About the book
Updated
and expanded fifth edition of the "instant
classic" that took everybody by
surprise. Now with additional
product test information, and many
additional illustrations of items
ranging from "prehistoric" gearing
mechanisms to the very latest
components, including the most
innovative 2016 product
introductions.
How could such a specialized
subject find so much interest?
Whereas all other cycle history
books cover the early development in
great detail but have nothing more
to say once the modern safety
bicycle is introduced at the end of
the 19th century, this book picks up
where the others leave off. It is
the history of the modern bicycle
during the last century—or, put
another way, the first century of
the derailleur bicycle.
The book is packed with
fascinating illustrations, including
hundreds of Daniel Rebour's
wonderfully detailed
renderings—many of them never seen
in print before.
Table of Contents
1. The First Bicycles: 1817–1860
2. The Search for Speed:
1861–1890
3. The Bicycle Boom: 1891–1899
4. Pre-Derailleurs, Epicyclics,
and Exotics 1900–1907
5. The First Derailleurs:
1908–1919
6. Practical Derailleurs:
1920–1929
7. The Golden Age: 1930–1939
8. The Postwar Years: 1945–1954
9. Slow Growth: 1955–1964
10. The “Great American Bike
Boom”: 1965–1974
11. The Dawn of Mountain
Biking: 1975–1984
12. The Rise of Shimano:
1985–1994
13. Into the 21st Century: 1995 to the
Present, Part I. Shimano
14. Recent Developments: 1995 to
the Present, Part II SRAM, Campagnolo, and the Rest
15. How Derailleurs Work
16. Nothing New Under the Sun?
Bibliography
Index
What the Critics Say
The Dancing
Chain is a big book: Big in size
(400 pages of text and appendices),
big in scope, and big in
aspirations. It is even bigger than
its title suggests, describing nor
just derailleur bicycles, but
virtually all mechanisms used to
make a bicycle climb uphill better
and go faster on level ground.
It is an
impressive achievement: There seems
to be hardly any derailleur ever
made that is not mentioned, usually
with a photo or drawing and an
explanation how it worked. Being so
broad in scope, it is roughly
encyclopedic, and like any
encyclopedia, the level of detail
can be overwhelming. Particular
sections of The Dancing Chain
tell coherent stories, but even the
most extreme bicycle geeks are
unlikely to read the book
cover-to-cover,
The development
of gear changers has been a story of
competing ideas and even backward
steps. My main criticism of The
Dancing Chain is its failure to
provide a coherent narrative
structure, which might help the
reader understand the reasons behind
some of the adventurous designs
shown in its pages. How could these
be popular when at the same time,
more modern-looking derailleurs were
available. In fact, The Dancing
Chain often reminded me of
paleontological textbooks describing
extinct creatures, some of which
closely resemble current species
and others with forms that appear
bizarre from our current
perspective. As in nature, solutions
to some problems repeatedly appear
and die out. The last chapter of The
Dancing Chain highlights five such
ideas: treadle/lever drives, shaft
drives, retrodirect pedaling,
bottom-bracket gears, and expanding
chainwheels, I’ve seen old and new
examples of most of these ideas
before, but I found the expanding
chainwheels particularly
interesting because in my early
development as a bike geek, I once
had a brainstorm and “invented” such
a mechanism. The Dancing Chain
shows that I was far from the first.
In addition to
the five recurring ideas highlighted
in the last chapter, The Dancing
Chain describes many other
novelties. For example, I’d never
before seen a rear derailleur with
neither a shift Ieyer nor a cable,
Both the 1947 Renalb-Lux and 1951
Selectric shifted by back-pedaling
(although how one switched from
up-shifting to down-shifting is not
explained). Even more unique was the
J.Wi.S solution to maintaining chain
tension across multiple gears: an
expanding chain with a narrow coil
spring around the entire
circumference. One of the pleasures
of The Dancing Chain is the
possibility that any page will
include something similarly unique,
interesting, or even downright
wacky.
The Dancing
Chain also documents some
extensive efforts to solve problems
that we currently disregard. Perhaps
the best example is chain tension,
Until the late 1950s, many riders
believed that the chain tension
created by derailleur pulleys caused
significant friction. Derailleurs
were specifically designed to
provide even, low tension, and some
were even equipped with an
additional cable to allow the rider
to fine tune the tension manually.
