Any time I see a very old bicycle, my mind has this habit of telling myself that back in the day it didn’t appear so primitive. I want to give those crafters the benefit of much doubt and pre-concede that when the bike, penny-farthing, draisine or whatever was new, it looked more sophisticated and refined that what I am invariably viewing. That is partly because when I lived in New England, every bike shop I worked in had the remnants of something bike-type object from before World War II (in one case from before WWI), and those were mostly rusting hunks of metal that weighed as much as a full-grown German Shepherd. This video puts a certain amount of that to rest, and fills me with a sense of gratitude that so many crazy people tried what were clearly bad ideas on the way to us riding things like the modern full-suspension mountain bike.
