John Constable, inventor of the modern safety bicycle?

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Ming the Merciless

There is no mercy
Location
Inside my skull
sorry - you've lost me - the thing you showed a pic of is not a safety bicycle - a safety bicycle is basically the things we all pedal around on - even, with minor refinements TDF folk - they and we don't pedal around on anything like the object you posted.

Quite simply what I showed you existed in 1820 and matches (as well as any other bike around at the time) what you can see in the painting.

P.S. The safety bike was not originally diamond frame and could have different sized wheels. Derailleur came in 1950.
 

classic33

Leg End Member
interesting.

what is it?
"Mayan/Aztec carving" depicting an alien on their means of transport.

What's the one on the right doing though?
 

MontyVeda

a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
...

something caught my eye and I looked more closely.

. View attachment 502998

Someone out for a nice spin.

...


whatever it is...
503101


...it looks no more than about 2 foot in height, going by the man in black to the right of it.

I'm currently zero percent convinced that it's someone on a bike.
 

hoopdriver

Guru
Location
East Sussex
Quite simply what I showed you existed in 1820 and matches (as well as any other bike around at the time) what you can see in the painting.

P.S. The safety bike was not originally diamond frame and could have different sized wheels. Derailleur came in 1950.
Derailleurs were invented around 1910.
 
OP
OP
Blue Hills
Location
London
Perhaps for clarity I should come clean.

I wasn't seriously suggesting that he'd had a vision of the late 1800s safety bicycle.

Just paying tribute to his technique.

When I was a kid/youngster Constable was seen as somewhat chocolateboxy, due to any number of reproductions on biscuit tins.

But I understand that he was rather revolutionary in his time.

And if you look at that pic closely (fighting your way through tourists intent on facefarking their hols) and several of his other paintings you can see that many of his figures are suggested by mere flics of the brush.
 

hoopdriver

Guru
Location
East Sussex
A book called The Dancing Chain, which is a history of the derailleur. They were making early versions of proto-derailleur even a bit before 1910. Henri Desgrange was aghast at the idea of having these effete things used in the Tour de France and expressly forbade them for many years. I think 1937 was the first year they were allowed in The Tour
 
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