Rewriting Mountain Bike History?

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Re:

In this article Tom Ritchey uses a photo of a bicycle that he claims to be the original 1977 650b mountain bike that he built for John Finley Scott.
http://mbaction.com/uncategorized/tom-r ... ain-biking

However the same photo has been previously posted in an article where its current owner asks Lenard Zinn, a franebuilder who worked for Tom Ritchey BiTD. In this article Zinn compares the bike to his own 650b Ritchey Competition from 1983, and gives advice on how it should be restored:
http://www.velonews.com/2012/07/mtb/tec ... 50b_252332








The above style of bike was sold by Jack Taylor from 1953. This stye of bicycle was fitted with French 650b 'Randonneur' balloon tyres.
There is convincing documentary evidence that Tom Ritchey built an English style Roughstuff bike for John Finlay-Scott circa 1978. However, I don't know why, in the absence of photos of that bike, he needs to cite pictures of other 650b wheeled mountain bikes that he built years later in the early 1980s?

 

[ibbz]

Amazing what retrobike has in it's archives. Spent a long while reading and learning from this thread!

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Amazing what retrobike has in it's archives. Spent a long while reading and learning from this thread!

ibbz, it's good to know that people are still reading this. The true history of what we now call mountain bikes is much more diverse than the common version of events that surmises that it all started with 1970s Californians racing down a hill.

It turns out that the origins the English Roughstuff bikes that inspired John Finlay-Scott and Tom Ritchey, were 650x40B ballon tyre audax/randonneur bikes that developed for long-distance riding on poor-quality French roads in the 1930s.

Independently, another tradition of leisure off-road riding started when teenagers started to ride bicycles on cleared British WWll bombsites. First hand memories of these bikes can be found here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=334891

Or if you have done enough reading the story of both the Roughstuff Fellowship and British Dirt Track or 'Tracker' bikes can be found at the beginning of this film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6zbENQcwkk

 

[ibbz]

Amazing what retrobike has in it's archives. Spent a long while reading and learning from this thread!

ibbz, it's good to know that people are still reading this. The true history of what we now call mountain bikes is much more diverse than the common version of events that surmises that it all started with 1970s Californians racing down a hill.

It turns out that the origins the English Roughstuff bikes that inspired John Finlay-Scott and Tom Ritchey, were 650x40B ballon tyre audax/randonneur bikes that developed for long-distance riding on poor-quality French roads in the 1930s.

Independently, another tradition of leisure off-road riding started when teenagers started to ride bicycles on cleared British WWll bombsites. First hand memories of these bikes can be found here:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=334891

Or if you have done enough reading the story of both the Roughstuff Fellowship and British Dirt Track or 'Tracker' bikes can be found at the beginning of this film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6zbENQcwkk

Thanks for the link! And for the comments. This website is a treasure trove of experiences - if only such threads were collected under a sticky or something called ‘MTB History’ for easy access . I usually trawl to random long threads from years back to read and often find fascinating new stuff (for me)

 

[The History Man]

Recombinant conceptualisation perhaps being the best way to sum up the development but still doesn’t add evidence to the discussion. I’m with Geoff.

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Recombinant conceptualisation perhaps being the best way to sum up the development but still doesn’t add evidence to the discussion...

There is now a great deal of evidence to support the idea that bicycles similar to what we now call mountain-bikes developed independently in a variety of locations and times. Key to these developments was the availability of suitable components and local engineering skills. In particular we are talking about tyre availability and frame-building know-how.

Creating a new tyre that is wider than those in general use does not make commercial sense. Especially so when you consider that making tyre moulds using traditional methods was very expensive. Gary Fisher reportedly paid Wilderness Trail Bikes $50,000 to create the moulds for and produce the first batch 700x52C WTB NanoRaptor tyres. Tyres considered by many to be the first true 29er tyre despite actually measuring less than 29 inches in diameter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8syt59gK65o&t=139s

That's a $50,000 outlay for a tyre that would not fit existing bicycle frames. This was a high risk investment when the benefits of the larger diameter tyre could only be tested after the tyre had been produced and bicycle frames created to fit the new size. The fact that large diameter Finnish snow tyres supplied to Fisher by Geoff Apps had been successfully used in early 1980c US national cyclo-cross races, must have convinced fisher of the the advantages of using wheels larger than the then 26" standard. This would have made Fisher's decision to invest a lot easier.

I believe that the multiple discovery of the mountain-bike concept (recombinant conceptualisation) was able to occur whenever four local factors existed:
*Local people had the leisure time and nearby locations needed to ride bicycles off-road.
*Local people had the disposable income needed to make or buy bicycles that were specifically designed for riding off-road.
*Suitable tyres and other components were available locally. (These were often manufactured for a different purpose).
*Suitable frames were available locally, or there were local frame-building traditions that allowed custom built frames to be made.

 

[BoyBurning]

Thanks for bumping this thread - I had forgotten how modest TR is!

 

[Repack Rider]

The modern mountain bike arose in one place and time. A lot of people claim to be part of that process, who were not.

I often wonder why no one thought of it before we did. Our inspiration was putting a modern racing bicycle next to a 40-year old modified Schwinn, and observing that there were a number of ways to improve the old bike. And then doing so.

 

[Oldtat]

Reading the history it sounds more like it evolved in a few places. You chaps in the US were just better at marketing!

 

[Repack Rider]

Reading the history it sounds more like it evolved in a few places. You chaps in the US were just better at marketing!

People rode bicycles on dirt roads since the inception of the bicycle. There were groups like the Rough-Stuff Fellowship (Gary Fisher and I were members) who rode on bridle paths and trails. Cyclocrossers rode all kinds of rough terrain. Post-war kids in France and England had versions of off-road bicycles, some even jumped them.

The difference maker was downhill racing. I didn't "invent the mountain bike." I invented downhill racing. The mountain bike invented itself in response.

All of the off-road groups that preceded mountain bikers stayed within the limits of their machinery. Downhill racing exceeded those limits by so much that new bikes had to be designed and built to handle that stress. In response to the new bikes, the courses evolved too. Now no one would attempt to ride a World Cup downhill course on anything but a full suspension bike with disc brakes.

It came as a surprise to me that anyone else would pay big money for a bike with fat tires.

In the last 40 years, hundreds of people have told me that they themselves "invented the mountain bike," long before I took up cycling, which is the primary reason I don't make that claim. AFAIK, no one has claimed that they invented the downhill off-road time trial before I did.