Hi folks, Dale's informed response to my probably unfounded 'defensive' comment on Falcon frames got me pondering. I am trying to write a history of Elswick-Hopper and Falcon over a period of 120 years and it struck me that I know more about the 1896/7 bicycle boom in the UK than the US 1972/4 boom in lightweight sales. Herlihy's recent book just mentions the fact that there was one. I am not terribly interested in an attempt to define Great Britain, or in the mindset of GWB. What I would like US CR'ers to tell me is what drove the US boom. Can't have been the oil crisis as that was 1974.. Nigel Land Barton on Humber, England