Fifty two years after Scientific American first declared a human propelling a bicycle to coasting speed more efficient than salmon, seagulls, or jet planes, the august magazine has revisited an iconic 1973 graph and the results hold firm: the cycle remains the planet’s most energy-efficient mode of transport.
The graph, much reproduced by cycle advocates and engineers down the years, was included in an 11-page article on bicycle technology that appeared in the March 1973 edition of Scientific American. The history-heavy piece edition was by S. S. Wilson, then a lecturer in engineering at Oxford University.
He wrote that the purpose of a bicycle was to “make it easier for an individual to move about, and this the bicycle achieves in a way that quite outdoes natural evolution.”
Wilson argued: “When one compares the energy consumed in moving a certain distance as a function of body weight for a variety of animals and machines, one finds that an unaided walking man does fairly well but he is not as efficient as a horse, a salmon or a jet transport. With the aid of a bicycle, however, the man’s energy consumption for a given distance is reduced to about a fifth. Therefore, apart from increasing his unaided speed by a factor of three or four, the cyclist improves his efficiency rating to No. 1 among moving creatures and machines.”
This extract, and the graph that accompanied it, went on to inspire many, including Steve Jobs of Apple, who used it in a 1980 presentation to explain the efficiency of the personal computer. Quoting the Scientific American article, he said: “What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.”
Now Scientific American has updated and re-released what it calls the “classic graphic” that shows that a human on a bicycle—able to coast, or freewheel, without pedaling—remains the world’s most energy effecient traveler.
Using heat maps and the addition of a cyclist in a cycle covered with an aerodynamic fairing, Scientific American shows that propelling such a “velomobile” makes cycling even more energy efficient. (The world speed record for a human inside such a velomobile was set in 2016 by Canadian rider Todd Reichert: he peaked, on pedal power alone, at just a smidgen below 90 miles per hour.)
Tyson Hedrick, a comparative physiologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill told today’s Scientific American that a cycle “turns a human into [an] hyperefficient terrestrial locomotor.”
ForbesBicycling Booms During Lockdown—But There's A Warning From HistoryBy Carlton Reid
Back in 1973, at the height of the 1970s bike boom, Wilson wrote of the cycle’s human-sized perfection: “It is because every part of the design must be related to the human frame that the entire bicycle must always be on a human scale. The lightness of construction, achieved mainly through the development of the wire-spoke wheel and the tubular frame, was dictated not only by the fact that the machine has to be pedaled uphill but also by the desirability of making it easy to lift. Since the bicycle makes little demand on material or energy resources, contributes little to pollution, makes a positive contribution to health and causes little death or injury, it can be regarded as the most benevolent of machines.”
He continued: “For those of us in the overdeveloped world the bicycle offers a real alternative to the automobile.”
The possible inducements of more cycling are many, he stated, including “cycleways to reduce the danger to cyclists of automobile traffic, bicycle parking stations, facilities for the transportation of bicycles by rail and bus, and public bicycles for ‘park and pedal’ service. Already bicycling is often the best way to get around quickly in city centers.”
He concluded: “If one were to give a short prescription for dealing rationally with the world’s problems of development, transportation, health and the efficient use of resources, one could do worse than the simple formula: Cycle and recycle.”