Why was it so difficult to invent the bicycle?
Why was it so difficult to invent the bicycle?
In the series "Interesting Things I Read on Substack This Week,"
I came across an article on the invention of the bicycle and why it took so long to develop something that seems apparently so simple. (In fact, the article was not on Substack, but I was directed to it by Jimmy Song’s Substack). Here is the link to the article by Jason Crawford:
The short answer is
The correct design was not obvious.
Materials needed to evolve.
The Correct design was not obvious;
Surprisingly, the correct design almost came in renaissance Italy. According to the article: “The concept of a human-powered vehicle goes back many centuries. The earliest reference I have found is to Venetian engineer Giovanni Fontana, who in the early 1400s described a four-wheeled carriage powered by a driver pulling on a loop of rope connected by gears to the wheels”
It would have looked something like this
"In fact, when you think of all the incredible things that Leonardo da Vinci imagined (helicopter, locomotive, tank, air balloon), it is not all that surprising that such a close concept to the final design was conceived in Renaissance Italy. But it took many different iterations of the concept and various different approaches to find the one that would work. It reminds me of Einstein’s insight that imagination is the real sign of intelligence. Or as Geoffrey Hinton points out in this excellent lecture on AI, intelligence is the ability to determine the features of objects and see how those features interact with other objects. (around minute 14:30).
Then, according to the article in the 1800 an “ insight was to stop trying to build a mechanical carriage, and instead build something more like a mechanical horse. This step was taken by the aforementioned Karl von Drais in the early 1800s”. But the person would walk or run to give momentum to the machine. It looked something like this.
“The next key advance didn’t come until decades later, when someone put pedals on the bike. There are conflicting claims to first inventor (going back to 1839), but it was definitely done by the 1860s in France. In any case, it was in the 1860s that bicycle development really took off. Pedals allowed the rider to propel the machine faster and more efficiently. This model was manufactured in France, at first with wooden frames, later with iron”
The third and final key advance, then, was to separate the pedals from the wheel. Variations on this “safety bicycle”, including at least one driven by treadles and levers, were attempted from the 1870s if not before. The first commercially successful model, using the familiar crank and chain design, was produced in 1885 by John Starley. Finally, in 1888, inflatable (pneumatic) tires were introduced by John Dunlop, cushioning the ride and eliminating the last advantage of the penny-farthing.
This reinforces the next key insight:
Materials needed to evolve. As the author states, 'Metalworking improved significantly in the 1800s.' However, tires and rubber didn’t see substantial improvements until the late 1800s.
Some argue that the real key to the success of AI lies in the tremendous development of GPUs, originally designed for gaming. Thus, innovations in one field catalyze progress in another, often by chance.
It's worth noting that the fundamental building blocks of the internet and cryptocurrencies, such as the Diffie-Hellman key exchange and RSA function, were established in the late 1970s. Similarly, I hope that the ZK proof technology being developed today, inspired by blockchain, will partially restore our anonymity in the digital world in the next 20 years. Cynical people will say 'forget it,' but we all need to dream.