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[chdfarl]

Saw this on a trip to the Curtiss Museum in NY and figured some of you would appreciate seeing it.

[Richard230]

Those old bikes were said to use LPA (light pedal assistance) to get up hills.  History books claim that LPA led to more than one heart attack.   

[CrashCash]

I have a copy of "Motorcycles & Sidecars: Construction, Management, Repair" from 1924. It's a general Clymer's/Chilton's sort of book.

Anyway, the author strenuously disapproves of the manufacturers leaving bicycle style pedals off of the more recent models. Reminds me of the discussions in the '70s about them newfangled Hondas with electric start and no kickstarter. "But you've gotta have a kickstarter for when the battery dies!"

Not only did the pedals help with hills, they also acted as a kickstarter. Some of the bikes had no clutch, so they had to be stopped and restarted using the pedals at every intersection.

[chdfarl]

I wasn't planning to reply but the point was that you could ride an ICE bike without a variable transmission. Try putting one in any gear under 4th and pull off the shifter and you could ride from a stop and even up hills and that's without a 4 or 5 to 1 underdrive and its true that you could burn the clutch but only if do it wrong and ride the crap out of the clutch. A lot of mopeds use fixed gear ratios ( some use CVTs ) and have pedals too but can go from a stop and up hills without issues as long as your not shopping at the big and tall store but they are 50cc bikes so what would you expect. Those antiques bikes were similar with low torque and hp engines so they'd likely struggle even with transmissions.
Now on a separate note are you really blaming early 20th century cases of heart attacks on "light pedal assistance" now I'm rolling my eyes!

I'm done with this thread now it was for those who might not know that even though it isn't optimal for a gas bike to use only one speed, one could and that large underdrives were used on early gas bikes too.