Adult Life
Starley's employer, John Penn, bought a rare and expensive sewing machine. Starley mended it when it broke down and improved the mechanism. Penn knew Josiah Turner, a partner of Newton, Wilson and Company, the makers of the machine, and in 1859 Starley joined its factory in Holborn. Turner and Starley started their own sewing machine company in Coventry around 1861. Coventry was the centre of the British bicycle industry and Turner's nephew brought a new French bone-shaker to the factory in 1868. The company started making bicycles.
At this time, velocipedes (cycles) had wheels of nearly equal size, the front slightly larger, although to grow much larger in the penny-farthings Starley soon made with William Hillman. Their Ariel was all-metal and had wire-spoked wheels, much lighter than wooden-spoke ones. Tangent spokes were patented in 1874. Lever-driven and chain-driven tricycles, often in strange configurations, were also devised for women and couples.
Starley, then ageing, found it difficult to ride a tricycle sociable with his son, James, in the other saddle. They could not steer because one was stronger than the other. The historian Edward Lyte wrote: "Each rider of the Sociable drove his own big wheel independently, so the course of the machine along the road was rather variable. One day Starley cried 'I have it!' and dismounted. He sat down to a cup of tea and forthwith invented the differential gear that is now incorporated in the back axle of every car. It was a Saturday. At 6am on the Monday the prototype was being made and at 8am Starley was stepping on to the London train to register patent No. 3388,1877."
Read more about this topic: James Starley
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