Study Task 1

You will create a body of research that explores the relationship between content, context and product in relation to an individually chosen subject or theme. In this exercise, you will begin to research a range of information and responses that clearly and effectively communicate and utilises your concepts in relation to:

A brief history of...

A collection of...

An introduction to...

Things you need to know about...

An exhibition of...

Chosen subject matter

Bicycle

A bicycle, often called a bike^[2] (and sometimes referred to as a "pushbike",^[3] "pedal bike",^[4] "pedal cycle",^[5] or "cycle"^[6]), is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other.^[7] A bicycle rider is called a cyclist, or bicyclist.
Bicycles were introduced in the 19th century in Europe and now number more than a billion worldwide, twice as many as automobiles.^[8] They are the principal means of transportation in many regions. They also provide a popular form of recreation, and have been adapted for use as children's toys, general fitness, military and police applications, courier services, and bicycle racing.
The basic shape and configuration of a typical upright, or safety bicycle, has changed little since the first chain-driven model was developed around 1885.^[9] But many details have been improved, especially since the advent of modern materials and computer-aided design. These have allowed for a proliferation of specialized designs for many types of cycling.
The bicycle's invention has had an enormous effect on society, both in terms of culture and of advancing modern industrial methods. Several components that eventually played a key role in the development of the automobile were initially invented for use in the bicycle, including ball bearings, pneumatic tires, chain-driven sprockets, and tension-spoked wheels

The dandy horse, also called Draisienne or laufmaschine, was the first human means of transport to use only two wheels in tandem and was invented by the German Baron Karl von Drais. It is regarded as the modern bicycle's forerunner; Drais introduced it to the public in Mannheim in summer 1817 and in Paris in 1818.^[13] Its rider sat astride a wooden frame supported by two in-line wheels and pushed the vehicle along with his/her feet while steering the front wheel.

Michaux' son on velocipede 1868

Thomas McCall in 1869 on his velocipede

The first mechanically-propelled, two-wheeled vehicle may have been built by Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a Scottish blacksmith, in 1839, although the claim is often disputed.^[14] He is also associated with the first recorded instance of a cycling traffic offense, when a Glasgow newspaper in 1842 reported an accident in which an anonymous "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design" knocked over a little girl in Glasgow and was fined five shillings.^[15]
In the early 1860s, 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). Another French inventor named Douglas Grasso had a failed prototype of Pierre Lallement's bicycle several years earlier. Several inventions followed using rear-wheel drive, the best known being the rod-driven velocipede by Scotsman Thomas McCall in 1869. In that same

Bicycle Inventors

Pierre Lallement

Marius Olivier

Kirkpatrick Macmillan

Pierre Michaux

Karl Drais

Karl Drais (April 29, 1785 – December 10, 1851) was a German inventor, who invented the Laufmaschine ("running machine"), also later called the velocipede, draisine (English) or draisienne (French), also nicknamed the dandy horse. This incorporated the two-wheeler principle that is basic to the bicycle and motorcycle and was the beginning of mechanized personal transport. Drais also invented the earliest typewriter with a keyboard in 1821, later developed into an early stenograph machine, and a wood-saving cooker including the earliest hay chest.

Pierre Lallement (October 25, 1843 - August 29, 1891) is considered by some to be the inventor of the bicycle.
Lallement left France in July 1865 for the United States, settling in Ansonia, Connecticut, where he built and demonstrated an improved version of his bicycle. With James Carroll of New Haven as his financer, he filed the earliest and only American patent application for the pedal-bicycle in April 1866, and the patent was awarded on November 20, 1866.His patent drawing shows a machine bearing a great resemblance to the style of dandy-horse built by Denis Johnson of London, with its serpentine frame, the only differences being, first, the addition of the pedals and cranks, and, second, a thin strip of iron above the frame acting as a spring upon which he mounted the saddle to provide a more comfortable ride.
Failing to interest an American manufacturer in producing his machine, Lallement returned to Paris in 1868, just as the Michaux bicycles were creating the first bicycle craze in France, an enthusiasm which spread to the rest of Europe and to America. Lallement returned to America again sometime before 1880, when he testified in a patent infringement suit on behalf of plaintiff Albert Pope, to whom he had sold the rights in his patent. At the time Lallement was living in Brooklyn and working for the Pope Manufacturing Company. He died in obscurity in 1891 in Boston at the age of 47.

