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Old 05-08-08 | 06:47 AM
  #72  
EvilV
Bicycling Gnome
 
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 1,877
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From: 55.0N 1.59W
Look at the seat, the relationship to the bars, and the small back wheel. I'd claim the original safety penny farthing has features that are in the strida.

Seriously though, my point is that while modern cycle designers bring their own brain power to the table, they are mostly endlessly re-cycling earlier concepts and ideas in cosmetic ways. Ritchie and his ilk have a bloody cheek in claiming they have the right to copyright their products as he did in that Dutch court judgement. His whole product depends on the work of hundreds of bike designers and engineers, who long ago worked out how to make ALL the core technologies. Ritchie claimes that his single curved main tube is unique. Is it? I don't think so. The penny farthing above has a single curved main tube, even if it does have a rather larger front wheel.

My diatribe is really against the idea that it is such a big sin to copy a design. Leaving aside the minor arrangements of parts and particular shapes and proportions, everything important about the bicycle was invented before any of our parents were born, and most of us, before our grandparents could walk.


Last edited by EvilV; 05-08-08 at 06:57 AM.
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