Doesn’t the fact that JFS was himself inspired to support Fisher and Kelly’s venture implicate his bike in the lineage, whether it’s acknowledged or not? (ie. he was a part of the story so his bike is too.)
In product development the same ideas can develop independently at different times and places. Sometimes these ideas get picked up, adopted widely and go viral. Other times as with JFS's 1953 bike, they go unnoticed, maybe because they are two far ahead of their time, and maybe for they don't get the backing they deserve.
Dictionary definition of 'lineage' = Line of direct descent from an ancestor.
There is no direct or even indirect decent between JFS' 'Woodsie' bike and the later mountain bikes until someone amongst the mountain bike pioneers says that this bike inspired them to create their own versions.
JFS's continued off-road cycling over 20+ years may not have inspired the mountain bike pioneers to also take up off-road cycling. However, in a letter in the 1963 Rough Stuff Fellowship journal, he says that "As far as I know I am the only American cyclist with an special interest in rough stuff riding". In that he was a true pioneer, and his accounts of his adventures remain an inspiration to this day
To use a evolutionary analogy JFS's 1953 bike idea had no prodigy and became extinct. For the next 20+ years, JFS continues cycling off-road, incidentally, not on bikes based on his 1953 design, but mostly on an English rough-stuff bike made for him by Jim Guard in Southampton. He then meets fellow off-road cyclists who are riding similar bikes his 1953 'Woodsie' and seeing them as fellow pioneers, backs them financially.
This connection between JFS's 1953 bike and the mountain bikes is JFS's continued love of off-road cycling and not his 1953 bike that only existed in his memory and few photos.
IF JFS's support of Fisher and Kelly’s venture is to 'implicate his bike in the lineage' of the mountain bike, then the English Rough Stuff bikes he loved should should also be included. Especially as Tom Ritchey has described the 650b wheeled rough stuff bike he made for JFS in 1977 as the first mountain bike he ever made.
Sure the guys would no doubt have succeeded without him but he was involved, so….?
According to Joe Breeze, John Finley-Scott's "backing of Fisher and Kelly gave their "MountainBikes" business more momentum,
perhaps the critical momentum to carry through to inspire others".
I don't think that MountainBikes had much money early on, so Scott's investment in MountainBikes would have definitely speeded things up. Their big break through came when they displayed a couple of bikes at a bike show held at Long Beach in October 1981. This is where the Japanese and others saw mountain bikes for the first time, and so were inspired to go away to make copies and specialist components. Things would have worked out differently if they hadn't got those bikes ready in time to display there.