history of marketing practice for one of the most important products of the twentieth century.
Author: John Norris Publisher: Pen and Sword Military ISBN: 1526763540 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 200
Book Description
Almost as soon as a viable metal-framed bike was invented, it was put to military use, offering a much cheaper, less fragile and less logistically demanding alternative to horse transport. Widely used in many armies from the late 19th century, through both world wars and beyond, the bicycle really is the forgotten war machine. John Norris traces traces the development of military cycling from first experiments, including early (often flawed) designs for armed and multi-passenger versions. He explains how any why bikes were used for rapid movement of infantry units as well as carrying messages and other tasks. First used in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, then by both sides in the Boer War, they were widely adopted throughout Europe before the First World War. In the Second World War, the Japanese used over fifty thousand bicycles in the conquest of Malaya and the German army used over three million, relying on them increasingly as petrol shortages immobilized motor transport. The Allies famously made use of folding and air-dropped bikes in Operation Market Garden and in Normandy. After WW2 bikes were used extensively in Vietnam, particularly along the Ho Chi Minh trail and some European armies maintained specialist bicycle units throughout the Cold War and into the 21st century. Specialized military bikes, collapsible for use by parachutists, are still being made for Special Forces units. John Norris examines the whole history of pedal-powered warfare and illustrates it with an array of high-quality photographs.
Author: Evan Friss Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 022675880X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 280
Book Description
As Evan Friss shows in his mordant history of urban bicycling in the late nineteenth century, the bicycle has long told us much about cities and their residents. In a time when American cities were chaotic, polluted, and socially and culturally impenetrable, the bicycle inspired a vision of an improved city in which pollution was negligible, transport was noiseless and rapid, leisure spaces were democratic, and the divisions between city and country blurred. Friss focuses not on the technology of the bicycle but on the urbanisms that bicycling engendered. Bicycles altered the look and feel of cities and their streets, enhanced mobility, fueled leisure and recreation, promoted good health, and shrank urban spaces as part of a larger transformation that altered the city and the lives of its inhabitants, even as the bicycle's own popularity fell, not to rise again for a century. --Publisher's description.
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