Take a Moment

     The idea for this post started off being centered on bicycles, of course, but as the notion brewed in my mind it sort of grew to encompass, well, everything.

     Have you ever stopped to consider the technology around you?  No, I don't mean computers, cell phones and other high tech gizmos of the modern age.  Those don't count.  I mean the little things that make civilized life possible.  I'm talking about ballpoint pens.  Corrugated cardboard.  Pneumatic tires.  Have you ever wondered where these simple things that we take for granted come from?  Have you ever wondered who came up with them?  Because that is how they came to be:  they were someone's idea.  More than likely, it was a single person's idea.  At some point, someone realized there was a way to solve a problem or make something easier; there was a way to write with ink more easily, a way to make cardboard significantly stronger, a way to take the bump and jostle out of road.  That idea was realized, and granted it was improved and built upon for the decades to come, and likely will continue to be improved in the future, but ultimately that idea came out of seemingly nowhere.

     It's so easy to take these things for granted today.  It seems everything is comprised of hundreds if not thousands of tiny, specific parts, all different ideas that came at different times to ultimately come together into one item.  The bicycle is a great example of that.  Did you think that some day, some guy got a bright idea and hammered together a fully geared, chain driven bicycle with pneumatic rubber tires on laced wheels that stopped with caliper brakes, and that this idea came out of nowhere?  I'll give you a hint, it didn't.  Before pneumatic tires there were solid rubber tires, and before that there were simple wooden wheels, much like those found on a horse-drawn wagon.  Having multiple gears on a bike was an idea that came sometime in the early part of the 20th century, and it was a notion that was met with great resistance at first.  In fact, the very idea of a chain driven bicycle, something that might seem so simple and obvious to us today, was an idea that came about decades after the first velocipede was created.  Before chains, the crank was mounted directly to the front wheel.  The iconic "penny-farthing" was a great example of this, and you might be surprised to learn that it was very difficult to ride.

Left:  Example of a "penny-farthing".  Could you imagine trying to ride one?
Right:  Example of a safety bicycle.  It may seem like common sense,
but this was at one time a huge technological breakthrough.
Source

     Fed up with the difficulty associated with riding the beast, the safety bicycle, the forefather of the modern bicycle, was invented in 1876.  This significantly easier to ride vehicle led directly to the infamous "bicycle boom" of the 1890's, which would foster several technological achievements that we definitely take for granted today, pneumatic tires and road building standards being just a few.  A lot of the technology that helped make the automobile not only possible, but also practical, was already "discovered" thanks to the bicycle.

     In our superficial, consumerist society it's easy to get caught up with what things look like on the outside.  But every once in a while, take a moment to think about what's inside, and what it took to create whatever is powering your high tech cell phone, or low tech ballpoint pen.