The Lost Recumbent

Has anybody been following The Lost Recumbent story on Laid Back Bike Report?
Interesting all wheel tilting trike invented in 1981 and was written up in Popular Science Magazine.
This was BEFORE there was any Tadpoles...
First Tadpole or does anybody know of one before that?

Neuxstone said:

Has anybody been following The Lost Recumbent story on Laid Back Bike Report?
Interesting all wheel tilting trike invented in 1981 and was written up in Popular Science Magazine.
This was BEFORE there was any Tadpoles...
First Tadpole or does anybody know of one before that?

Click to expand...

Excellent, thanks for the link Neuxstone :thumb:

https://www.laidbackbikereport.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YByLVqCYBM&feature=emb_title

Creating a tilting trike in the early 1980s was anything but mainstream. Our guest for this podcast is David Ashenbrener. David tells us his tale of designing such a recumbent and getting noticed enough to be published in Popular Science magazine in 1982. From there we talk about how he mysteriously lost track of his invention and its design for almost 40 years before resurrecting it this year with hopes of bringing it to market. Honza Galla joins us with the latest Recumbent News and Nina Paley our resident "Retro-Futurist" begins her new regular segment looking back at the Bicycle of the Future.

Click to expand...

Thanks for posting the links!
I’m really curious if anyone in the forum can think back to the first “Tadpole” style trike.
While designing this the only one I identified with that had that general configuration was the record setting “Vector”.
While I was designing it however, I found the “cart” steering so far removed from a bicycle (which I rode since I was 6) that it was disturbing to ride.
My idea was to get it to ride and bank into corners.
It took over 2 years but I finally perfected it, or as close as I could get to a bicycle ride.
I would like to claim this to be not only the “Lost Recumbent” but to be the “First Recumbent Tadpole”.
Anyone out there as old as me that can remember?(without making any outrageous claims)

Yeah. That was pretty interesting. I fooled with recumbent trikes back in the late 1980s. I had an idea for a lean steer trike, and had some guys in Indianapolis build one from my design for me. It was a real hoot to ride.

I decided recumbent trikes were fun, but too low and wide for safety around cars.

Neuxstone said:

This was BEFORE there was any Tadpoles...
First Tadpole or does anybody know of one before that?

Click to expand...

There were tadpole trikes, an velomobiles in the mid 1970's.

Mid-70s Tadpole?. Nina Paley is doing a History of the Golden Age of recumbents. It would be interesting to have everyone weigh in here with any links or info I could pass on.
Thanks ahead.

The oil embargo launched the rebirth of quite a few open, and enclosed, trikes. I used to have all the articles, books, journals, and periodicals from the 1970's through the early 2000s. I shipped it all off to UC San Diego Engineering School some years ago, I think it was.

https://www.delo.si/assets/media/other/20130304/VELO_thesis.pdf

https://www.velostrom.de/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/velomobile_presentation_v5.pdf

https://tadpolerider2.wordpress.com/2014/09/06/hpv-slingshot-dragster/

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

So very cool and appreciated Warren.
I’ll send these off to an associate who is doing a documentary film on the golden age of recumbents.

Neuxstone said:

First Tadpole or does anybody know of one before that?

Click to expand...

The Masa Slingshots were commercially available in the 1970s. They were heavy and prone to tipping over due to rider placement relative to the placement of the wheels.

https://tadpolerider2.wordpress.com/2017/03/31/masa-slingshot-a-bit-of-nostalgia/

thank you. Very interesting but I wonder why they didn’t shorten to equalize wheel weight? I guess crawl before you walk then run which is a progression like anything else.