When was the last time you thought
about how much tension your
derailleur placed on the chain. Even
though the concern about chain
tension on old racing bikes with
narrow gear ranges may have been
unfounded, it is not such a
far-fetched topic for modern
cyclotourists. Many modern bikes
with wide gear ranges suffer from
chainslap and even chainsuck on the
small chainring, caused or
exacerbated by insufficient chain
tension,
As The
Dancing Chain progresses beyond
the 1960s, it places significantly
greater emphasis on relatively small
variations in parallelogram-based
rear derailleurs. This emphasis
reflects the narrowing of
technological development once the
inverted parallelogram derailleur
had been adopted by most makers, As
a result, I found the second half of
the hook considerably less
interesting than the first half, A
few descriptions of short-lived
experiments such as the 1981 Shimano
Dura-Ace AX gruppo caught my
attention, but the parade of
side-profile photographs and
descriptions of Shimano, Suntour,
Campagnolo, Simplex, Mavic and other
very similar derailleurs began to
blur.
The book’s
micro-level focus on the refinement
of derailleurs in the last thirty
years reflects not only historical
trends, but also the author’s
interests and experience. In the
introduction, Berto states that his
expertise starts in the 1970s, when
he began writing technical articles
for Bicycling! magazine, Although
the third edition of The Dancing
Chain has, for the most part,
been expanded beyond this
timeframe, some relics remain as
signs of prior editions’ more
limited focus, For example, the
penultimate chapter titled “How
Derailleurs Work” is focused
entirely on current
slant-parallelogram designs. While
it is true that virtually all
current-model derailleurs follow
this convention, this is hardly the
case for all derailleurs ever made,
or even for all derailleurs
currently in use. The chapter might
have fit more smoothly with the rest
of the book if it had briefly
described the various levers,
plungers, spirals, and
parallelograms that have
historically been used to push the
chain between cogs. In conjunction
with the explanation of chain gap,
the primary advantage motivating the
current dominance of
slant-parallelogram designs would
have been made clearer.
Generally, The
Dancing Chain would benefit
from a greater emphasis on
information synthesis and
identification of the themes that
drove bicycle development. By
relying heavily on a chronological
structure, Berto describes the
features of bicycles and components
produced during specific time
periods, but he rarely pulls the
observations together to help the
reader understand them in context.
The best encyclopedias and
historical texts include both
description and interpretation. Such
interpretation can be controversial,
but it leads to greater
understanding.
Perhaps it is
unfair to criticize a book that
attempts to describe the entire
history and development of geared
bicycles for limiting its
interpretation of that history.
The Dancing Chain is extremely
useful and interesting as an
encyclopedic reference. For a
veteran or aspiring bike geek, there
is no other book that even
approximates the range of technical
and historical information in The
Dancing Chain, particularly at
the book’s bargain price.
Mark Vanden
Kamp in Bicycle Quarterly,
Summer 2009
Critical reviews of the earlier
editions
“The Dancing Chain does not shy
away from technical detail, yet
remains informatively accessible to
the lay reader, making it a
fascinating resource for leisure
reading as well as hard research for
academia. Highly recommended for
bicycle enthusiasts and historians
alike.”
The Midwest Book Review/Small
Press Bookwatch, June 2005
“With a final chapter on how
derailleurs work, this book is a
dream for the real tech-heads.
There's no doubt that this book is
highly researched, and thankfully,
quite comprehensible for the average
reader.”
Francine Letil, in The Ride
Magazine, June 2005
“This is a large, beautiful,
hardcover book, profusely illustrated and
full of fascinating information on
the development of derailleur
gearing and the modern bicycle.
“Every reader of Human Power
should (...) buy this book. It gives
you all the history, the
fundamentals, the reasons for
continual changes in design, the
pitfalls to avoid, and so on that
you will ever need.”
David Gordon Wilson, in Human
Power, Fall 2000
“The Dancing Chain was a
major 5-year undertaking that has
accomplished what no one else has
even attempted to do: track the rich
and intriguing history of bicycle
drive-trains from the earliest days
right up to the present.
“Even if you've never paid
attention to my book reviews in the
past, please trust me on this on—The
Dancing Chain is a must. Out of
my normal rating of 1 to 10, I give
this one a 12!”
Gabe Konrad, in On the Wheel,
Winter 1999
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