When was the Mountain Bike Invented? And who by?

[Chopper the ex Copper]

Typical of the short sighted ness of British industry at the time. A lesser man would've given up long ago.

 

[Unclejack]

okay...how about this? the yanks invented the sport. Nic Crane defined the idea of what could be possible. Raliegh brought the concept to the UK public. as for who first built a mountainbike i accept all of the above about tracker and ruff stuff but also suggest we never hear from cyclcross riders. if trackers are just modified rod bikes, as are klunkers well i'm sure someone custom built a cyclclocross bike for offroad and commercially marketed it ages ago. i'll discount the whippet as it was probably designed just to cope with the terrain of the time which happened to be rough rather than off road if you get the difference.

 

[DEAN C.]

My version was a home built 3 speed tracker in about 1972.
It had Cow horns fitted, and the mudgaurds were binned for the little blumells shorties. and 26x 1 3/8 tyres. I had seen a mates imported cruiser style bike which was a cross between a mountain bike and a chopper. We had nothing like the MTB as we know it until a few years later.
Dean.

 

[Unclejack]

dbl post

 

[Chopper the ex Copper]

When did cyclo cross start?

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Raliegh brought the concept to the UK public. ...

Raliegh could be said to have unwittingly brought the general concept to mainstream attention with the Bomber but they saw them as adolescent playthings. It was the likes of Ridgeback, Saracen, Dawes and Muddy Fox (in chronological order) as well as numerous foreign brands, that placed the first bikes into British cycle shops.

... i'll discount the whippet as it was probably designed just to cope with the terrain of the time which happened to be rough rather than off road if you get the difference.

Back in 1888 nearly all cycling took place without the benefit of roads.

 

[Unclejack]

i wasn't actually refering to the bomber i meant the maverick. theres a pice on the web where Yvonne Rixs explains how that was a response to the tracker bikes she was seeing. i beieve it wasn't until somwtime later when in US and the far east researching for the bmx craze they had miss judged that she first became aware. i meant the maverick. not the first but before that the only people i knew who had heard of mountan bikes were the others who had also read the old bicycle actions that seemed to get laft in yha's. i argue that before your big national cycle shops your biggest bike shop was your local raleigh dealer. halfords was still busy with bmx and it was when raliegh brought out the maverick that the uk public really became aware.
with regards to the whippet, yes i am aware of john mcadam so thats my point. the roads were rubbish. not that it was designed to go off road. all of the above said i defer to your wisdom, quote you directly in a number of instances such as dating my maverick and my 83 saracen and was going to ask if it could squeeze onto the highpath run i think you organise. i believe its nov?

 

[GrahamJohnWallace]

Hi Unclejack, you are more than welcome to join us on the annual Cleland Reunion Ride in starting from Wendover Bucks the first Sunday of December 2012. As are all RetroBikers.

http://clelandcycles.wordpress.com/weekend-rides/

This may be the web article to which you refer?

http://www.hadland.me.uk/raleigh.htm

3.3.6 Mountain bikes

"When Yvonne Rix visited the USA and the Far East in 1981, she formed the view that mountain bikes would eventually come down from the hills and onto the streets. The reaction from the Raleigh board was, who needs mountain bikes in England where there are few mountains? Yvonne Rix’s response was that neither do you need a 4x4 to drive in London, but you see plenty of Range Rovers in Chelsea. Not a woman to be easily dissuaded, she kept up the pressure for several years. Yet there was still very little interest in mountain biking in the UK: a review of the UK cycling scene in the International Cycling Guide 1983 made no mention of it.

Eventually, Yvonne Rix persuaded the Raleigh board that a move into mountain bike production made sense. In spring 1985, Raleigh launched Maverick, its first range of MTBs. Offered in 5, 15 and 18-speed versions, it was built using traditional Raleigh roadster-style brazing. However, initial sales were disappointing. The MTB market in the UK remained relatively small, with few domestic players and no meaningful presence yet from American or Taiwanese companies".

Spring 1985 was two years after the first US style mountain bikes appeared in UK shops and bike catalogues. By then Saracen were the best selling mountain bikes in Britain, Muddy Fox were established and Raleigh were the about the last UK manufacturer to produce a mountain bike. Initially they imported Japanese made Mavericks, probably re-badged, until UK production could be set up.

 

[Russell]

As many have already noted, all over the world riders were adapting bikes to ride off road and were on a similar evolutionary path to the US, its just that the guys from Marin were the first to market the idea successfully.

As for "...why the Clelands and Highpath designs effectively died out when they were far more suited to UK conditions than even the best of the US designs."...

I don't want a bike ideally suited to UK conditions. I want a sleek, sexy, uncluttered lightweight bike that climbs and descends quickly in most conditions and I'm willing to put up with a bit of trouble with mud every now and again.

Whilst the design principles behind Cleland/Highpath may be sound (for very specific conditions) there's just no market.

Of course, I'm typing this having never ridden a Highpath or Cleland but they always seem to be 'sold' on their ability to ride up, down or across things slowly and on their 'mudplugging' ability... Its just all a bit 'niche' to be adopted by the industry, or anything but a very small pool of potential customers.

 

[klunkerbill]

No one person invented the bikes, or the sport. At least, that was the idea behind the film, but J.F. Scott made a pretty sweet off-road bike in 1953. Multiple gears, flat bars, good brakes, fat tires, etc. He passed away shortly after I released Klunkerz, so I dedicated the film to his memory. I also made a little film to honor his induction into the MTB HOF in '08. It is now included in the DVD extras on the new Klunkerz discs. Here's a clip...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHWo_h1nBx4