Recumbent History

You would think that recumbent´s were a modern invention but you would be wrong They have in fact been around since the 1800´s with bent´s like the Challand recumbent and the Macmillan Velocipede most of the expert´s from the start of the 1900´s thought that because the recumbent was comfortable it would be slow. Until 1933 when Francis Faure who was thought of as second-class professional track cyclist broke the 20 year-old hour record Of 44.247km by going 45.055km on a recumbent Called velocar which was built by Charles Mochet.

Mochet started out building small, Very light cars until his wife asked him to build a safer bicycle for their son George. Mochet´s spouse thought that her son would hurt himself on the conventional two wheeled bike, so Charles built a four wheeled Bike for George and to George´s surprise his HPV (Human powerd vehicle) was faster than the other boy´s two wheeled Bicycles. Mochet invention became so popular that he gave up building cars and concentrated on his Human Powered Vehicle. He built a two-seated, four-wheeled pedal-car he called Velocar It was equipped with a differential, three gears a comfortable seating Position with the pedal propulsion of the bicycle a light fairing made of the aeroplane windshield material Triplex and the boot of a car (Trunk for our American friends).

The velocar proved to be very fast, from time to time they were used as pace vehicles in bicycle races. At higher speeds the Velocar´s soon reached their limit´s that were achieved easily but cornering got very dangerous. Every time you hit curve meant that you had to brake hard and then re-accelerate. You had to peddle hard to be fast on a curved track. Mochet experimented and built a vehicle with three wheel´s, but its tendency towards falling over in curves was even worse than the four-wheeler.

Mochet had an idea he would divide a Velocar into two halves thus making a two-wheeled version in effect a Recumbent bicycle. The bike had two 50-cm wheels and a wheelbase of 146 cm a seat that was adaptable to the driver´s height. The bottom bracket / boom was about 12 cm beneath the seat which you could also change the elevation of. An intermediate drive provided the required gearing. During the evolution of his recumbent bike Charles Mochet acted intentionally: extensive and careful preparation and much thought preceded the actual building. Mochet not only wanted to show that the recumbent bike is faster than the everyday bike. He also wanted to divulge to other cyclist´s that a recumbent bicycle is also exceptionally appropriate for touring and every-day use.

When Mochet decided to race the Velocar he tried to find a good cyclist to ride his new recumbent bike in cycling events. At first Mochet had Henri Lemoine, a pro cyclist, riding it. But alas Henri. Couldn´t be persuaded to ride the Velocar in contests, Much to his loss. Mochet´s secondary choice of riders was Francis Faure, brother of the celebrated cyclist Benoit Faure. Francis was a decidedly minor rider than either Lemoine or his brother Benoit. But he was the first significant cyclist who took an interest in Mochet´s recumbent bike. A few test rides later he decided to enter a race riding it.

At the start of his first race Faure got much ridicule from the other cyclists they Laugh at him and told him to sit upright and pedle like a man. They quit laughing when Faure left them all behind. They couldn´t even get close to him. One after the other Francis Faure defeated everyfirst-rate track cyclist in Europe.

The following year Faure was practically unbeatable in the5000-metre events. Even in races against three or four top riders alternating the pace between them, the Recumbent´s Aerodynamic supremacy would show and Faure would leave the Velodrome with all the honours. Beside the successes on the track the Velocar´s and their riders won many road races. Paul Morand, a road racer, won the 1933 Paris-Limoges race on a recumbent bike created by Mochet.

From the dawn of the century until the thirties the French cyclist Marcel Berthtet and the Swiss Cycling-icon Oscar Egg clashed over the hour record. In 1907 Berthet achieved a record of 41.520 kilometres per hour. During the next seven years the record passed six times from Oscar Egg to M. Berthet and back, before Egg recorded the incredible distance of 44.247 km (27.4 miles) in 60 minutes. This record lasted approximately 20 years up to 1933. During the war many cyclists lost their lives, were disabled or omitted there Training so it is apparent that there wasn´t a serious record attempt in the years immediately after the war. Nevertheless the record by Oscar Egg has to be classified as a great achievement.

The 7th of July 1933 was to be a momentous day. Francis Faure rode 45.055 km (27.9 miles) in one hour on a Paris velodrome and thereby Shattered the close to 20-year-old record by Oscar Egg. Faure and Mochet´s Velocar media´s attention in journals and cycling publications Illustrations of the record setting vehicles were being published. Soon questions were asked: Is this truly a bike? Will the Faure record be proclaimed? Will this be the end of the common bike? Statements, interviews, comments and political cartoons all addressed this issue.

A decision had to be made. On August 29, 1933, in Saint Trond France when Maurice Richard, on a traditional Bike also beat The hour record set by Oscar Egg, who had ridden 44.077 kilometers in one hour. (27.4 miles). Which record was legal? The recumbent´s or the traditional Bike? Who was to be world record holder -- Richard or Faure? Would the recumbent be sanctioned as a legal bicycle, to ride in UCI competitions, or be prohibited forever from the sport? The UCI had to make a decision.

