by Phillip Obermiller
With aluminum, titanium, and carbon fiber bikes plying our streets and trails, it’s hard to imagine bicycles made of wood, but that’s how it all started. Running machines, propelled by the rider’s feet pushing off the ground, appeared in Germany during the early 1800s.
These primitive devices were eventually replaced by more efficient and faster bikes called velocipedes that had pedals attached to the front axle.
Without gears the only way to increase speed was to enlarge the size of the wheels, resulting in the next phase in the bicycle’s evolution - the high wheeler. High wheelers were faster, but difficult to mount and hard to control, sometimes resulting in a head-over-handlebars face plant. These relatively expensive bikes were usually ridden by well-to-do, athletic young men.
High wheelers were so precarious they were soon replaced by so-called “safety bikes.” This design, familiar to modern cyclists, was much more comfortable, manageable, and affordable. Safety bikes featured same-sized wheels, the now-classic diamond frame, pneumatic tires, and pedals attached to a sprocket that drove the rear wheel with a chain. This design opened cycling to women, children and people with disabilities.
Bicycle popularity in the US blossomed after the Civil War, peaking in the 1890s with some 300 manufacturers producing over a million bikes a year. There were over a thousand bike-related patents issued in North America and Europe between 1868 and 1900, including those for substituting hollow tubular steel for wooden frames.
In England the demand for bicycles sent manufacturers’ shares rocketing, leading to the “British Bicycle Bubble” of 1896 when stock prices jumped by over 200%. The bubble began deflating a year later when the US entered the European market with cheaper, mass-made bicycles with steel frames.
The popularity of bicycles created a shortage of metal frame tubes, however, so US bicycle makers continued to rely on plentiful and inexpensive wood, primarily from Canada. American and Canadian wood turners were accustomed to producing sturdy hardwood spars for sailing ships, spokes for buggies, and spindles for staircases. As a result, wooden bicycle frames were nearly as strong as those with steel tubes, yet lighter and more flexible. Wood components became increasingly rare in the early part of the twentieth century as metallurgists developed durable alloys for bicycle frames.
Today, there are some wooden wheels that embody fine design and craftmanship while others, reminiscent of the earliest bicycle precursors, can be built in your garage.
Phillip Obermiller is a FLMSP Trail Sentinel.
January 2021
