Originally Posted by
gmt13
... Apparently, up until the 1890's drives were on either side, but they became standardised to the right side during the turn of the century boom. Nevertheless, Archibald Sharpe in his 1896 treatise describes cogs as often being soldered onto the hub, which makes the thread argument moot. He describes the Elswick hub, which has the cog on the left, as having a thread pattern that causes the cog to tighten when pedaled and then goes on to say, that if you have the drive side on the right, then the threads should be right hand.
The Abingdon hubs of the early 90s made hubs that had a 10 sided polygonal surface that matched the cog, which was then soldered on.
I am going to bet that the right-side/left-side issue was settled as a fashion whim, much like folks want hub stickers to be aligned with sides and hub stampings these days.
Have a better argument?
Agree, that is a compelling debunking of the threading idea. Anyway, with a screw-on sprocket, right-hand drive would tighten right-hand threading, sure, but what I overlooked was that back-pedaling would unscrew it. You would need a left-hand threaded lockring to hold the sprocket on while braking, just as on a modern-day fixed-gear track bike. So you would still need two threads of opposing direction on the rear hub, whether the drive was on right side or left side.