@Rеnаud When I really need 3 bottles I put the tools elsewhere... But since there's lots of places to get water and 3 bottles are really heavy, I rarely use all 3.

hehehe I remember one ride I did, with a 3L camelback and a single bottle.

Ended up refilling that thing three times, estimate 10 litres of water was drunk

Big advantage of riding events - supply stations with iso drink 😉 warm plastic-tasting water from a canister at the top of a hill never tasted better...

Lol, Mercedes supposedly admitted that 95% of the g-class's users never use it off-road. It's a pure status symbol...

yeah - goes for every 4WD.

Meanwhile - there are lots of artisanal traditions all around the world for making all kinds of craft with centuries of history which have been used as status symbols since forever. Showing off your wealth with a hand-painted japanese vase is much more ecological and doesn't take up space...

bugger - I think reopening the "prehistoric bike" question might have been a mistake

@Criggie Why not moving it to world building, where it belongs?

@Criggie some people went on Drais' velocipedes from Mannheim to Paris in 1818. It must have been a most horrible trip. There are no detailed reports of it.

In 2018 some people tried to copy that. In the meantime ways became much better. They still had to reduce the daily distance to 40 km, went some parts in cars, and wore cycling shorts.

rennrad-news.de/news/…

Drais had the unusual fortune that there was a new metalled road from his house to Mannheim. But except for some disconnected short stretches like that, or paths in formal gardens, ways were way too rough for Draisines to be of any use.

@Criggie Of course it was a mistake. It's not on topic and never was.

@Rеnаud Exactly.

@gschenk And that's still 4 centuries later than the question.

> Even in the 18th century it looked like this...

19th century

Yes, that's right.

@DavidW the breakthrough for bicycles were Macadam roads. There were metalled roads before, but they were too expensive to build and way too expensive to maintain.

They were developed in the 1820s I think.

I think it would have been fine if OP hadn't tried to find fault with anyone who disagreed.

Critical questions improve answers. I don't find those comments bad.

Judging from the extremely naive understanding of industry and anachronistic image of history I expect it's a curious teenager who's asking.

@DavidW we could have rephrased to before 1800.

The world wasn't ready for bikes in 1820. So the lower limit of that interval doesn't matter. In 1700 bikes were as useless as in ancient mesopotamia.

Fixed axles and spokedn wheels were only necessary technologies used in Drais original velocipede those mesopotamians didn't have.

No I'm wrong. They had everything in 2000 BCE. (See age of war chariots.)

Yes, they had spoked-wheel chariots. but I bet those wheels were still super-heavy.

That's a function of requirements.

Good point, yes. A chariot wheel has to hold up a chariot and two people. But a bicycle wheel still has to hold up one person and a bicycle.

If they needed a light one, they'd have built one. So anyone could have invented the bicycle since 2000 BCE. If they did it was forgotten it they just didn't. Cause it was utterly useless.

@Michaelcomelately I'm certain any good waggoner could have built a wheel to Drais specs. He likely didn't go to a fancy master of that trade being too poor to feed his horse.

@gschenk Agreed. You could make a bicycle-like object, but you can't make it better than a donkey, an ox, or a horse.

But a non-pennyfarthing-bike needs a chain, and that requires precision metal fabrication

Well, not being practical isn't a reason to call it BSO.

Since the romans built excellent roads, perhaps they could have built roads with bicycle-appropriate smoothness had it been necessary

Drais' thing was called 'velocipede bicycle' after all. To set it apart from three or four wheeled vehicles. It was practical enough that he went at the speed of a decent 15 km runner without exerting himself too much. Beyond that, just a novelty, perhaps meant as a joke.

On documentations about historic inventions, the bicycle is often shamefully neglected 😠

@Erlkoenig plastered roman roads were rarely open pavement. The stones were a foundation covered with dirt and stuff. You need two wheel ruts and a soft area in the middle form your oxen.

@Erlkoenig a bike doesn't need a drive train to be a bike

A drive train makes it efficient and practical

In the OP's setting, it was definitely not practical.

prehistoric, ancient, late medieval, and 1500-1700. OP covered quite every period in time except early and hight medieval aera.

@Erlkoenig there were some articles recently that investigated the impact of the bicycle boom in late 19c as driver of industrial mass production.

Why has no one mentioned...

There is also ample research on the social impact of cheap bicycles on working class organisation.

@Erlkoenig Do you mean this one?

/grin

Bring back tandems as family vehicles

@gschenk I have to say, I was tempted to answer sarcastically to: "Has anyone here ever tried a bicycle made with late medieval technology in rough terrain?"

@gschenk I'm voting down all the stupid answers to a question that shouldn't be open. Why are you voting up useless noise?

Oh my, the vague, open-ended and counterfactual question has attracted a bunch of opinions, many of which are only tangential to the question. Who ever could have imagined such a thing?! How can nobody have thought of a way to deal with posts that don't contribute to the site!?

Shrug. That's your prerogative.

@DavidW I think there can be good answers even if the question itself is uh, questionable. I do think all the answers written make a good-faith effort to answer the question honestly and with sound reasoning.

Even good answers to bad questions should be discouraged, since they just give the bad question visibility. In this case I'm actually kind of shocked it hasn't made it to the HNQ, but even so they keep bumping it.

@Rеnаud It was already asked there in a wider/general sense. Dude asked the specific bicycle-related bits here, for more specific focus.

@gschenk clearly early cyclists were all masochists too.

@DavidW yeah - on the flip side, some variety is good too. Its definitely in the grey area of on/off topic. Which is partially why I faceriously suggested he try the experiment of riding a junk bike with no tyres/pedals like a balance bike. I doubt he'll ever do it for real, but even as a thought experiment it shows how horrible that would be.

@MaplePanda Yup "good-faith" attempts are excellent. Now, I know on world-building the culture is a little different, because the premise for the site includes imaginary worlds. So for them something like "how to BBQ an alien animal?" would totally be on-topic even though its theoretical.

@DavidW I don't like the question in it's present form because it shows ignorance and I'm an arrogant bastard. However, it could be summarised as "why where there no bicycles before 1860". It's likely more suitable for history stack exchange. But it has overlap with bicycle technology and fits here well enough. Regardless where it lives, it is a good question. Now for being ignorant, best thing against it is asking questions that exposes ones ignorance.

Confer also to Nathan's comment arguing for keeping it open.