By the early 1980s, French bicycle manufacturers were already voluntarily adopting British threads on freewheels, BBs, and headsets, just to stop the erosion of market share. The marketplace demanded it.
Greg Parker
Ann Arbor, Michigan
No argument there. It's just that a longstanding big-picture objective of the the ISO was to gain universal acceptance of the System International measurement system with millimeters, grams, etc., yet their shorter range decisions in cases like bicycles undermined that by adopting dimensions that are only nominally in SI units, which is why the numbers look so strange.
Agreed that there was a need for a general standard, whatever that be, but if they had settled on Swiss thread, that would in 2005 have all the same benefits as the current ISO standard without the weird dimensions.
Of course picking Swiss thread would have forced 98% of the market to change rather than 10% or maybe 20%, since I'm not sure English thread was quite 90% at the time. Which of course is exactly why they made the decision they did. They chose the course that achieved a common standard with the smallest possible change to the status quo, which makes practical sense, but there is no doubt it represents a compromise of the strict technical standards.
Had the standard been adopted in say the late 60's, when UK component makers were already disappearing, the US had no significant lightweight cycle manfacturing, the Japanese were not yet important component exporters and the French and Italians were still adhering to their own standards, it is a strong possibility they would have standardized on French thread, or maybe even Swiss, since only the fixed cup was different, and that made good engineering sense.
But obviously the political climate was not right in the late 60's, and by the mid 80's the bicycle world had changed. So we have a politically and commercially practical standard, even though in purely technical terms it is a bastard system.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
gpvb1@comcast.net wrote: And the Italians felt that Italian threads made the most sense, and the Zimbabweans probably felt that Zimbabwean threading was the way to go. That's why it's difficult to have any standards at all....
In a mature marketplace, you can't just come in and tell everyone to change everything - not gonna happen. British threads were on maybe 90% of the world's bikes by the time the standards were proposed. The ISO did things that were improvements, like ISO freewheel threading, that folks would agree to. In the real world, what they came up with makes perfect sense to me.
At least we don't have a bunch of French, Swiss, Italian, or Whitworth threads out there in the mix at this point (on current production parts) - it's much less complex now, from a manufacturing standpoint.
Greg
I think it was bizarre in a technical sense that they adopted as a standard English dimensions they had been calling archaic for decades. OK, they officially list the dimensions in mm, but it us usually a mm number to 3 or 4 decimal places, because it is in fact just an English measurement converted to mm. Someone reading the standard for the first time with no knowledge of the history would think "Why the hell didn't they make it an even number of mm rather than xx.3862?" Such a detached observer would probably conclude the entire standards committee must have been drunk the day they decided on bicycle standards.
In a purely technical sense, French thread, a purely metric standard with most dimensions in even mm, would have made much more sense, but by the time the standard was adopted, French thread just didn't have enough market share to prevail. Actually, Swiss thread, which properly uses left hand thread on the fixed BB cup, would have been even better in a technical sense, but of course the market share of that was miniscule.
I remember in first grade in the mid-50's reading in our weekly science reader how the world was changing to metric and how the US would be on the metric standard within 10 years. In fact, I doubt I will live long enough to see that actually happen.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
gpvb1@comcast.net wrote: The ISO (based in Geneva, Switzerland), after a decade or so of Global discussions, came up with the ISO Standards for bicycle components. Here's a quote from 1990, from Sutherland's Manual: "Standards, standards, standards. Why doesn't soebody come up with a set of standards? Somebody has. Manufacturers and representatives from other groups from countries that manufacture bicycles met in Geneva and over a period of years came up with standards for the International Standards Organization or ISO. The ISO is an international agency, a meeting ground for representatives of national standards organizations such as the US' American National Standards Institute (ANSI). The ISO attempts to standardize dimensions, markings, and safety requirements to increase compatability, help international trade, and reduce product hazards. Standards are introduced slowly to avoid disruptions in trade. The ISO tries to make new, standardized equipment work as often as possible with existing equipment. For this reason, despite the trend elsewhere toward metric standards, many of the ISO bicycle standards are based on English measurements. ISO thread form (the shape of the thead itself) is slightly different from English, but parts are still compatible. Axle threads, wrench flats and the like, which require the use of standard tools in manufacture or srvicing, are metric in the new ISO standards." What's bizarre about that? Greg Parker Ann Arbor, Michigan
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 04:51:29 -0700 (PDT) From: Jerome & Elizabeth Moos To: Raymond Dobbins , Classic Rendezvous Bike List Subject: Re: [CR]What does ISO mean on a Regina Oro freewheel
ISO threading is essentially the same as English. The ISO some years ago sanctified the English standard by adopting it as the "official" internat! ional standard for bicycle threading. Technically this was a bizarre decision, since as early as the mid-50's, most international technical organizations were pronouncing the English system of measurement in general to be archaic and obsolete, and predicting its imminent replacement with the metric (now referred to as SI) system. But the ISO decision was all about economics and market power. By that time the Japanese component makers, especially Shimano, had become huge players in the market, and they had gone primarily to English threading since the US was their biggest market. So the ISO bowed to this reality, and adopted a standard which they or their predecessors had been decrying as obsolete for decades. I had thought that the ISO standard was adopted more recently than 1985, but time flies, I guess.
Regards,
Jerry Moos Houston, TX
Raymond Dobbins wrote: hi all,
i have a 1985 6 speed regina oro freewheel nib. the freewheel does not indicate what the threading is, but the box is marked "ISO." for some reason i thought this meant the threading was english - is this correct? if ISO has nothing to do with the threading, how can i know what the threading is?
thanks in advance for your help,
ray dobbins
miami, florida