Go back in time to the Middle Ages

Yeah, and even with a high quality mountain bike there are still lots of places you couldn't go. Some cities and towns would probably be glad to adopt them (since some had proper roads), but you're gonna have a hell of a time actually constructing additional bicycles and maintaining them.

Bike rusts in five years
People remember it as an oddity
History continues

>Bike rusts in five years

Your parents stopped buying you things because you kept leaving them out in the rain, dummy.

Replicating the gear and chain mechanisms and brakes will probably be the most difficult for people of the time period. Not saying it can't be done, but you'd better bring an instruction manual with you on how to build the damn things, too.

It's not the bicycle that would get most anons burned for witchcraft, it's their personalities.

People always forget this, but back then even iron was relatively rare.

You'd be better bringing a flintlock musket and steam engine. Those could be replicated and understood by medieval science.

>Those could be replicated and understood by medieval science.

Metallurgy would be a bitch, though.

oh hi there i'm just enabling everyone to rapidly produce and spread en masse literally any idea anyone comes up with

Imagine if Cathars had a printing press.

Top lel, probably true about thatanon

Would the cyclist be knighted?

I once asked this question on Veeky Forums, and according to them the issue isn't the metalwork but the rubber tires. A bike without them isn't nearly as good.

Also, even if you had modern bikes it wouldn't change much as horses are still better for warfare.

Can you imagine bicycle jousting?

This user get it They would probably struggle to recreate a good bike chain that would hold up to the kind of wear and tear it would undergo. We don't worry too much about rust these days, but back then it would probably have been prohibitive.

Plus they'd have to make tires out of wood, which could a) break and b) would be terribly uncomfortable because c) they definitely could not make springs.

The real problems would be ball bearings and grease that didn't decay into glue so the wheels rotate freely.

...

I teach people to wash their hands in recently boiled water before taking care of someone's injuries, and the same with bandages. That'd be more useful.

Assuming you mean Europe, nothing. The tech to make rubber isn't there nor are the materials. There's no good replacement material for the wheels and even if there was the roads are no good for bicycles.

Women would have much larger thighs without modern medicine to deal with it, child mortality rates skyrocket.

Don't forget milk. Or rather, stop just before boiling point. Good job, you've invented pasteurization and will save countless lives.

Try googling "bicycle polo" for nearest existing equivalent...

Didn't people still mostly drink watered wine even "late"? I guess I'll tell them about milk too, though.

Basic cowpox/smallpox vaccination technique would also help.

Also the weight would be a huge hurdle.

>Also you wouldn't be burned for witchcraft as they had complex machines like siege engines
Also, accusing someone of witchcraft was actually a capital offense in many parts of Europe, such as early Middle Ages France.

Just bring them the closest equivalent.

Pretty much this.

A whole lot of investment for something less useful than a horse.

Bike really only became a thing when metallurgy and machining made them cheap enough to be a horse alternative.

Inversely, the bicycle and piston might actually make it easier to produce proper steel by pumping oxygen into a forge. It would also make it easier to charge air canisters if you wanted to introduce airguns/the Girandoni a few centuries early.

Perhaps a better invention to bring would be the semaphore tower, or barbed wire.

>Also, accusing someone of witchcraft was actually a capital offense in many parts of Europe, such as early Middle Ages France.
This. Believing that the devil could give people magic powers was heretical for a long time in many places.

There's a Mark Twain book about this.

Guy goes back in time.
Guy shows off cool future-toys to King Arthur and his knights.
Guy and the King get in trouble but knights of the round table come to their rescue. On bicycles.

Good stuff.

I remember a story from my law history class.
Some middle age farmer was living next to a very old very senile widow. For some petty reasons I don't remember he accused her of witchcraft.
The French Inquisition that everyone expect came, and they finally killed the man instead after finding out it was completely false and the old lady wasn't even shady

Don't really need a chain or gears

>Only problems I can see would be the chain, gears brakes and tyres
So, everything.

The new Sword Art Online looks amazing.

There is literally a classic novel about this.

Read a book, kids.

I've wondered about that too, even earlier times. Can you imagine Roman soldiers going about on their bikes?
I thought Veeky Forums was supposed to be creative. You don't need a chain, or brakes, or rubber tires. The first bike was made out of wood.

Reading's for nerds.

Muh wheels, muh off roading, muh high tech thick wheeled mountain bikes.

Bah I say BAH

>You don't need a chain, or brakes, or rubber tires

Witchcraft burning was done by Protestants in the early modern period, not medieval catholics

>his bike needs a chain

Where do you think you are?

Yeah. But they take up too much space, you can't load them up with racks and panniers to carry cargo, and your much more likely to go sailing over the handlebars and bash your head/neck.

