In perhaps one of the great ironies of human civilisation, mechanical
devices to truly magnify human power came along as soon as we didn’t need
them. Pedal-powered devices like bicycles only appeared after coal
had already begun to transform the landscape, however – mass production was
necessary for the standardised metal parts -- and around the same time that
gasoline was first being introduced as a fuel for automobiles.
We tend to forget, then, three important things about the bicycle.
First, it remains the most efficient method of using our bodies, allowing us to
attain higher machine speeds for longer than we would on muscle power alone –
and without using any more fuel or causing any more weather to go haywire.
Bicycles have been used for so long as children’s toys and exercise
equipment that we forget what useful technology they represent. They multiply
our bodies’ speed and efficiency many times over, allowing us to travel miles
without strain. Their widespread adoption in the late 19th century created a
ripple of under-appreciated effects in society; for example, they allowed women
to commute to jobs away from home and paved the way for the universal sufferage
movement.
Second, bicycles have seen many improvements in the last hundred years,
most of which have escaped the notice of anyone but enthusiasts. Many of the
bicycles we use today function mainly as toys, and racing bikes are built for
speed; sturdier bicycles – often going under the name of “military bicycles”
can still be ordered.
Most importantly, though, bicycles are only one of many possible
pedal-powered machines that were not used for transportation. Beginning in the
19th century, factories began to make and stores to market treadles for
manufacturing everything from cigars to brooms to hats. Farms saw foot-powered
harvesters, tractors, threshers, milking machines and vegetable bundlers.
Machinists saw pedal-powered drills.
“…no matter how simple it seems to us today, pedal power could not have
appeared earlier in history,” wrote Kris DeDecker in LowTech Magazine. “Pedals
and cranks are products of the industrial revolution, made possible by the
combination of cheap steel (itself a product of fossil fuels) and mass
production techniques, resulting in strong yet compact sprockets, chains, ball
bearings and other metal parts.”
Today, we have built a world that runs on fossil fuels, which will not last forever. Eventually we will not be able to depend on
familiar machines like cars and electronics - - either because we won’t be able
to afford them, or to afford continually fixing them, or because fuel prices
will be out of reach.
One way or another, we will have to go back to muscle power, and the
best way to do that is to revive the lost technologies of pedal-powered tools.
Most of these devices exist today only as a few rare museum specimens, but we
should easily be able to build more. The irony, though, is that we need to
build them while we still have fossil fuels.
“It is important to realise that pedal powered machines (and
bicycles) require fossil fuels,” DeDecker writes “If we burn up all fossil
fuels driving cars, we won't be able to revert to bicycles, we will have to
walk. If we burn up all fossil fuels making electricity to drive our
appliances, we won't be able to revert to pedal powered machines, but to the
drudgery that went before them.”
Perhaps more people around here will take to bicycles again, as I will
now that I have a headlamp to light my way during the winter nights. Older people here
remember when the bicycle was the most popular method for getting from one
village to another, and the roads were safer then with so few cars. It’s
possible that the schoolchildren of today will see those days again.
