Life As An Inventor
In the early 1980s, Cunningham made significant contributions to the modern mountain bike:
- welded & heat treated aluminum mountain bike frames
- sloping top tubes on mountain and road frames*
- tubular-style fork crowns
- 135 mm zero-dish rear wheel for mountain bikes (now the standard)
- identifying the fundamental tread design principles needed for good-performing mountain bike tires. Co-designed Ground Control, the first tire incorporating these principles.
- invented the Grease Guard Bearing System that allows bicyclists to completely replace with clean grease in seconds the dirty grease that always gets into bicycle bearings...thus extending component life and saving significant time and money spent overhauling and/or replacing parts. Grease Guard's effect on component longevity conflicted with the bike industry's needs. The industry requires that bike parts wear out, thus necessitating replacement.
- the Roller Cam Brake. The brake arms, the pivot mounting location, and the linkage combined to eliminate flex in the fork blades and frame stays. Ultimately, the cam was replaced with the Lever Link, resulting in a brake that Cunningham believes is his best rim brake.
Cunningham's Roller Cam brake also featured the linear spring he invented, now used on almost all V-Brakes today.
Read more about this topic: Charlie Cunningham
Famous quotes containing the words life and/or inventor:
“The child who enters life comes not with knowledge or intent,
So those who enter death must go as little children sent.
Nothing is known. But I believe that God is overhead;
And as life is to the living, so death is to the dead.”
—Mary Mapes Dodge (1831–1905)
“It is beyond a doubt that during the sixteenth century, and the years immediately preceding and following it, poisoning had been brought to a pitch of perfection which remains unknown to modern chemistry, but which is indisputably proved by history. Italy, the cradle of modern science, was at that time, the inventor and mistress of these secrets, many of which are lost.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)