Interesting.

Though the problem of having strong, long lasting, reliable bearings is still an issue even with that bike because while the number of bearings is reduced to just the ones in the wheels and the tools used to machine the bike, that's still important

I still don't understand what importance would the bike have. Even if you could make chains, brakes and rubber, you still won't have knights on bikes because a horse is still superior for warfare.

If they could mass produce them, they'd be excellent for moving foot soldiers around. Way cheaper and easier to maintain than horses, too.

Introduction of new ideas. As quite a few people have said, you're lacking a lot of the technique necessary to make such a thing back then or properly maintain it. BUT. You do have a finished product, and the human mind is an ingenious little shit.

Nobody painted in perspective until an italian autist showed them how, user, and he sparked a revolution in the arts and architecture.

Who's to say the end result of bringing a bike back has to be wide spread adoption and warfare anyway?

>Can you imagine Roman soldiers going about on their bikes

Rip, world.

In 1825 the first railway, between Stockton and Darlington, was opened, and Stephenson's "Rocket," with a thirteen-ton train, got up to a speed of forty-four miles per hour. From 1830 onward railways multiplied. By the middle of thecentury a network of railways had spread all over Europe.

Here was a sudden change in what had long been a fixed condition of human life, the maximum rate of land transport.

After the Russian disaster, Napoleon travelled from near Vilna to Paris in 312 hours. This was a journey of about 1,400 miles. He was travelling with every conceivable advantage, and he averaged under 5 miles an hour.

An ordinary traveller could not have done this distance in twice the time. These were about the same maximum rates of travel as held good between Rome and Gaul in the first century A.D. Then suddenly came this tremendous change.
The railways reduced this journey for any ordinary traveller to less than forty-eight hours.

That's just a skateboard in the shape of a bike.
A bike by definition has pedals.

No it wasn't

Well, transportation would be quick, cheap and low skill (as long as there were roads)

This would encourage the movement of people and labour and lead to the dissolution of the feudal system more swiftly

It would also have spread the plague at quadruple the speed so theres that

Medieval society believing everything is witchcraft really is a bit of a meme isn't it? I think a bicycle would fill a typical medieval person with wonder and delight. There's nothing unsettling about an obviously mechanical object. I am willing to bet that people have been people for far longer than the human species is given credit for.

Literally first episode of Jackass.

What does that have to do with bicycles?

Yes. But it's a bit silly to say that.

It's like saying helicopters are way better at transporting people than horses if you can mass produce them for less than the cost of a horse.

You what

Shhh... He went to public school, don't make him feel bad

Is that a Flintstones bike?

They'd basically only be able to build 2 wheeled carts that you can sit on and push around, which already existed and were not practical.

But they clearly do have the necessary materials needed to replicate and easily produce something as simple as It's not like asking Charlemagne to build a Saturn-V.

If you think: is a practical way of moving an army, you're mad. Especially given what passed for roads, in a lot of places.

Kind of want to have a Mad Count who forces his men to use these.

neat AF

modern pushbikes wouldnt be very useful without modern roads

it would be dooable with wood. a lot of people forget that there was advanced math, and woodworking before there were ever masons. Probably use a knotted rope in place of a chain, or a series of gears. and be heavier and dumber. but workable.

How do you ride this?

couldn't you use [pardopn the expression] bigger balls? You could use brass during that age. [i know it sounds like a double entendre' but its not]

So what, wooden ball bearings?
They'd split under the pressure

petrified wood?
you'd also have to carve a perfect sphere with no machining, and some sort of organic lubricant like vegetable oil.

though i really shouldn't help you save face, since that was an ignorant statement.

people in my town play unicycle football and there is a tradition where the first team to get the ball is decided by jousting match.

youtube.com/watch?v=XzNof-JM7N4

your quaint simple town sounds charming and idiotic. Allow me to sell you several kilos of cocaine to make it more modern.

Any place it is safe to unicycle is a place that needs a little more excitement. Tell me, have you tried meth?

Nobody would unicycle without heroin addicts in the first place. Its like juggling. The five dollar blowjob of street entertainers.

And that my friends, is called trolling. Its how you get away with things when things are too peaceful. It takes a while for people to start hollering and calling you a pain in the ass, but once they do, the insufferable snootyness that has infected your community will come crashing down.

Of course, it will likely be replaced with a slew of profanities and ignorant generalities, but oh well..

Not at all. Bicycles are worthless toys.

there are examples going as far back as history allows that demonstrates as you say 'people have been people'. The people of the past haven't even been incompetant they just didn't have the vast knowledge of their ancestors behind them.

Saying something is witchcraft was usually reserved for when the church was involved and were required to give an official statement for something they didn't understand, very similar in every respect to today's politicians.