1892/1893 Crypto Geared Ordinary
with pneumatic single tube tyres
Hub No 4616
42″ Front wheel
18″ Rear wheel
LENGTH: 68″
WIDTH: 22″
HEIGHT: 57″
From 1892 until the end of the 1890s, the Crypto hub gear was used by many cycle firms to make either a ‘Geared Front Driver’ or a ‘Geared Ordinary.’ Both were considered ‘safety bicycles’ because they were lower to the ground than ‘ordinaries.’ But the subtle difference is in the wheel sizes. The ‘Front driver’ had a front wheel between 34″ and 38″ diameter, and a larger rear wheel; while the layout of the Geared Ordinary resembles a scaled down version of a full size ordinary (aka penny farthing) with a proportionally smaller rear wheel. This example has a 42″ front wheel and 18″ rear.
Though the hub (#4616) was obviously supplied by Crypto, we don’t know for sure if Crypto supplied this frame too, or if it was built by one of the many other cycle firms who used the Crypto hub. It shows a frame number 1020, which suggests a modest production run …though numbering could have started at #1000! It’s fitted with single tube tyres, and has been sympathetically restored so that it can be ridden as well as displayed. This rare machine is ready to ride.
Instead of the cranks driving the front wheel direct — as in the ungeared ‘ordinary,’ the spindle carried a pinion: on the inner circumference of the hub was a ring of teeth; between these teeth and the aforementioned pinion was a set of three small pinions revolving on studs affixed to the hub-flange. By means of this mechanism (which was similar to that used in the high gear of a modern three-speed hub) the 42 inch driving wheel was geared up.
This gear was a development of the Crypto Dynamic two-speed gear, invented by William Thomas Shaw and William Sydenham in 1882, patent No. 3230. With mechanism locked solid, the road wheel was “geared” up or down according to the number of teeth on the driving and driven sprockets: with the pinion in operation a lower gear was brought into action.
1892 CRYPTO CATALOGUE EXTRACTS
GEARED ORDINARIES
