On Thu, 17 May 2007 22:40:26 -0600, [email hidden] may have
Quoted message said:This patent diagram shows a flat upright spring in an old headset,
intended to encourage the "velocipede's" front wheel to stay straight:
http://i1.tinypic.com/4orrn8m.jpg
In the patents of that era, "velocipede" means what we'd call a
bicycle with a fairly normal frame and wheels, as opposed to a
highwheeler.
The hidden spring deliberately produces the rough equivalent of our
modern unintentional headset indexing, but the cunning inventor of
1887 left no room for debate about the mechanism.
The patent was assigned to the Pope company, the largest U.S. bike
manufacturer, but I don't know how many Pope "velocipedes" ever used
this hidden self-straightening spring.
Note that the drawing appears to be of a design that had a vertical
steerer with effectively negative trail. It may have used tiller
steering. With that steering geometry, the self-centering spring
would have been more than an oddity; it would have been needed. Note
also that the steerer design sharply limits the amount of wheel
deflection possible; the bike would have been a pain to maneuver
through a crowded area without picking it up and carrying it...and
with all that wall thickness (assuming the drawings are close to
production designs) the resulting unit would probably have been *very*
heavy.
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