I always thought older bikes had slacker seat tube angles? Seems to me that with slacker seat angles, the shorter rails on leather saddles weren't a problem and that the longer rails of today seats are a result of steeper seat tubes, amongst other things. I mean, didn't the older French bikes have slacker angles and eventually moved to the more modern, racier Italian design with steeper seat angles?
A lot of more modern race bikes that I see always have the seat slammed all the way back (before the Arione came out). Again, this seems contradictory to what Hogg contends.
Doland Cheung SoCal "Prefers a smaller frame"
-----Original Message----- Clipped for Steve Hogg post on cyclingnews.com:
This meant that seat tube angles were often (not always) steeper on many frames of the 70's than they are now. Leather seats of the era had much shorter seat rails than modern seats which steepened the effective seat tube angle by a degree typically. The net effect of all of this was that riders rode further forward generally.