hmm!
well, the best quote i could find on this in my cursory search through the ol paper pile is from a "_cycling_ penny handbook" entitled "variable gears and all about them", published around 1920 or so.
its a section entitled "variable gears that can be fitted with a fixed wheel", which starts off:
"we have made enquiries of the variable gear manufacturers, and we find that the following gears can be supplied optionally with a fixed instead of a free wheel..."
which makes for an interesting can of worms, because it holds to my assertion that fixed wheel is the opposite of free wheel, but also separates the definition of "fixed wheel" from "fixed gear" even further, because here we have a fixed wheel which is most certainly not a fixed gear, by period definition.
which leads me to think of wheels as free or fixed, and gears as variable or fixed - with "fixed" having different meanings in each context. in conjunction with "wheel", "fixed" is defined as "stationary", which when used with "gear" its meaning is "set" or "constant".
coaster/backpedal brake hubs - in my mind, the wheel is free, the gear is fixed or variable... that the brake is inside the hub is immaterial to the fixed/free/variable gear/wheel discussion...
-joel
>those cycle writers from yore must have thought of such things as a
>Sturmey TF or ASC when they wrote about "single speed fixed",
>opposite would be "two / three speed fixed".
>
>Besides, there also were back pedalling brake hubs with two, three,
>four or even five speed derailleurs, like the German Renntorpedo.
>
>Hoping to have complicated things,
>
>Toni Theilmeier, Belm, Germany.
>_______________________________________________
--
joel metz : magpie@messengers.org : http://www.blackbirdsf.org/
bike messengers worldwide : ifbma : http://www.messengers.org/
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==
i know what innocence looks like - and it wasn't there,
after she got that bicycle...