Rudge Rotary, Victorian tricycle

[@Qingeaton]

Thank you for putting this up. Cool history.

[@Buck1954]

I have seen drawings of these, but never like this. It all makes sense now. Thank you for the reveal.

[@andrewwilliams2353]

Thanks for this Alex. Another fascinating and beautifully delivered presentation

[@austinswallow]

Looks like electric assist would be a very suitable addition for hill climbing, looks like a fun ride!

[@gremblobeans5004]

I just discovered your channel and i love it! hope to see some new content from you :)

[@forwardtothepast2411]

Thank you Gremblo, season 2 will be coming out in January 2021

[@85active]

Hey Mate, great Chanel. The P50 brought me here and I’ve been watching your other videos. Love Vanlife, can’t wait for more videos. G’Day from Adelaide, Australia!

[@forwardtothepast2411]

Hey , thank you very much, I hope to be able to tow my p50 with my camper for future adventures one day

[@85active]

@@forwardtothepast2411 Sounds great. Looking forward to it.

[@euticleide]

Great video! I would really like to try it, here in Tuscany, just like the Pennels: unbelievable!

[@ThisTimeTheWorld]

It looks like fun for city tourism

[@sleeplessengineer1450]

Do you still have this tricycle? I'd be curious to see more videos!

[@cpcnw]

Hats off to you Sir! Was the original design by Coventry cycles?

[@2DMax00]

The seating position brings it more in line with a recumbent bicycle.

[@youtuuba]

2DMax, well, no, not really. This is still much more upright than it is recumbent.

[@depfordbusinesscoaching2212]

Jolly marvellous. So, I'm looking for somewhere to live that is just flat, or downhill...?

[@dlarge6502]

Nice out-take. I would certainly be one of those too afraid to ride on a Penny Farthing so I guess I would have been riding something like this. It does remind me of my folding bike, which thanks to is very small wheels, really becomes intolerable when cycling up even a very slight slope :D Normally I just use my old racer, poor thing, I treat it more like a mountain bike :D

[@forwardtothepast2411]

in my experience, the Penny farthing is a lot less demanding to ride than the Rudge, it seems to have way more momentum : )

[@ginnialveymusicstudio843]

I have an old photo of a tricycle. Do you think that you could figure out when it was made?

[@forwardtothepast2411]

Possibly

[@ginnialveymusicstudio843]

@@forwardtothepast2411 Thank you! Where should I send the photo to?

[@forwardtothepast2411]

@@ginnialveymusicstudio843 I think you can privet message people on KZbin

[@ginnialveymusicstudio843]

@@forwardtothepast2411 If you know how, could you please tell me how to private message on KZbin? Thank you for your kindness.

[@jameslugsden2207]

Hello, Enjoyed the Rudge vidio. I wonder if you could help me? I'm planning a trike with similar pedal crank and I'm worried about it's strength. Could you possibly let me know the diameter of the steel the crank is made from?

[@forwardtothepast2411]

Hello , sadly I dont own it anymore, however it was made by a company called Richard's of England

[@macrumpton]

I wonder why they didn't just use a third small wheel instead of the giant one. Of course the gear attached to the pedals would have to be substantially larger, but it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult.

[@forwardtothepast2411]

the top speed would have been compromised

[@ThisTimeTheWorld]

Convention and aesthetics from the era of carriages with large wheels.

[@ThisTimeTheWorld]

The large wheel reduces rolling resistance some. The same effect can be seen on tadpole trikes with a large rear wheel .

[@youtuuba]

First, don't listen to "ThisTimeTheWorld", who appears to just be making up 'facts' in his comments. These highwheel tricycles have a large driving wheel for the same reason that the "Penny Farthing" highwheel bicycle have one. That reason is purely to have the machine be in a high enough "gear" to get a good enough speed (with a reasonable pedaling cadence) to make then move considerably faster than a person could walk, and thus make them practical for human powered transportation. For the highwheel bike design, which predated these tricycles, in order to be in a higher gear, the machine would need to have chains and gears, which in 1870-ish would have been too heavy, clunky and unreliable. So designers just made the drive wheel as big as possible instead and kept the mechanical complexity as low as possible. When they decided to come up with highwheel tricycles, as a means to allow ladies in skirts to ride along with their men for pleasure outings, they stuck with what worked, and retained the large drive wheel. But there was the need to add gears and chains because the lady would not be straddling the drive wheel, however by this time metallurgy had improved and it was possible to incorporate a rough yet reasonable chain drive system (around the same time, variations on the mens' highwheels also started to incorporate similar chain drive schemes). They could have gone further with the idea and had a reduced size drive wheel......and they DID; the drive wheel on this Rudge is considerably smaller than what a highwheel BICYCLE would have had. The history on the development of these machines is more complex than what I have written, but when one knows the developers' reasoning, it makes pretty good sense.

[@macrumpton]

I imagine going uphill on a pennyfarthing was no treat either especially if you did not have the momentum.

[@forwardtothepast2411]

the penny farthing is a lot easier up hill than the rudge to be honest

[@Keeping_IT_Simple]

Yet another great video Have you still got that penny farthing with the small wheel at the front ? Maybe a video on that ?

[@forwardtothepast2411]

Hello, yes i do still have my Penny Farthing, but the small wheel is at the back : )

[@Keeping_IT_Simple]

@@forwardtothepast2411 must be my imagination I thought you had one of these ? images.app.goo.gl/LvPNia4LhZs3vPP38

[@forwardtothepast2411]

@@Keeping_IT_Simple haha no, maybe one day

[@Keeping_IT_Simple]

@@forwardtothepast2411 images.app.goo.gl/kiXU2zJ8qRUgcYQf7

[@gaetanozuccarello9802]

😊😊😊👍👍👍

[@gaetanozuccarello9802]

👍😉

[@ThisTimeTheWorld]

It would work much better with a slight gear reduction

[@youtuuba]

ThisTimeTheWorld, not really. Just as with the highwheel (Penny Farthing) bikes, the who point is to go as fast as possible using human power and the limitations of the technology of the day. The size of the drive wheel is already optimized for being able to manage the kinds of riding situation they are expected to be ridden for; make the wheel bigger (higher gear) and they are faster but harder to ride up hills, make the wheel smaller (lower gear) and they can do hills a bit better but then can't keep up with other people in your riding group, or end up being hardly any faster than just getting off and walking. These highwheel trikes were really intended to allow ladies to ride along with the men, who were almost all riding highwheel bicycles; they were not created just to let nervous people ride. When men and women rode together, it was a social outing and not for real transportation, as in riding from one town to another, etc. A lot of the intended riding would be on pathways in parks and such, and steep grades were not as much of a problem in those locales.

[@ThisTimeTheWorld]

Treadles

[@ThisTimeTheWorld]

Band brake