My ca 1905-1906 ladies Rover roadstar has origionally aluminium rims,
irene rutgers - bristol.uk
________________________________
From: Hilary Stone <hilary.stone@blueyonder.co.uk> To: Steven Maasland <themaaslands@comcast.net> Cc: CR <Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org> Sen t: Monday, 3 November, 2008 18:15:39 Subject: Re: [CR]Fw: Bicycle History Revisionism at work
Steven is undoubtedly correct in stating that the re was widespread use of aluminium rims before the 1930s. Many British road ster manufacturers - Sunbeam, Humber, Raleigh etc used Roman aluminium rims on their top roadster models in the seven to ten years preceding WW1. Thes e rims continued to be made into the 1920s. They were a Westwood shape rim and were solid so were certainly not sophisticated. Constrictor however int roduced an aluminium narrow aero section rim in 1927 - the first ones were solid but in 1933 Constrictor have them small box sections on the side much like a minature version of the corner box sections in Super Champion model 58s. The Constrictor rims were aimed at the racing and high end sports mar ket and were really quite popular in the UK.
On to cotterless cranks - here I think the importance of Stronglight was not that they were the firs t with cotterless cranks but they were the first as far I am aware to marke t aluminium cranks with a tapered square fitting for AFTERMARKET use. The m akes such as Taurus were only for use on their machines - and significantly it was Stronglight's design that became the de facto standard for cotterle ss cranks with a few exceptions for over 40 years. All tapers barring one o r two rather rare exceptions are the same - the length of the taper varies and there are slight dimensional differences but the angle adopted by Stron glight remained the same on Campag, Shimano, TA, SunTour etc
Hilary St one, Bristol, England
Steven Maasland wrote:
> I have be
en quietly letting certain known revisionists go on once more with their no
nsense. But enough is enough. The main revisionist will undoubtedly claim,
as is his wont, that he has qualified his posts in such a way as to make hi
s answer truthful, but reality is simply not on his side.
> The first no
nsense claim: "In the 1930s, it was Mavic who introduced the first aluminum
rims that found widespread acceptance."
>
> Unless you have some twis
ted way of defining "widespread acceptance", Mavic was not the company to f
irst introduce aluminum rims. Mention of aluminum rims dates back at least
to the teens. They were common on roadsters in Italy from the late 20's onw
ards.
>
> Second nonsense claim: "In the 1940s and 1950s, the best bik
es were equipped with Mavic, because their rims were the best."
>
> Fi
rst of all, as has already been pointed out, this whole claim about being t
he "best" is nonsensical to start. To then claim that Mavic equipped the "b
est bikes" is utterly preposterous. In part, because it is not possible to
define "best bike" and in part because Mavic simply did not supply anything
approaching a number of bikes to be considered the supplier of even a sign
ificant part of the "better" bikes on a world scale. The fact of the matter
is that the Europe of the 40's and 50's was made up of countries that gene
rally had protectionist governments when it came to the bicycle trade. Duti
es were very high and there was virtually no international trade of bicycle
parts, except in countries that were either very strong economically or ha
d no or insufficient internal production. Mavic rims barely made it out of
the borders of France. On the other hand, Clement, Fiamme, Ambrosio, Weinma
nn and Scheeren (among others) were widely sold outside of their
countries of origin. The Fiamme patented eyelet reinforcement was commonly
touted in foreign advertisements. Many competing rim manufacturers, both I
talian and foreign, paid royalties to Fiamme for use of this feature. The p
reponderance of evidence would show that Mavic was little more than the bes
t of the rest or perhaps among the best of French manufacturers in the 40's
and 50's. Stating anything more is willfully misleading and/or inaccurate.
>
>
> A third quote made in response to Wesley's question: "Now th
at we seem to be entering the twilight of the reign of the taper square cot
terless crank, I've been wondering about a couple of historical questions.
First, did Stronglight originate the concept, and, if so, when? I'm guessin
g late '30's?" is terribly misleading inasmuch as it states that "Stronglig
ht introduced square-taper aluminum cranks 1933 (...) I am sure there were
others before, but they were not very successful. The Stronglight set the s
tandard."
> Stronglight did not "invent" either the square taper or the
cotterless crank as both of these ideas were already in use prior to 1933.
Nor was Stronglight the first to successfully bring it to market, nor did t
hey set the modern standard. Manufacturers like Taurus were continuously eq
uipping all of their top of the line roadster bikes with cotterless cranks
from the 20's onward. As far as setting standards go, Stronglight copied an
already existing bottom bracket design with fixed and adjustable cups and
axle and bearings, so nothing new there. They then used a square axle, so n
othing new there. The only item that could be perceived as different is the
fact of the taper fit of the crank on the square axle. In this, Strongligh
t has never been the standard-bearer as their taper was not widely adopted.
In fact it is one of the less common tapers.
>
> Another fanciful cla
im is that Tullio Campagnolo took inspiration of "cyclotouring derailleurs
and came up with his Gran Sport". If you look at patent documents, you will
see that Campagnolo bought an Italian patent for a derailleur and that "hi
s" Gran Sport was little more than a modified version of this first "modern
style" Italian derailleur for which he was the holder of the patent. It ha
d absolutely nothing to do with Cyclotouring derailleurs as such.
>
>
Continuing on, there is the claim that Campagnolo paid "Fausto Coppi millio
ns of lire to switch from Simplex". While the number stated in Lira would s
eem to be extravagant, it should be pointed out that 2 million 1950 lira wo
uld be the equivalent of about $30-40,000 2008 dollars adjusted for cost of
living. So we are not really talking about anything out of the usual as th
ere are many present-day cyclists of far lesser marketing value that get pa
id substantially more than this for their sponsorship support. The idea of
Campagnolo paying Coppi to switch is as a whole correct but far from comple
te, as it was Lucien Juy of Simplex who first pulled the "sponsorship" card
, long before Campagnolo even had the financial wherewithal to do the same.
In fact, Campagnolo did not "outbid" Juy to get Coppi to switch in 1950, a
s Coppi received less money from Campagnolo than what he had received from
Juy. It was sufficient that Campagnolo, a fellow Italian and
highly respected among the racing establishment, could come up with a resp
ectable counteroffer.
>
> Then you get to the oft-repeated but absolu
tely absurd comment that "the racers continued to ride cottered cranks, mos
tly because they offered a narrower tread (Q factor), for more than 20 year
s after Stronglight's cranks had proven themselves. See the archives for th
e discussion about why professional racers stuck to cottered cranks..." Wha
t careful reading of the archives will show is that there is apparently onl
y an extremely small fringe contingent who claims this to be true. No wides
pread acceptance of this theory can be found anywhere, nor is there any com
monly accepted logic to back this idea up either.
> Some people never le
arn and believe that saying things often enough will eventually make them b
ecome true.
>
> Time to go back into lurk mode.
>
> Steven Maasla
nd
> Moorestown, NJ USA
>
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