Designing Your Own Bicycle - Popular Pastime Through The Years

Designing Your Own Bicycle – Popular Pastime Through The Years

Written By: Bill Griggs - Jan• 19•12

Designing your own Bicycle has been a popular pastime for ages. Designing a bike to meet your own specific needs can be fun and entertaining for others to watch. I recently attended the Detroit Makers Faire and was impressed with the number of people who were making their own bicycles. Many of our industrial pioneers were avid Bicycle fans including the Wright Brothers, Karl Benz and Glenn Curtis. Bikes are also one of the greenest forms of transportation on the planet so it is natural that makers would love bikes.

Bikes have been around for a long time. The earliest sketches of a bike was a 1493 drawing by Gian Giacomo Caprotti, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci. Most bikes have two wheels and are operated by pedals the rest is subject to change without notice. Lately, some innovative new designs have been appearing for bikes. Here are a few that I found interesting.

Penny Farthing Bike

The High wheel bike is one of the older bicycle designs and dates back to around 1870. High wheel bikes are also know as Penny Farthing bikes because of the mismatch between the size of the two coins described the relationship between the size of the wheels on the bike. Personally, I had no idea that a farthing was smaller than a penny. The reason the big front wheel was developed was to increase the top speed on the High Wheeler. High wheelers were the first vehicles referred to as a bicycle.

The Horizontal bike is a creation popular in France. On a horizontal bike the rider lies across the top of the bike frame and stretches out his legs behind him to peddle a crank mounted above the rear wheel. The rider looks like he is swimming on wheels. I think it might be really hard to see oncoming traffic in this position. I also wonder if this is hard on the neck?
Reclining or Recumbent bikes remind me of taking a Lazy Boy recliner for a ride. Comfortable but hard to see behind you. However the reclining bikes are much better for long trips which can be hard on the lower back. Many riders choose this type of bike because the riders weight is better distributed over a larger area. For many, reclining is a more comfortable position to maintain than leaning . Another advantage to the recumbent bike is that they are more aerodynamic since the leading edge of the bike has a small frontal area compared to a conventional bike. Reclining bikes hold the land speed record for bicycle.

Which type of bike you buy or build is completely a matter of personal tastes. However there are plenty of places to get information on modifying and building bikes. Here are just a few of the many sites which cater to bike builders. If you have an unusual bike you would like to share please send us a link or leave a comment below.

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