Marius Olivier

The Olivier brothers, Aimé, René, and Marius, were the first people responsible for recognizing the commercial potential of a new invention : the bicycle.
The Olivier family was wealthy, owning a series of chemical plant in France based in Lyon. While students in Paris in 1864, they were among the first users of the new velocipede. In 1868, the Oliviers formed a partnership with Pierre Michaux to mass-produce bicycles.
All through the first bicycle craze, from 1867 to 1869, it was René Olivier who led both the Michaux company and the industry as a whole. René stayed "behind the scenes" in the beginning, until severing the partnership with Michaux in 1869, at which point he formed his own Compagnie Parisienne bicycle factory, however, the bicycle craze in France (and in the USA) ended that year. The bicycle's popularity continuing only in England, it was inventors and manufacturers there who contributed the next series of improvements to its development.

Kirkpatric MacMillan

Kirkpatrick Macmillan (Born 2 September 1812 in Keir, Dumfries and Galloway; died 26 January 1878 in Keir) was a Scottish blacksmith. He is generally credited with inventing the rear-wheel driven bicycle.
According to the research of his relative James Johnston in the 1890s, Macmillan was the first to invent the pedal-driven bicycle. Johnston, a corn trader and tricyclist, had the firm aim, in his own words "to prove that to my native country of Dumfries belongs the honour of being the birthplace of the invention of the bicycle".
Macmillan allegedly completed construction of a pedal driven bicycle of wood in 1839 that included iron-rimmed wooden wheels, a steerable wheel in the front and a larger wheel in the rear which was connected to pedals via connecting rods.
A Glasgow newspaper reported in 1842 an accident in which an anonymous "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design" knocked over a pedestrian in the Gorbals and was fined five British shillings. Johnston identified Macmillan as that gentleman.
A 1939 plaque on the family smithy in Courthill reads "He builded better than he knew." Yet MacMillan lived in Glasgow and worked at the Vulcan Foundry during the relevant period around 1840, not in Courthill.

Pierre Michaux

Pierre Michaux (June 25, 1813 - 1883) was a blacksmith who furnished parts for the carriage trade in Paris during the 1850s and 1860s. He may have become the inventor of the bicycle when he added pedals to a draisine to form a velocipede, the forerunner of the modern bicycle. However historic sources reveal other possible claimants such as his son Ernest Michaux and Pierre Lallement.

Pierre Michaux was born at Bar le Duc and worked as a blacksmith who furnished parts for the carriage trade in Paris during the 1850s and 1860s.
He started building bicycles with pedals in the early 1860s. He, or his son Ernest, may have been the inventor of this machine, by adapting cranks and pedals on the front wheel of a draisine. In 1868 he formed a partnership with the Olivier brothers under his own name, Michaux et Cie ("Michaux and company"), which was the first company to construct bicycles with pedals on a large scale, a machine which was called a velocipede at the time, or "Michaudine".

Types

A freestyle BMX bike, an example of a bicycle designed for sport

Bicycles can be categorized in different ways: such as by function, by number of riders, by general construction, by gearing or by means of propulsion. The more common types include

utility bicycles

A utility bicycle is a bicycle designed for practical transportation, as opposed to bicycles which are primarily designed for recreation and competition, such as touring bicycles, racing bicycles, and mountain bicycles. The vast majority of bicycles can be found in the developing world, and are utility bicycles. As such utility bicycles are the most common form of bicycle globally.

mountain bicycles

A mountain bike or mountain bicycle (abbreviated MTB or ATB, for all-terrain bicycle) is a bicycle created for off-road cycling. Mountain bikes are typically ridden on single track trails, fire roads, logging roads, and other unpaved environments. These types of terrain commonly include rocks, washouts, ruts, loose sand, loose gravel, roots, and steep grades (both inclines and declines). Mountain bikes are built to handle this terrain and the obstacles that are found in it like logs, vertical drop offs, and smaller boulders.

racing bicycles

A racing bicycle, also known as a road bike, is a bicycle designed for competitive road cycling, a sport governed by according to the rules of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). The UCI rules were altered in 1934 to exclude recumbent bicycles.
The most important characteristics about a racing bicycle are its weight and stiffness which determine the efficiency at which the power from a rider's pedal strokes can be transferred to the drive-train and subsequently to its wheels. To this effect racing bicycles may sacrifice comfort for speed.

