Besides making hill climbing easier, what primary speed goal did early gearing systems help riders achieve?
Answer
Achieving higher wheel rotation speeds without requiring an impossibly fast pedal cadence.
A major limitation of direct-drive high-wheelers was the physical cap on the rider's maximum efficient cadence; if the wheel was large, the rider's legs had to spin extremely fast to maintain speed. By introducing a chain and sprockets, inventors could engineer a gear ratio where one pedal revolution resulted in the rear wheel turning further than the diameter of the front wheel would allow directly. This meant the rider could maintain a comfortable, physiological power band (like 90 RPM) while moving much faster than the direct-drive cap allowed.
Related Questions
What characterized James Starley's 1871 invention described as the first gear cycle?What inherent limitation defined the direct-drive pedals on the 'boneshaker' or 'penny-farthing'?What two fundamental features did the safety bicycle introduce to enable widespread practical gearing?Which gearing system generally offered very high durability because it was sealed from dirt and weather?Besides making hill climbing easier, what primary speed goal did early gearing systems help riders achieve?How does the external derailleur system physically accomplish shifting between different gear ratios?What practical difficulty often caused many cyclists to stick with fixed-gear bikes for decades?What refinement, developed in the mid-to-late 20th century, made derailleur shifting nearly foolproof?What was the initial function of the earliest devices separating pedal speed from wheel speed?Which cycling niche ultimately favored the external derailleur system over the internal hub gear?According to the comparison table, which system generally carried more weight?