Thanks, Jan. I've also wondered why no other maker did a square taper cotte rless set in the 40' or early 50's. I'd forgotten about Rene Herse. Also, t he Gnutti was a very different design,with an expanding splined spindle spl it longitudinally at 120 degrees, so Campagnolo is the third unless there were others. Does anyone know what the intro date of the Williams AB77 was?
Best regards,
Wes Gadd
Unionville,CT
From: Jan Heine <heine94@earthlink.net> Subject: Re: [CR]Cotterless crank history questions To: wesleygadd@sbcglobal.net, classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Date: Sunday, November 2, 2008, 9:59 PM
At 3:35 PM -0800 11/2/08, Wesley Gadd wrote:
>Now that we seem to be entering the twilight of the reign of the taper squ
a
>re cotterless crank, I've been wondering about a couple of historical
quest
>ions.
>First, did Stronglight originate the concept, and, if so, when? I'm
guess
>ing late '30's?
Stronglight introduced square-taper aluminum cranks 1933. There was an article in La Pedale Touristique in May 1933 on the new cranks. They were used on many bikes in the 1934 Technical Trials - see Vintage Bicycle Quarterly Vol. 1, No. 4.
I am sure there were others before, but they were not very
successful. The Stronglight set the standard, and it fits on modern
bottom brackets. It was made almost unchanged through the 1970s -
more than 40 years. The TA is a direct copy, and still is available
new.
>Did they hold a patent that kept other manufacturers from u
>sing this design?
Herse used the same design around 1938/39. Remember that Herse started as a component maker, and his cranks were used by many constructeurs, such as Singer, Hurtu and others. In 1940, Herse started making bikes, and reserved his parts for his own bikes, with a few exceptions.
I don't know about patents, but I do know that Herse never advertised
his cranks as "Stronglight Patent" or something the like.
>As far as I know, the first company to make a taper squar
>e crank after Stronglight was Campagnolo in 1958.
See above, Herse came before. Gnutti advertised "cotterless" cranks in Le Cycliste 10/1950 ("the great novelty of the show") - I assume this was the cotterless model.
So Campagnolo was fourth, unless we are missing somebody.
I have often wondered why nobody else introduced cottered cranks in
the 1940s and early 1950s. I think Stronglight had the market
cornered in France, and it was off the radar in other countries.
Campagnolo really was the first in the racing world to look beyond
established practice and take inspirations from elsewhere. When
everybody worried about straight chain runs, he looked at
cyclotouring derailleurs and came up with his Gran Sport, which
completely ignored conventional wisdom of what made a good racing
derailleur. However, he managed to get professionals to ride this
components (paying Fausto Coppi millions of lire to switch from
Simplex), and thus was able to prove their worth.
>Others used different met
>hods (Gnutti, T.A. "Criterium", Williams AB77 come to mind) but
did the alm
>ost universal adoption of the taper square method have somthing to do with
>the expiration of a patent?
Cottered interfaces (basically, two straight holes) are much easier to make than square tapers. That may have more to do with the lack of makers. In any case, racers continued to ride cottered cranks, mostly because they offered a narrower tread (Q factor), for more than 20 years after Stronglight's cranks had proven themselves. See the archives for the discussion about why professional racers stuck to cottered cranks... So for companies focusing on racing, there was no need to make other cranks until the 1950s.
The writing was on the wall for cottered cranks in the mid-1950s, as one professional after another switched to Stronglight aluminum cranks. So it made sense that one maker after another came up with racing-specific models to replace Stronglight's cyclotouring cranks.
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
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Seattle WA 98122
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