touring bicycles

A touring bicycle is a bicycle designed or modified to handle bicycle touring. To make the bikes sufficiently robust, comfortable and capable of carrying heavy loads, special features may include a long wheelbase (for ride comfort and to avoid pedal-to-luggage conflicts), frame materials that favor flexibility over rigidity (for ride comfort), heavy duty wheels (for load capacity), and multiple mounting points (for luggage racks, fenders, and bottle cages).

hybrid bicycles

Hybrid bicycles blend characteristics from more specialized road bikes, touring bikes and mountain bikes.The resulting "hybrid" is a general-purpose bike that can tolerate a wide range of riding conditions and applications. Their stability, comfort and ease of use make them popular with beginning cyclists, casual riders, commuters, and children.

cruiser bicycle

A cruiser bicycle, also known as a beach cruiser, is a bicycle which combines balloon tires, an upright seating posture, a single-speed drivetrain, and straightforward steel construction with expressive styling. Cruisers are popular amongst casual bicyclists and vacationers because they are very stable and easy to ride, but their heavy weight and balloon tires tend to make them rather slow. They are associated with the larger category of hybrid bicycles.
The bikes, noted for their durability and heavy weight, were the most popular bicycle in the United States from the early 1930s through the 1950s,and have enjoyed renewed popularity since the late 1990s.

BMX Bikes

Bicycle motocross or BMX is cycle sport on BMX bikes, either in competitive BMX racing or freestyle BMX, or else in general on- or off-road recreation. BMX began when young cyclists appropriated motocross tracks for fun, racing and stunts, eventually evolving specialized BMX bikes and competitions.

Less common are

tandems

lowriders

tall bikes

fixed gear

folding models

A folding bicycle is a bicycle designed to fold into a compact form, facilitating transport and storage. When folded, the bikes can be more easily carried into buildings and workplaces or on public transportation (facilitating mixed-mode commuting and bicycle commuting), and more easily stored in compact living quarters or aboard a car, boat or plane.
Folding mechanisms vary, with each offering a distinct combination of folding speed, folding ease, compactness, ride, weight, durability and price. Distinguished by the complexities of their folding mechanism, more demanding structural requirements, greater number of parts, and more specialized market appeal, folding bikes may be more expensive than comparable non-folding models. The choice of model, apart from cost considerations, is a matter of resolving the various practical requirements: a quick easy fold, compact folded size, or a faster but less compact model.
There are also bicycles that provide similar advantages by separating into pieces rather than folding

amphibious bicycles

recumbents

THE

Unicycles

tricycles and
quadracycles

are not strictly bicycles, as they have respectively one, three and four wheels, but are often referred to informally as "bikes".

A collection of road bikes

Traditional Road

Over 100 years of road racing have produced the current iteration of the road bike. As little as 15 pounds of gleaming metal and carbon formed to give you the most efficient ride possible. Not only are the parts light, they also you a more aerodynamic position than all other bikes save time-trialers. Inexpensive models are priced at $700 and range up to $3,000 and beyond.

Endurance Road

Many people are not comfortable with the body position that road bikes put the rider in. There is more weight on the hands, and the neck and back are muscles are called upon more than on other bikes. So recently companies started building road bikes with a more upright riding position. The handlebars are closer to level with seat height instead of a few inches below, like traditional road rigs. They have a little more stable geometey with a little longer wheelbase which also makes a more comfortable ride. The frame and fork are also designed to deliver a more comfortable ride. Many Pros will use these bikes to race on in the "Spring Classics" the races famed for their rough roads and cobblestones. This is by far the most popular catagory of road bikes in this shop.

Flatbar Road

These bikes take it one step further and do away with the narrow road drop handlebars, replacing it with the stable-handling mountain bike variety. The light road wheels, components and road gearing are still maintained. These are very fun bikes to ride, and are great around-town commuters.

Cyclocross

A cyclocross bike resembles its road counterparts, but is designed for off-road cyclocross racing. It sports knobby tires and a stronger frame designed for more stable handling and clearance over obstacles. 'Cross bikes dispense with traditional road caliper brakes in favor of cantalever or disc brakes for performance in muddy conditions. These bikes make great dirt road bombers as they give a smoother and more stable ride than skinnier tired bikes.

Touring

Looks like a regular road bike but it's been substantially modified to carry heavy loads via panniers front and back. The frame and parts are beefed up as well as the geometry made more stable to control the extra momentum. It can also work well if you are doing a lot of riding on dirt roads.