Amphibious bicycle

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Amphibious bicycle by Baumgartner and Hirth, Waldshut around 1910
Cyclomer amphibious bicycle , Paris 1932

An amphibious bicycle is a bicycle that can be pedaled as an amphibious vehicle both on land and on the surface of water.

Amphibious bicycles

The safety low wheel developed in the 1880s stimulated the development of amphibious bicycles. The bulkiness of the construction, the susceptibility to corrosion and safety-related problems prevented the models from ever being built and marketed in larger series, despite a strong media presence.

The obvious and simple construction of the amphibious bicycle ensured that it has been reinvented in different versions and solutions worldwide for over 100 years. One to eight (in the prototype by Li Weiguo) pontoons provide the buoyancy . The most common drive options are propeller , paddlewheel or paddle drives .

The first known, functional and tested amphibious bicycle was developed in 1910 by Alfred Baumgartner and Hirt, employees of the Christian Mann machine factory from Waldshut in the southern Black Forest. On August 10, 1913, Baumgartner demonstrated the suitability with a combined tour by water and on land on the Rhine from Waldshut to Laufenburg (Baden) with a distance of 20 km each. A patent application in all European countries followed. However, the model did not go into series production.

E. Fabry presented his amphibious bicycle Cyclomer at a Paris fair in 1932 . Series production is also not known here.

In 2006, Saidullah's Bicycle , designed by an Indian inventor, was featured on the BBC News and Discovery Channel .

Amphibious tricycles

Wenkel's water bike 1895

At the end of the 1860s, the first designs and patent applications for three-wheel spherical velocipede that could be used on land and water were made. The French army attempted to lay telephone cables on land and water using three-wheeled spherical velocipedes in the late 1880s.

In 1890 the ship engineer Georg Pinkert from Hamburg developed the water velocipede , a water- going tricycle with large hollow tires. This model was also powered by protruding slats on the rear wheels. Pinkert tried to cross the canal with his vehicle.

In 1895, the Berlin engineer Max Wenkel on the Leine and Ihme near Hanover made experiments with his water tricycle. It was developed on behalf of a rubber factory to make it easier to reach waterfront plantations in South America.

Thore J. Olsen from Chicago presented a Water and Land Vehicle in 1896 , which was carried in the water by a hull with a split bow to accommodate the front wheel. The pedal-driven rear wheels acted as a paddle wheel drive through lamellae on the spokes. The hulls were loaded for the weight of three people.

Ernesto Octavio Moraga from Buenos Aires, Argentina presented his Cyclo Amphibious in 1969 , for which he received a US patent in 1971.

Pontoon fittings for bicycles

Pontoon equipment for bicycles, Berlin Boat Show 2009

The SBK Engineering Shuttle-Bike is a variant of the well-known waterwheel that was developed in 1992 and went into series production. It puts conventional mountain bikes under a pontoon frame with paddle wheel drive in just a few simple steps. The collapsible base can be stored in a backpack.

Amphibious bicycle models (selection)

  • Wasservelociped , Georg Pinkert, Germany, 1890
  • Land at Water Vehicle , Thore J. Olsen, United States, 1896
  • Water and road bicycles , Baumgartner and Hirth, Germany, 1910
  • Cyclomer , E. Fabry, France, 1932
  • Moraga's Cyclo Amphibious , Ernesto Octavio Moraga, Argentina, 1969
  • Amphibious bicycle , Dwarka Prasad Chaurasiya, India, 1982
  • SBK Engineering Shuttle-Bike , Italy, 1992
  • Saidullah's Bicycle , Mohammed Saidullah, India, 2006
  • Amphibious bicycle , Li Weiguo, China, 2007

swell

  1. ↑ Werner Huff: By bike over land and water, weekend supplement from July 6th. 2013, Albbote , No. 154, Volume 163, 2013
  2. ↑ Shourie, D. (2006) Grassroots inventions The Tribune , Chandigarh, India. 17th February 2006.
  3. ^ Susanne Päch: Utopias: Inventors, Dreamers, Scharlatans, Westermann , 1983, p. 64
  4. ↑ Frank Patalong: The Victorian Vibrator: Foolish to Deadly Inventions from the Age of Technology , Bastei Lübbe, 2012
  5. ↑ Prometheus , Volume 2, Verlag von Rudolf Mückenberger, 1891, p. 148
  6. ↑ Boys - your world! , Volume 6, 1943, page 450
  7. ^ San Francisco Call, Volume 79, Number 169, May 17, 1896, p. 29
  8. ↑ United States Patent Office 3,606,856 Patented Sept. 21, 1971 3,606,856 CYCLO AMPHIBIOUS Ernesto Octavio Moraga, Rincon 1239, Buenos Aires, Argentina Filed Jan. 8, 1969, Ser. No. 797,318 Int. Cl. B63f 3/00; B63h 1/38 US Cl. 115-1 1
  9. ↑ SBK Engineering shuttle bike

Web links

Commons : Amphibious Vehicle  - collection of images, videos and audio files
  • Amphibious Cycle, Southampton, 2007 [1]
  • SBK Engineering Shuttle-Bike [2]