At 12:42 PM -0500 1/21/08, Philcycles@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 1/21/08 9:35:05 AM, heine94@earthlink.net writes:
>
>>My initial point was that many 1930s aluminum alloy parts appear to
>>have been reliable - not 100% (but what is?), but reliable enough to
>>find widespread acceptance. The 1930s also appear to have been the
>>time when aluminum alloys first saw widespread use in high-end
>>bicycles.
>>
>
>
>It cannot be a coincidence that aircraft use of aluminium became
>wide spread in the 30s. Remember also that 531 was originally
>developed for aircraft use in the 30s.
>Phil Brown
>Cold and wet in Berkeley, Calif.
I was unsure when aluminum alloys (as somebody pointed out, it wasn't aluminum) became widespread in aircraft. I thought it might have been during the 1920s.
In France, there was a lot of interplay between aircraft, high-end cars and high-end bicycles. Rene Herse worked on prototype aircraft before starting to make bicycle components, and later, complete bicycles. Reiss (Reyhand) claimed that the ideas for triangulating his frames came from Ettore Bugatti, the famous racing car builder. Louis Delage (another racing and luxury car maker) rode a Camille Daudon bicycle, which he considered the most advance piece of mechanical equipment you could buy. All these makers' workshops were in the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret or the surrounding areas (with the exception of Bugatti, who worked there only during WW 1 when he designed aircraft engines, but went back to Molsheim to make his cars). Across the Seine, you had the Citroen factory, where they made some of the most advanced mass-produced cars in the world (front-wheel drive, unibody construction in the 1930s) in the 1930s, and was experimenting with magnesium chassis and other stuff for their "people's car" (later to become the 2CV).
I think it is this environment of facilities (a huge number of machine shops, forging and casting shops) and interest (racing car designers buying high-end cyclotouring bicycles and discussing bicycle design with their builders) that explains the unique constructeur bicycles that we chronicled in "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles."
In Germany, I have not seen evidence of Ferdinand Porsche (who designed the Auto Union race cars) or the Mercedes Benz engineers taking an interest in bicycles. In Britain, none of the Bentley Boys enthused over their bicycles, if they had any. And the Dusenberg brothers' influence on American bicycles appears to have been limited, too. What a shame to waste such engineering talent on cars, rather than apply them to the machines that really matter - bicycles! ;-)
(A few decades later, Campagnolo was as famous for their magnesium car wheels used on Ferrari sport-racing cars, as they were for their bicycle components. Today, some car companies market bicycles, but it does not appear that anybody behind them is an avid rider.)
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
140 Lakeside Ave #C
Seattle WA 98122
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