ByCarlton Reid,
Senior Contributor.
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.”
