VERY Early Gearheads

[JCsman]

A site I found interesting - OK maybe it's just me. But there are some odd ball things here. For example a pre-1900 patent for a motorcycle with heated grips....

http://patentpending.blogs.com/patent_pending_blog/motorcycle_technology/index.html

[DarthRider]

Great Bill !
That site is a keeper, thanks.
I've seen the Curtis motorcycle...scary !



A site I found interesting - OK maybe it's just me. But there are some odd ball things here. For example a pre-1900 patent for a motorcycle with heated grips....

http://patentpending.blogs.com/patent_pending_blog/motorcycle_technology/index.html

[DJ Down Under]

Great site...I think I've seen this front suspension somewhere before???

DJ

http://patentpending.blogs.com/patent_pending_blog/images/spring_front_bike_suspention.jpg

[Wild Will]

Fascinating to me that Glenn Hammond Curtiss, pioneer of flight and annoyed ceaselessly in court by the Wright bros., invented the twist grip, as well as many other motorcycle related items as he made the test mule for his aircraft engine a motorcycle, with which he set the speed record well before WWI. Something like 136 mph in Ormond Beach, Fla. in 1904.

He hand cast and machined the V8 emgine behind his bicycle shop near where Bones and Little Bones are blessed to dwell. These pioneers are astonishing in the light of what they had to work with. Curtiss was largely uneducated.

He also is credited with ailerons (patent), wind tunnel design, the seaplane, single hulled flying boat, laminating machine for wood ribs and forming wood propellers, electrically operated throttle control, retracting landing gear (with Hugh Robinson), steel propeller design and tip reinforcement, submerged hydroplanes, catapault for ship launching of aircraft, gyroscope aircraft stabilizer (with Elmer Sperry), detachable wings, and many, many more.

The Wrights flew their craft by a method of wing warping, until Curtiss developed the aileron. Then they sued him again for the rights they said came from their very early developements. They were castigated by their peers, incidentally, including the Smithsonian Institution.

I am never so humbled as when I stand in some ancient workshop, smelling of old grease and parafin, wood and burned metal, where something fantastic was invented. The race to flight is one of the most fascinating tales of the late 19th, early 20th centuries.

[DarthRider]

And thus the kinship between the motorcycle & the airplane was born, proclaiming riders & fliers alike to be kindred spirits, in their fast, dangerous, rush through the air.

About half the people I know well who ride, also fly. (Or flew.) Coincidence ? I think not !

I've seen Mr. Curtis' world speed record setting motorcycle. That had to be one of the most dangerous, most intimidating machines ever built.
Thanks Glenn ! :eusa_clap:

And thanks for having cool heroes, WW...
Another of my favorites is Howard Hughes.