David Gordon Wilson: The Father of the Modern Human-powered-vehicle Movement

Prof. David Gordon Wilson died on May 2nd 2019 at the age of 91. He began the modern human-powered-vehicle movement when he sponsored a design competition for an improved version of human-powered land transport in 1967.

Wilson received his PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Nottingham in 1953. Between that time and 1966 when he joined the faculty of MIT in 1966, he engaged in multiple pursuits.

 He received a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship to conduct research in the USA with MIT an Harvard concluding with work for the Boeing Commercial Airplane Company as a gas turbine engineer.

Wilson did a two-year stint in Africa, teaching at he University of Ibadan in Ziria. Nigeria.

After doing two years of Voluntary Service in Cameroon, Wilson contracted malaria and was forced to more back to England.

In 1960, he was invited to be the technical director of the Northern Research and Engineering Corp to form a London branch specializing in turbo-power machinery and heat transfer.

Invited to MIT for a permanent position in 1966, Wilson taught thermodynamics and mechanical engineering. Students he advised conducted research in turbo-machinery, fluid mechanics and other design topics.

Wilson retired from MIT in 1994 after 28 years. He acted as professor emeritus until his death.

Outside of the university he pursued issues as an environmental activist particularly in regard to transportation. Wilson was appointed to a commission of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.   He served on the Center for Transportation Studies.  He joined the Massachusetts chapter of Common Cause and was the co-founder of the Massachusetts Action on Smoking and Health which advocated for the rights of non-smokers.

In later years Wilson invented a heat-exchanger and a micro-turbine which are fundamental to non-photo voltaic solar power production. The company, Wilson Turbo-power was formed to commercialize the inventions.

And in 1974, Wilson came up with the idea of the Carbon Tax.

Of course, when it comes to the environment and responsible transportation, Wilson will be most remembered as a life-long commuter cyclist who used a bicycle instead of an automobile. Wilson was not deterred from using bicycle by the most severe weather.

Up until the mid 70's, Wilson rode a Moulton. Now at the time the Moulton design was quite sophisticated. It used 17" narrow high-pressure tires and had front and rear suspension. The small wheels made room for carrying quite a bit of cargo over the front and rear wheels. (I knew a college physics professor, an all season cycle commuter like Wilson, who carried a 55 lb. filing cabinet on the back of his Moulton.) The Moulton could also be folded in half for storage and transport.

So, even though he was riding the best engineered commuter bicycle, he still felt there was a lot of room for improvement.

As Wilson was about to leave the UK for the USA and his job at MIT, he found out he would not be able to take his savings with him.So in 1967 he took his savings and organized an international competition for man-powered land transport. There were 73 entrants before the judging in 1969.

A summary of the results can be found in the magazine:

Engineering (London) vol. 2071, no 5372, 11 April 1969, pp. 567-573

The winning design was from W. D. Lydiard, a British aerospace engineer. Not only did he submit a paper design he build an actual prototype of his Mk.3 version. He called this version the Bicar.

Shown below is a  schematic of the Mk. 3 version top and the Mk. 4 bottom.

The Bicar was an enclosed recumbent bicycle that used 16" wheels. Lydiard invariably encountered what I call "the recumbent bicycle problem", that being, for a front steered recumbent bicycle, the pedals want to be in the same location as the front wheel for an ideal weight distribution. He solution was to use an non-circular, elongated pedal path located above the front wheel. the pedals moved in near linear tracks and  were attached to connecting rods that pulled on a conventional crank. This mechanism is what I refer to as a "oscillating treadle".

The post listed below discusses linear pedal motion in some depth.

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7497191769424400596#editor/target=post;postID=5532337496842064005;onPublishedMenu=template;onClosedMenu=template;postNum=9;src=postname

Lydiard encountered interference with the pull rods when he put his feet on the ground through the flaps in the body, so he also presented a Mk. 4 version that used what I refer to as a constant-torque treadle.

Wilson was quite taken with the use of an elongated pedal path to minimize foot-front-wheel interference and came up with over a dozen sketches of different concepts, eventually detailing the design show below.

In 1973 Wilson was approached by Frank Rowland Whitt, a chemical engineer and a writer of technical articles for cycling publications. Whitt had gathered material for a book about Bicycling Science and he approached Wilson in hopes that he could help him get it published. Wilson in turn approached MIT Press and they agreed to publish it if Wilson would be a co-author.

