this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
184 points (99.5% liked)

HistoryPhotos

1284 readers
803 users here now

HistoryPhotos is for photographs (or, if it can be found, film) of the past, recent or distant! Give us a little snapshot of history!

Rules

  1. Be respectful and inclusive.
  2. No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
  3. Foster a continuous learning environment.
  4. No genocide or atrocity denialism.
  5. Photos MUST be at LEAST 10 years old, and ideally over 20. We appreciate that we are living through events which will become history, but this is ultimately not a comm for news or current affairs, but events which have occurred some time in the past.

Related Communities:

founded 8 months ago
MODERATORS
Deceptichum@quokk.au
sga@piefed.social
PugJesus@piefed.social
184
Cyclists in the Tour de France sharing a smoke, France, 1920 (media.piefed.social)
submitted 1 week ago by PugJesus@piefed.social to c/historyphotos@piefed.social
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] merde@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

25849

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Check out the bike - fixed gear, they just flipped the rear wheel for the climbing gear. Shoes strapped into the pedals, slowing on mountaint descents with brakes made of cork, people died in these races.

[–] merde@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 week ago

are you sure about bikes being fixed geared? They may just be single speeds.

By 1899 there was widespread adoption in UK bicycle manufacture of the freewheel, usually combined with the back-pedal brake, and conversions were offered to existing bicycles.

At the turn of the century, bicycle manufacturers within Europe and America included the freewheel mechanism in a majority of their bicycles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freewheel