A quick google search gave me an estimate of a 300:1 cost ratio of iron to silver (1 lb iron costing ~300 lb silver) in the 14th century. For comparison, a king’s annual income might have been 20,000 lbs of silver. Without fossil fuels, smelting iron ore requires lots of charcoal, which requires lots and lots of wood, which requires plenty of land and labor (ever chopped a tree down by hand?). Bicycles would have been prohibitively expensive before fossil fuels.
With silver trading at $230/lb and steel going for somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.20−.90 per pound (the range representing Chinese bulk commodity thru US small commercial quantity structural shapes), it would appear that the price ratio hasn’t changed much. (They are both metals...)
That’s a good quick check to run, thanks. Though, as the author mentions in the post, you could start experimenting with wooden frames.
On the other hand, assuming 20 pounds of steel per bicycle, that means a king could have had 20,000 * 300 / 30 = 300,000 bicycles per year. That’s a whole lotta bicycles to not be building. ;)
A quick google search gave me an estimate of a 300:1 cost ratio of iron to silver (1 lb iron costing ~300 lb silver) in the 14th century. For comparison, a king’s annual income might have been 20,000 lbs of silver. Without fossil fuels, smelting iron ore requires lots of charcoal, which requires lots and lots of wood, which requires plenty of land and labor (ever chopped a tree down by hand?). Bicycles would have been prohibitively expensive before fossil fuels.
https://www.quora.com/How-expensive-was-iron-in-the-late-12th-century-Europe
You have it inverted; your link says:
Whoops. My bad.
With silver trading at $230/lb and steel going for somewhere in the neighborhood of 0.20−.90 per pound (the range representing Chinese bulk commodity thru US small commercial quantity structural shapes), it would appear that the price ratio hasn’t changed much. (They are both metals...)
I am not a historian or an economist, but it seems better to compare steel to food: in 1500ish England, 8 pennies gets you 2 bushels of grain (i.e. 100 lbs; 3 month’s porridge)… or one axe head (1-2 lbs steel). (Though note that 16th century food prices are “weird”—it’s prior to refrigeraton, mechanization, chemical fertilizer, barbed wire...) http://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/gclark/papers/Agprice.pdf http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html
That’s a good quick check to run, thanks. Though, as the author mentions in the post, you could start experimenting with wooden frames.
On the other hand, assuming 20 pounds of steel per bicycle, that means a king could have had 20,000 * 300 / 30 = 300,000 bicycles per year. That’s a whole lotta bicycles to not be building. ;)