Strangely enough, these bikes have two different records. Dr. Abbott's was at the salt flats, and has been broken twice, by John Howard And Fred Rompelberg. (I might not have spelled the last one right)
Bursfords record was set on rollers, so the aero features were mostly useless. There are lots of web sites about this project, but it's definetly outside the list timeframe, so I'll stop here.
Steve Birmingham Lowell, Ma ------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 2003 09:42:54 -0500 From: <nickzz@mindspring.com> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: [CR]Absolute speed record Message-ID: <Springmail.0994.1042296174.0.93454300@webmail.atl.earthlink.net> Precedence: list Reply-To: nickzz@mindspring.com Message: 10
While reading a bicycle book published in 1975,I came across an excerpt regarding the Absolute Speed Record for a bicycle at 138+ mph.I did some further surfing & found some interesting tidbits.
The bike used to set the record was not that radically different than a track bike from that era.[Huge chain wheel & 18" wheels the major exceptions]
Check it out at
http://abbc3.usc.edu/
Also take a look at a more modern 210+ mph record holder:
http://www.homestead.com/
To my surprise these two special purpose bicycles were both certainly different but not too far removed from the contemporary bike designs of their eras.
Nick 'sub 200mph' Zatezalo
Atlanta,Ga