Wire Wheels - On Bicycles

On Bicycles

The first commercially successful use of wired wheels was on bicycles. They were introduced early on in the development of the bicycle, following soon after the adoption of solid rubber tires. This development marked a major improvement in bicycles, over the older wooden wheels, both in terms of weight and comfort (the increased elasticity of the wheel helping to absorb road vibrations).

In England, the engineer William Stanley developed the steel-wired spider wheel in 1849, an improvement over the cumbersome wooden spoked wheels then fitted to the tricycles that his employer was making.

Bicycle manufacturers build millions of wheels annually, using the common crossed-spoke patterns whose crossings of adjacent spokes are governed by the number of spokes in the wheel. Wheelbuilders of racing teams and in good bicycle shops build wheels to other patterns such as two-cross, one-cross, or no-cross (usually called radial). Many of these patterns have been used for more than 100 years, it is claimed that crossed patterns have more strength and stability while irregular patterns are art forms and have little structural merit (Brandt, 1993).

In the 1980s, cast wheels with 5 or 6 rigid spokes began to appear in the Olympic Games and professional racing: these have advantages in specialized applications, such as time trials, but wire-spoked wheels are used for most purposes.