Hub Gear - History

History

Before epicyclic gears were used in bicycle hubs, they were used on tricycles. Patents for epicyclic hubs date from the mid-1880s. The first patent for a compact epicyclic hub gear was granted in 1895 to the American machinist Seward Thomas Johnson of Noblesville, Indiana, U.S.A. This was a 2-speed but was not commercially successful.

In 1896 William Reilly of Salford, England patented a 2-speed hub which went into production in 1898 as 'The Hub'. It was a great success, remaining in production for a decade. It rapidly established the practicality of compact epicyclic hub gears.

By 1902 Reilly had designed a 3-speed hub gear. He parted company with the manufacturer of 'The Hub' but had signed away to them the intellectual rights to his future gear designs. To circumvent this problem, the patents for Reilly's 3-speed were obtained in the name of his colleague, James Archer. Meanwhile, well-known English journalist and inventor Henry Sturmey had also invented a 3-speed hub. In 1903 Frank Bowden, head of the Raleigh cycle company, formed The Three-Speed Gear Syndicate, having obtained the rights to both the Reilly/Archer and Sturmey 3-speeds. Reilly's hub went into production as the first Sturmey Archer 3-speed.

In 1902 Mikael Pedersen (who also produced the Dursley Pedersen bicycle) patented a 3-speed hub gear and this was produced in 1903. This was said to be based on the "counter shaft" principle but was arguably an unusual epicyclic gear, in which a second sun was used in place of a ring gear. In 1904 the Fichtel & Sachs company (Germany, Schweinfurt) produced a hub gear under license to Wanderer, and by 1909 there were 14 different 3-speed hub gears on the British market.

By the 1930s hub gears were used on bicycles all over the world. They were particularly popular in the UK, The Netherlands, the German speaking countries and Scandinavia. Since the 1970s, they have become much less common in the English-speaking countries. But in many parts of northern Europe, where bicycles are regularly used as daily transport rather than merely for sport or leisure, hub gears are still widely used. The cheaper and stronger (but less reliable) derailleur system now started to appear and offer a wider gear range.

By 1987 Sturmey-Archer made only 3- and 5-speed hubs, and Fichtel & Sachs and Shimano made only 2- and 3-speed hubs. In that year the first book (apart from service manuals) for some 80 years dealing solely with epicyclic bicycle gears was published. Since then there has been a slow but steady increase in interest in hub gears, reflected in the wider range of products now available.

In 1995 Sachs introduced the Elan, the first hub gear with 12 speeds, and an overall range of 339%. Three years later Rohloff came out with the Speedhub 500/14, a gear hub with 14 speeds and a range of 526%, comparable to that of a 27 speed derailleur gear system, and also sufficiently robust and light weight for mountain biking. In 2007 NuVinci started manufacturing stepless ∞-speed (CVT) hubs for commuter bicycles, with a range of about 350%.

As of 2008, Sturmey-Archer makes 3-, 5- and 8-speed hubs, SRAM (successor to Fichtel & Sachs) make 3-, 5-, 7- and 9-speeds and Shimano make 3-, 7- and 8-speeds. In February 2010 Shimano announced the introduction of the Shimano Alfine 700, an 11-speed model.

Though most hub gear systems use one rear sprocket, SRAM's Dual Drive system combines an epicyclic hub with a multi-speed rear derailleur system to provide a wide-ranging drivetrain concentrated at the rear wheel. In 2010 Canyon introduced the 1442, a hybrid hub which uses a similar epicyclical/derailleur combination.

Brompton Bicycle have their own design, with a two-speed derailleur coupled to a special three-speed wide-ratio Sturmey-Archer hub, the "BWR" (Brompton Wide Ratio). The system is useful for folding bicycles (where a multiple front chainset could foul the bike's folding mechanism) and in recumbent bicycles and freight bicycles (where small wheels and/or increased weight require a wider range of gears with smaller steps). Hub gears have in the past also been used on motorcycles, although this is now rare.