What's Your Favorite Story - January 16

January 15, 2009

January 16: What's Your Favorite Story

 

Comments

[Yuri Pavlin]

Hey Guys really love the show. At the end you guys started making fun of the old bicycles with the really big front tires. You asked " why would anyone design a bike like that??". Well here is the answer.The front wheels became larger and larger as makers realized that the larger the wheel, the farther you could travel with one rotation of the pedals. You would purchase a wheel as large as your leg length would allow. So there you go........not as dumb as it sounds.

Yuri from Toronto ...and no I am not Russian

[Greg Goss]

I already voted for the micro-hands using the polldaddy thingy, so don't double-count me. Second in line was the curved photosensor for a less-distorting digicam.

Yuri beat me to the bicycle question. The bigger the wheel with the cranks on it, the faster you can make the bike go. There's no way to make a bike with small wheels go fast enough to be useful unless you manage to separate the cranks from the wheels.

Once they invented reliable bike chains, they had what were called "safety bicycles", though they weren't particularly safe till they invented brakes sometime later. Did you ever consider how many moving parts that there are in a bike chain, and the forces you're applying along it? Now imagine trying to make a bike chain out of cast iron...

That's why they didn't just invent it right to begin with.