The first edition was published in 1974. It was the first technical treatment of bicycle technology since Archibald Sharp's Bicycles and Tricycles published in 1896 and republished by MIT press in 1977. At last, human-power vehicle enthusiasts had a technical reference to aid in their research and designing. The technical bible had arrived and has only gotten more comprehensive with each edition.

Soon to be in it's forth edition, it is MIT Press's best selling publication.

In the mid 70's Wilson was contacted by a California bicycle mechanic named Frederick Willkie regarding the design of a recumbent bicycle and Wilson sent him several sketches. What resulted in what Willkie call the Green Planet Special 1 shown below.

The GPS1 was very similar to the Ravat recumbent of the 1930's.

Willkie found the GPS1 uncomfortable to ride and asked for some modification suggestions. Wilson told him to lower the pedals in front of the front wheel, locate the handlebars below the legs directly on top of the fork and lean the seat back. The GPS2 was born.

For reasons not revealed, Wilson purchased the GPS2 form Willkie. He made subsequent modifications and the Wilson-Willkie recumbent bicycle was created. Wilson added a number of creative features to the WW. Loops attached to the pedals that allowed one to ride with dress shoes, a large luggage box behind the seat and a hammock style seat.

By 1976, Wilson riding the Wilson-Willkie recumbent became the poster child for a better bicycle, at least in the USA. He was featured in newspapers, magazines and a commercial for creativity by the Mobile Oil Company

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYbfz4vCczg

I sure the irony of a man riding an alternative to the automobile being showcased by an oil company was not lost on Wilson.

Wilson teamed up with Harold Maciejewski and Richard Forrestal to investigate making commercial recumbents.

The Avatar 1000 thus followed the WW.

And the Avatar 2000 followed that.

The Avatar 2000 went on sale in 1980 and was the first commercial recumbent since the Second World War. ( The Hypercycle, being a knock-off of the Wilson-Willkie quickly followed.)

I have ridden s.n.85 Avatar 2000 for 35 years and I must say it is the most comfortable bicycle and recumbent that has ever been manufactured. The only negatives I have encountered are the difficulty in transporting a bicycle with a 63" wheelbase and a lightly loaded front wheel which can wash out on slippery surfaces.

Wilson generated a chart comparing the weight distributions of various upright and recumbent designs.

The ideal appears to be having between 36 & 40% of the vehicle and rider weight on the front wheel.

It is interesting to note that if one used a 16" and was to allowed an intermediary bottom bracket with sprockets on both sides, ( as the GPS1 and GPS2 had) then the wheelbase could be made 8" shorter than the Avatar 2000 and the front-wheel weight distribution could be increased the 35.5%, getting very close to the idea.

In later years Wilson did not commute on an Avatar 2000. When he rode to the campus  at MIT he had to carry his bike up quite few flights of stairs to his office. The Avatar 2000 was much too cumbersome for that task so he rode more compact recumbents of his own design.

The second picture was probably Dave's last recumbent and is of interest because it uses a timing belt to connect the pedals to the intermediary bottom bracket.

I was first introduced to Wilson in 1970 reading his 1968 article "Where Are We Going In Bicycle Design?" reprinted in Harley M. Leete's "Best of Bicycling" book.

I bought the first edition of "Bicycling Science Ergonomics and Mechanics" in 1974.(I subsequently bought the second and third editions and will buy the fourth edition when it is published next year).

  I started communicating with him in 1976 while in grad school requesting more information about his recumbent designs.

 In 1989 he edited my article on rear-steering recumbent bicycles published in "Human Power", the magazine of the International Human-powered Vehicle Association (IHPVA).

He sent me over a dozen of his designs for linear pedaling recumbents.

I met Prof. Wilson at the 1990 IHPVA speed championships held in Portland Oregon. I believe he was the president of the IHPVA at that time.

 And he endorsed the Lefthandedcyclist blog and his friend and publisher Richard Ballantine expressed interest in publishing a collection of my posts.


Prof. Wilson, the bicyclist and human-powered vehicle builders of the world are greatly in you debt.

Dr. Recumbent, we solute you!

Hephaestus

And a picture I had to include because is summons up such fond feelings of Prof. Wilson

Professor David Gordon Wilson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on a Tricanter machine bicycle riding around the University of Canterbury campus in Ilam.

Creator: Christchurch Star