Page:The Cycle Industry (1921).djvu/24

10 for one turn of the cranks as a wheel of 56 ins. does in one revolution.

Various devices were tried for rendering the high bicycle safer to ride, but none was commercially successful except, perhaps, the Facile.

The Facile was introduced primarily to enable the rider to sit further back along the backbone, and, instead of the pedals being attached direct to the cranks, the ends of the cranks were connected to levers pivoted on extensions of the forksides and having a bearing for attachment of the connecting rod about one-third of the distance along the lever from the pedal end. The rider, therefore, pedalled by pushing the levers down alternately and releasing the pressure at the end of the strokes. The Facile was followed at a later date by the Geared Facile, which was the same design as the Facile and had the same lever motion for pedalling, but included a sun and planet gear on the hub. Briefly, this consisted of a large toothed wheel on the axle and a crank extending beyond the edge of the wheel. Working in a bearing on the crank end was a small planet pinion, or toothed wheel, which meshed with the larger toothed wheel. Pressure on the pedal caused the planet wheel to travel around the larger sun wheel and the road wheel was geared up to the extent of the added diameter of the planet wheel. Thus, if the planet wheel were one-fourth the size of the sun wheel, it geared up the road wheel of 45 ins. to 56¼ ins. or thereabouts.

Then, with a bound came the geared up front driver; the first was the Kangaroo, produced by Hillman, Herbert and Cooper. This machine had wheels of about 36 and 24 ins., the front (of 36 ins.) being driven. To gear up the wheel the fork blades were extended beyond the centre of the wheel, towards the ground, and bent