历史与人物rootsofprogress.org
我们为何等了这么久才等到自行车？
Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?
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导读
这篇文章探讨了一个看似简单却令人困惑的问题：自行车结构简单，为什么直到19世纪才被发明出来？作者梳理了从早期木制两轮车到现代安全自行车的演化历程，并分析了材料、制造工艺和观念等多方面的原因。
为什么经久不衰：它以人人熟悉的自行车为切口，揭示技术发明的路径依赖与时代条件限制，读来常读常新。
HN 评论精选
自行车并不'简单'，它依赖于当时成熟的精密制造能力
作为一名机械工程师，'这不过是简单的机械发明'这句话让我很困惑。所有制造技术都存在于设计者可用的制造能力之中。在能造出一辆像样的自行车之前，制造技术必须非常复杂。空心钢管不简单，滚珠轴承也不简单。'理论派'中存在一种还原论视角，只见森林不见树木。
Excel_Wizard查看英文原文
>Yet it was a simple mechanical invention As a mechanical engineer, this statement baffled me. All manufactured technology exists in the context of the manufacturing capabilities available to the designer. The manufacturing tech had to be tremendously complicated before a decent bike could be made. Hollow steel tubes aren't simple. Ball bearings aren't simple. There is a reductionist viewpoint among "theory" people that misses the trees for the forest.
两轮平衡没有先例可循且学习成本高，可能才是自行车迟迟未现的主因
我来当那个提出质疑的人……什么？？独木舟的平衡和自行车毫无相似之处。我从未划过独木舟也能跳进去保持平衡，没有我它自己也能立得住，翻了还常常能自己正过来。独木舟是对筏子的演进，也类似于自然界的鱼、鳄鱼或浮木。四条腿的马更是荒谬的类比。两轮平衡（a）没有自然界或前人发明可类比、很不直观，（b）有明显学习曲线，（c）每种设计的学习曲线还各自独立——会骑现代自行车不等于会骑大小轮车或独轮车。我不惊讶这比材料限制更可能是主要障碍。
lucideer查看英文原文
> (Some commenters have suggested that it was not obvious that a two-wheeled vehicle would balance, but I find this unconvincing given how many other things people have learned to balance on, from dugout canoes to horses themselves.) I'll be one of those commenters I guess.... What!?? Balancing in a canoe is in no way similar to a bicycle. I can jump in a canoe having never been in one, and it will balance itself. I can probably even manage a few trepidous rows of an oar (or hand, or arbitrary object) without tipping it. Without me, the canoe will stand on its own. If I fall, it will often right itself without me. On top of that, a canoe is both an evolution on previous working designs (rafts), and analogous to nature (whether it be a fish, crocodile or a floating log). The horse, with its four (not two!) legs is an even more ridiculous comparison. It seems pretty clear that the development of the bicycle would've been significantly hampered by the fact that balancing on two wheels was: (a) unintuitive as an idea with no analogue in nature or previous innovations (b) had a marked learning curve (c) that learning curve was separate and independent for each design. Riding a modern bicycle doesn't automatically make you an adept penny farthing, unicycle, nor tandem rider. Nor any of the umpteen other technological iterations. I wouldn't be surprised if this trumped material/manufacturing limitations as a hurdle. See this whimsical video for "evidence" of this [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yJdz-kjfLk
自行车晚出现还因为当时缺乏'需要中距离日常出行'的大众需求
一个可能被忽视的因素：出行需求在近200年发生了巨变。直到一战前，我的祖先几乎没有任何理由离家超过十英里，整个大家族都住在两英里半径内。因为他们都是农民，农民不需要经常出行；而且真要出行，你本来就有马——这不是马贵不贵的问题，而是务农本来就需要马，马是沉没成本。如果你经常出行，多半是做 bulk 货物运输生意，那时你关心的是廉价而非速度，而自行车显然不适合运大宗货物。所以至少有一个因素是间接的经济因素：必须有足够多的人需要定期走到步行不便的距离之外，且马对他们不是沉没成本。
GlenTheMachine查看英文原文
One possibly overlooked factor: the nature of travel has changed dramatically in the last 200 years. Right up until World War 1, my ancestors literally had no reason to ever go more than ten miles from home, and even that was rare. The entire extended family lived within a two mile radius. This was because they were all farmers, and farmers didn't need to travel often. Furthermore, if you did travel, well, you already had a horse. Which, to make a point not made in the article, didn't have to do with the cost of the horse; it had to do with the fact that you already needed to have a horse to farm. So the horse was a sunk cost. If you did travel frequently, this was likely because you were in the business of shipping goods, ie tobacco or cotton or some other agricultural staple from where it was grown to a port, and hence speed wasn't your primary concern; inexpensive transport for bulk goods was. For all that is awesome about bicycles, bulk transports they aren't. So: at least one factor was economic, but of an indirect sort. We had to have a critical mass of population that needed to travel regularly farther than they could conveniently walk, and for which horses were not sunk costs.
凭记忆画自行车大多画错，说明人们对它熟悉的结构其实并不了解
顺带一提：你有没有试过让朋友或家人凭记忆画一辆自行车？有位设计师做了这个实验：http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html
jaclaz查看英文原文
As a side-side note, ever asked someone (friends, family, etc.) to draw a bycicle by heart? This guy did: http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html
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