TWO BICYCLES: the first is from 1888, the second a top-of-the-range racing bike from 2025. Nearly 140 years separate them, but the designs are almost identical.
Bicycles went through many iterations, from scoot-along hobby cycles to ungainly penny farthings. But once this format was arrived at, it stuck. Two wheels around two feet in diameter, a V-shaped frame between holding the saddle at one end, the handlebars at the other, with the pedals at the bottom. Cables may have replaced brake levers, and the handlebar shape may have changed, but the basic form factor is identical.
Once evolution has produced a format that works, we tend to stick with it. It’s the same with cars: two people in the front, two at the back, a wheel in each corner, steering wheel mounted on the dashboard, headlights on the front corners. A car designed today is built along almost exactly the same principles as cars designed a hundred and fifty years ago, which itself were based on the carriages from which they evolved.
If it works, it works.
