Good question-- why didn't Sturmey-Archer make a derailleur? Like, why Brooks never made a carbon saddle. Why Morgan never made an SUV. You have to love it. This probably explains why I fell off my chair a few years ago when I saw that Reynolds was making carbon forks.
Here's a cultural theory explanation: During the early development of deraillures, the French struturalism movement was bent on turning things inside out and making the insides visible. Derailleur systems are all surface. The innards are on the outside; same thinking that produced the Pompidou Center. Meantime, British syncretism was intent on holding everything inside, keeping secrets, wrapping and cloaking things, spy stories, Le Carre, while showing the world an ubane casual exterior as though nothing was happening. Sturmey-Archer hubs are like most brits: banal and plain on the outside while inside there's a galaxy of tiny gears and frenzied spinning. Derailleur systems, like most French, are pointy, notchy, and prickly on the outside, a blur of contorted effort and convoluted chain run, while inside there's not much going on except where to find the next pack of Gitanes. Now if only I could connect Sturmey-Archer's abandonment of hub gears to the breaking of ground on the Lloyds of London building.
Mitch Harris
Little Rock Canyon, Utah