Out of curiosity, which model. Looking over disraeligears gears, it lists shimano positron in 1975 as the first real shot at indexing- with a few of the 333 models are early incarnations. As early as 1967, but it's attributed to the twist grip system with dual cables. Under this logic, Sturmey Archer 3sp and similar would be the first true click/index shifters, no?
Sean Flores San Francisco, CA
On Mar 22, 2010, at 4:57 PM, classicrendezvous-request@bikelist.org wrote:
> Message: 14
> Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2010 22:49:11 -0000
> From: "kevin sayles" <kevinsayles@tiscali.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [CR] Suntour and indexing .When ?
> To: "sean flores" <seaneee175@gmail.com>,
> <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>, <gillottspear@googlemail.com>
> Message-ID: <A0651C8EC7AB4202A6CCBD5B51368888@UserPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> reply-type=original
>
> I could be wrong here.......but if I remember correctly Sun Tour were the
> first to have indexing gears...even before Shimano, but they never perfected
> the system....and didn't patent it!?........so Shimano took off with the
> idea and got it right.
>
> Although the SunTour ratchet gear levers were/are a joy to use.
>
> Be interesting to hear from those in the know?
>
> cheers
> Kevin Sayles
> Bridgwater Somerset UK