J. K. Starley's company became the Rover Cycle Company Ltd. in the late 1890s, and then renamed the Rover Company when it started making cars. Probably the best known and most widely used of these inventions, adopted well beyond cycling, is Charles Bennett's Bike Web, which came to be called the jock strap. Their board tracks were later adapted to early motorcycle and automobile racing. These techniques later enabled skilled metalworkers and mechanics to develop the components used in early automobiles and aircraft. An example of this is the Bicycle Film Festival, a film festival hosted all around the world. Foursquare, whose CEO Dennis Crowley "pedaled to pitch meetings … when he was raising money from venture capitalists" on a two-wheeler, chose a new location for its New York headquarters "based on where biking would be easy".
Popular in Wordplay
Track riders are still able to slow down because all track bicycles are fixed-gear, meaning that there is no freewheel. For most of the history of bicycles' popularity women have worn long skirts, and the lower frame accommodated these better than the top-tube. The more common types include utility bicycles, mountain bicycles, racing bicycles, touring bicycles, hybrid bicycles, cruiser bicycles, and BMX bikes. These models were known as safety bicycles, dwarf safeties, or upright bicycles for their lower seat height and better weight distribution. A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike, push-bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, with two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other.
Seating
They all experience the freedom and the natural opportunity for exercise that the bicycle easily provides. Ivan Illich stated that bicycle use extended the usable physical environment for people, while alternatives such as cars and motorways degraded and confined people's environment and mobility. (Ballantine, 1972) The bicycle is an inexpensive, fast, healthy and environmentally friendly mode of transport. One of the profound economic implications of bicycle use is that it liberates the user from motor fuel consumption. In line with the European financial crisis of that time, in 2011 the number of bicycle sales in Italy (1.75 million) passed the number of new car sales.
Bicycles are used for transportation, bicycle commuting, and utility cycling. More than 1 billion bicycles have been manufactured worldwide as of the early 21st century. Dérailleur gears and hand-operated Bowden cable-pull brakes were also developed during these years, but were only slowly adopted by casual riders. In the early 1860s, the Frenchmen Pierre Michaux and Pierre Lallement took bicycle design in a new direction by adding a mechanical crank drive with pedals on an enlarged front wheel (the velocipede).
Tools
- Some, mainly utility, bicycles use hub gears with between 3 and 14 ratios, but most use the generally more efficient dérailleur system, by which the chain is moved between different cogs called chainrings and sprockets to select a ratio.
- Less common are tandems, low riders, tall bikes, fixed gear, folding models, amphibious bicycles, cargo bikes, recumbents and electric bicycles.
- Countries which require adult cyclists to wear helmets include Spain, New Zealand and Australia.
- In the Netherlands, all train stations offer free bicycle parking, or a more secure parking place for a small fee, with the larger stations also offering bicycle repair shops.
Folding bicycles are useful in these scenarios, as they are less cumbersome when carried aboard. In Trondheim in Norway, the Trampe bicycle lift has been developed to encourage cyclists by giving assistance on a steep hill. In Europe, especially in the Netherlands and parts of Germany and Denmark, bicycle commuting is common. It was followed by yellow bicycles in La Rochelle and green bicycles in Cambridge.
cycle American Dictionary
The safety bicycle gave women unprecedented mobility, contributing to their emancipation in Western nations. Bicycle poverty reduction is the concept that access to bicycles and the transportation infrastructure to support them can dramatically reduce poverty. Until recently, bicycles have been a staple of everyday life throughout Asian countries.
Another basic maintenance item is regular lubrication of the chain and pivot points for derailleurs and brake components. Bicycle tires usually have a marking on the sidewall indicating the pressure appropriate for that tire. The most basic maintenance item is keeping the tires correctly inflated; this can make a noticeable difference as to how the bike feels to ride.
A bicycle is relatively simple compared with a car, so some cyclists choose to do at least part of the maintenance themselves. Like all devices with mechanical moving parts, bicycles require a certain amount of regular maintenance and replacement of worn spin class orlando parts. A number of formal and industry standards exist for bicycle components to help make spare parts exchangeable and to maintain a minimum product safety.
In addition, bicycle makers adopted the annual model change (later derided as planned obsolescence, and usually credited to General Motors), which proved very successful. Experiments done in Africa (Uganda and Tanzania) and Sri Lanka on hundreds of households have shown that a bicycle can increase the income of a poor family by as much as 35%. Some students who commute several miles drive a car from home to a campus parking lot, then ride a bicycle to class. There are towns in some countries where bicycle culture has been an integral part of the landscape for generations, even without much official support.
Bicycle sports include racing, BMX racing, track racing, criterium, roller racing, sportives and time trials. The next most numerous vehicle, the Honda Super Cub motorcycle, has more than 100 million units made, while most produced car, the Toyota Corolla, has reached 44 million and counting. By the turn of the century, cycling clubs flourished on both sides of the Atlantic, and touring and racing became widely popular. Among the earliest clubs was The Bicycle Touring Club, which has operated since 1878. This, in turn, required gearing—effected in a variety of ways—to efficiently use pedal power.
Although bike and cycle are used interchangeably to refer mostly to two types of two-wheelers, the terms still vary across the world. Other words for bicycle include "bike", "pushbike", "pedal cycle", or "cycle". Bicycles are used for fitness, military and police applications, courier services, bicycle racing, and artistic cycling. Some countries require cyclists to wear helmets, as this may protect riders from head trauma. In many jurisdictions, it is an offense to use a bicycle that is not in a roadworthy condition.
The bicycle has undergone continual adaptation and improvement since its inception. They are also used for recreational purposes, including bicycle touring, mountain biking, physical fitness, and play. Bicycles are the most common vehicle of any kind in the world, and the most numerous model of any kind of vehicle, whether human-powered or motor vehicle, is the Chinese Flying Pigeon, with numbers exceeding 500 million. Further innovations increased comfort and ushered in a second bicycle craze, the 1890s Golden Age of Bicycles.