It had become evident to all that the hour record set by Francis Faure riding the Velocar developed by Mochet was going to be vigorously debated at the 58th Congress of the UCI on February 3, 1934. An amateur rider showed the Velocar to the Congress by pedaling one around the executive´s conference table. They were amused and interested at first but their opinions on the bike´s legality for racing divided sharply. The British representative was surprised that the recumbent was so safe to ride, and forecast a great future for it, saying that it could be the bicycle of the future. The Italian Bertholini, on the other hand, was of the belief that Mochet´s innovation was not a bicycle at all.

In summation to legitimate arguments donated for and against permitting recumbent´s, non-technical issues also entered the debate. Some officials were of the notion that a mediocre cyclist like Francis Faure hadn´t warranted the right to partake in a world record setting event. Faure had only shown his skills in short races and sprints. How could such a cyclist now presume to hold the uppermost of all records, the hour? These critics preferred the clearly proficient rider, Richard, to Faure. Rousseau, the French commissioner, brought the issue back into focus. He established that the UCI and it´s rules were intended to control races, fix the limits of the legal length and breadth of the bicycle, to forbid add-on aerodynamic aids, but not to define the bicycle Itself.

The other commissioners seemingly disagreed, and assigned a task force, which would outline, or in effect, redefine exactly what was or wasn´t a bicycle. They then voted to recognise the (upright) record of Maurice Richard. Forthwith the (new) definition of what constituted a sport bicycle was approved by a 58-to-46 vote. The following rules would be in effect in UCI authorised racing from that point in history on:

1. The bottom bracket had to be between 24 and 30 centimetres above the ground.
2. The front of the saddle could only be 12 centimetres behind the bottom bracket.
3. The distance from the bottom bracket to the axle of the front wheel had to be between 58 and 75 centimetres.

These rules meant, a recumbent wasn´t a bicycle, but something completely different, aside having two wheels, a chain, handlebars A seat, and human Power. The ruling would take effect on April 1, 1934. It was to be the Recumbent´s darkest day. Faure´s record was changed into a new category called: Records Set By Human Powered Vehicles (HPV´s) without Special Aerodynamic Features.

Embittered by the decision of the UCI, Mochet wrote an appeal letter to the Union de Cycliste. But had no luck. Hearsay at the time were that the decision ”banning” recumbent´s had less to do with sportsmanship than with Big business: The upright bicycle manufacturers and Professional riders had money and connections and together created a powerful lobbing force Had the UCI had decided otherwise a lot more riders might be riding recumbent´s today.

Proffessor David Gordon Wilson

Professor David Gordon Wilson was born and educated in Warwickshire, England. He first came to America in 1953, he worked his way there in the engine room of a cargo boat on the Glasgow-Montreal run. In 1955, he was awarded a post-doctoral Commonwealth-Fund Fellowship for study and research at MIT and Harvard. After returning to work in Britain in the gas-turbine industry he taught for two years in Nigeria and worked briefly with the VSO´s (the British precursor of the US Peace Corps) in the Cameroon´s. For six years before joining the MIT faculty in 1966, he was technical director and vice president of Northern Research and Engineering Corporation in London and in Massachusetts.

At MIT Professor Wilson has been teaching engineering design and Turbomachinery and heat-exchanger design and has been supervising research in design and in power-and-propulsion projects. David is a CO-founder and past-president of MASH (Massachusetts Action on Smoking and Health), a group that worked for non-smoker´s rights. He is a keen hiker and bicyclist. MIT professor David Gordon Wilson is regarded as the architect of modern recumbent´s and who is partly responsible for the current enthusiasm of the recumbent. The first one from his design was built in 1970. He took it to MIT to show it to his Students, after which he decided to ride it home through Cambridge, to his amazement, people cheered him as he went past. After that, he was addicted, and now he is characteristic sight in Cambridge on his Recumbent bicycle.

Professor Wilson arranged and sponsored the first modern design contest for human-powered vehicles from 1967 to 1969,an event that led to the modern interest in recumbent bicycles. He was a founding board member of the IHPVA and later served as its president. Wilson has been the editor of Human Power, the IHPVA journal, since 1984 and a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1971. He is also the co-author of the popular book Bicycling Science with Frank Rowland Whitt and he wrote Human powered Vehicles with Allan V. Abbott the founding president of the International Human Powered Vehicle Association (IHPVA) and has served on its Board of Directors since 1977.

David is the CO-designer of the Avatar 1000 and 2000 recumbent bicycles. The Avatar 2000, on which the world bicycle speed record for 1982-1983 was set, this became the standard for recumbent bicycle design. He is a firm supporter of cyclists rights by trying to get Cyclists and motorists to be more hospitable e.g. get rid of rudeness and selfishness and if he finds a bad design on a bicycle, he writes to The manufacturer with the details of the problem to get them to change the design.

Most people think of David as a bicyclist but his main work activity is in power propulsion in jet engines and Gas Turbines. He has a book out about his work in this field called The Design of High-Efficiency Turbomachinery and Gas Turbines. Most people don´t know him much for that, he does not profit from the production of recumbent´s he just loves his title as guru. David Gordon Wilson retired in (1994).