The penny farthing

merlin

merlin

merlin

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
20,707
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England
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Seriously, what a f'in totally ridiculous idea.

:confused:

Thanks for reading, I just needed to get talk to someone about this.
 
How is it ridiculous? The geared 'Safety' bicycle hadn't been invented then :confused:

Edit: or the pneumatic tyre for that matter.
 
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Funnily enough I was thinking about this the other day and wondered how they ever came up with that design.

My guess is that as most people were still riding horses they would want a bike that would keep them at the same sort of height.
 
I know a guy in Greenwich who regularly rides one.

He was trying to ride around the world on it, but fell off in Romania and seriously mashed is knee. It's a long way to fall.
 
MonkeyMan said:
My guess is that as most people were still riding horses they would want a bike that would keep them at the same sort of height.
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No, it was simply to obtain high enough gearing to achieve a usable speed without chain, belt or gear drives.

You might as well argue that Karl Benz's first car was crap as it was very slow and handled poorly. It would be somewhat missing the point, just as this thread does.
 
I think they're pretty cool. It's like any other mode of transport, they were simply the first. The first was never the best example of the transport, just the original idea.
 
housemaster said:
A few years later Raleigh swapped it round and it sold in the millions!

chopper.jpg


:D
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Now they are cool. I had one back in my youth, and can remember being impressed by the central gear lever for the three speed 'spermey' archer. My brother had a Tomahawk, a smaller, single gear version of the Chopper.
 
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