Originally Posted by
alcjphil
Having started cycling in the 70's and having continued to this day I can tell you that for all the time I have been riding my bikes have had rubber padded hoods, and any good quality bikes I have seen over that time had padded hoods as well
Of course if owners didn't replace the hoods when they wore out those bikes may no longer have padded brake hoods
Any decent bike in the 70's had rubber hoods. I worked in a shop that sold mainly Raleighs (The real English kind) Peugeots and Motobecanes (The real French kind) and they all had rubber hoods. This was in '75.
Cheap bikes from Sears, Huffys, Murrays and most Schwinns had metal brake lever mounts and most had the cheater lever attachment.
Bikes came boxed with plastic tape and we had to wrap them when we built them. Thin cloth tape could be bought at the shop. Thicker corks style tape probably didn't appear until the mid 80s or so.
Roads were not generally as bad. Chip and seal had not been invented or was not in widespread use. We had leather gloves with light padding and a knitted mesh back. Yes, sometimes our hands got numb. We were just tougher back then.