“One must always go back to the fundamentals. And get your face out of the computer.”
So said , an engineer and the designer of a handmade, small-wheeled steel bike with rubber suspension, who died this past Sunday. He was 92. The Brit first built a Moulton bike , designing a prototype that in 1959 Raleigh refused an offer to buy. They said the new bike . So Moulton began his own factory. Eventually Raleigh made a similar frame and to them. Later, Moulton his patents. , cyclists have used Moultons to pedal to work in England, to ride across New Zealand, and to journey 6,000 miles through China.
The design and the manufacturing of the bikes changed over time, but a video released earlier this year shows how some things at the company stayed the same. As a boy, Moulton loved to destroy and rebuild various objects using his hands.
“From an early age Alex Moulton was interested in picking things apart in order
to see how they worked. He spent many hours as a child watching the
carpenter and blacksmith at work on the family estate, and this interest
blossomed into a considerable aptitude for engineering,” according to . “听At Marlborough College he built a steam car of his own design, and constructed
a steel dodecahedron in the metalwork shop鈥攖o the astonishment of his
maths master.”
As a man in his twilight years, he stressed that others should step away from their computers and do the same. As an obituary in pointed out, Moulton believed that when people used a thing, they could detect its “spirit”鈥攖he care with which it was made. “Man should make things…. Make a profit, of course, but don't take the money gain as the prime judgment.”
For more on the history of the bike and its designer, check out the on the Moulton Bicycles website.
鈥擩oe Spring