Penny-farthing

The Penny-farthing bicycle, sometimes called the high wheel or the ordinary, was first designed by the Frenchman, Eugène Meyer, in 1869. In England James Starley and others began producing them in volume and they remained popular through the 1870s and ‘80s until largely replaced by the safety bicycle.

These bikes were notoriously dangerous to ride, especially over bumpy surfaces where they had a tendency to throw the rider over the front wheel. There’s a good YouTube video describing how to mount and ride the Penny-farthing here.

This model is an amalgam of several different high wheels. The front wheel has a diameter of 1.33 meters (52.4 “). I imagined finding one after 140 years in an old barn, dirty, moldy and with some rust. After a bit of surface cleaning, it was placed on display in a museum and photographed.

 #Penny-farthing #high_wheel #ordinary #bicycle #Blender #Cycles

 

Curtiss Model D III

Glen Curtiss,1878-1930, was an inventor and motorcycle enthusiast who held the speed record of over 100 mph.

When he became interest in airplanes his experience was useful. The result was the Curtiss Model D, introduced in 1911. The model D was a pusher biplane with the single propeller and Curtiss-built engine mounted behind the pilot. Its wood frame had tricycle wheels. After losing a patent fight with the Write brothers over roll control by wing warping, Curtiss designed ailerons as winglets between the main wings.  Early versions of the plane used front mounted elevators to control pitch. At the rear the Model D had a rudder and horizontal stabilizer supported by a bamboo framework. After a landing accident in race where the elevators were damaged, they were moved to the horizontal stabilizer at the tail; a new configuration commonly known as the Curtiss Headless Pusher.

The pilot used three flight controls and a foot brake that activated a claw to dig into the e sod of a landing strip to slow the plane. Yaw (turning right and left) was controlled by the rudder connected to the pilot’s wheel. Pitch (nose up or down) was controlled by the elevators connected to the vertical column. Roll (turning horizontally around the nose-tail axes) was managed, as on a motorcycle, by the pilot leaning right or left against a shoulder rail connected to the ailerons.

A note on modelling: There are many different images on the internet of various reproduction and restorations of the Curtiss Headless Pusher. With as little ”artistic license” as possible, I based the model on the Curtiss D III powered by a Curtiss Model K four cylinder, water cooled engine.

 #Curtiss #Model_D #airplane #biplane #Blender #Cycles

The First Modern Bicycle

In a phone conversation with my granddaughter, Anya, in Brussels a few days ago, I mentioned that I didn’t know what my next modelling project would be. She suggested that an old bicycle might be interesting. I didn’t know much about bikes, so the research began. What I learned was, indeed, interesting.

In the 1870s and 1880s the popular bicycle was the penny-farthing with its huge front wheel. The rider sat above the big wheel and peddled directly on the axle. Unfortunately, while this arrangement provided speed due to the ratio of the rotation of the peddles to the circumference of the wheel, it proved to be quite dangerous. With the center of mass being so far above the ground, it tended to tip over causing, sometimes, serious, injuries to the rider.

 In 1885 Henry Starley of Coventry, England, designed the Safety Bicycle, which he called the Rover. With smaller, similar sized wheels the center of mass was much lower and the rider’s feet were close enough to the ground to easily prevent tipping. Speed was achieved through a chain drive to the rear wheel with a sprocket ratio of about two-to-one. With his new design, Starley essentially created the first modern bike and it was a huge commercial success.

#bicycle #history #Starley #Rover #safety #Blender #Cycles