Asymmetric bicycle
Someone once wrote that a frame consists of 11 tubes and this has been true from the first years of the rhombic frame with a fork (this design began to become more widespread after 1890) to the present day. This is quite true, except for a few minor exceptions. “A fork normally has two prongs and there is not much you can change in that”, a normal bicycle rider would say. Well, such a rider was certainly completely disconcerted when the American manufacturer of cult bicycles Cannondale came out with quite extravagant technology in 2000. The “Lefty” one-armed fork soon began to meet with success. And this occurred both in racing and in the commercial field. It didn’t take long for the Lefty front fork to be followed by an asymmetric “Righty” back fork.People began to talk about unprecedented structural design, modern times, cosmic materials facilitating these achievements, ....
However, as someone once wrote: “There is nothing new”.And he was right.Probably the best known manufacturer of asymmetrically fitted front and back wheels was the famous French manufacturer Labor, which shocked the cycling world with this design in the first half of the twentieth century. However, even they were not the first. However, this would require prolonged study of the designs of frames and forks. Our photo-gallery presents one of the oldest representatives, a machine with hard tyres, which can be viewed by the public in the Transport Museum in Coventry in England.
Example 1 - Machine from the famous Bartlett collection located in the Transport Museum in Coventry
Machine from located in the Transport Museum in Coventry
Example 2 - Labor racing model in the collection of the Dutch Velorama museum in Nijmengen.
Labor racing model in theVelorama museum in Nijmengen
Example 3 - A Labor bicycle in the condition in which it was found – private collection
A Labor in the condition in which it was found
