Originally Posted by markwebb
When I raced back in 70's my cleats did not work at all like this. I had those tiny thin narrrow Italian leather shoes with hard leather soles and a solid metal cleat that was just a little narrower than the front to back width of my Campy NR pedals. You inserted shoe fully until it contacted toe clip front, moved your foot downward, and tightened straps. No groove or anything on cleat.
This was stolen from Sheldon Brown: Cleat; A leather, plastic or metal fitting attched to the bottom of a cycling shoe to provide positive engagement with the pedal.
Classic cleats for use with toe-clip pedals had a simple slot that fitted over the rear edge of the pedal. This provided a consistent position of the foot on the pedal, both in terms of centering the ball of the foot over the pedal spindle, and maintaining the desired foot angle on the pedal.
Up until the late '70's, cleats were leather or aluminum, and were nailed onto the bottom of the shoe with many tiny nails. The usual procedure was to have the cyclist ride for a while without the cleats, until the pedal would make a mark on the sole of the shoe. This mark would then be used as a guide to locate where the cleat should be nailed on.
In the '70's, adjustable plastic cleats were introduced, and immediately rendered the nail-on system obsolete...unfortunately, they also precipitated a rash of knee injuries, because riders would adjust them by pure guesswork, and this often caused un-natural stresses on their knees. The invention of the Fit-Kit R.A.D. made it possible to adjust this type of cleat even more accurately than the old sole-impression system.
Froze: I use to have a web site that showed a picture of the cleats (and you could buy them new!) Sheldon and I are writing about but could not find it after many hours of web searching...sorry.