Today we have quite well defined what personal mobility is like, but at the start of the twentieth century and with everything to evolve, ideas were not so clear. The first cars were on their way and also the same motorcycles, but at the same time they lived with cars and horses through the streets. At the same time, the aeronautics was taking off, never better and the mixture was called Aerothrust.
The name, Aerothrust, “aerial thrust” or “aerial propulsion” already gives a clear clue what we are talking about. But the curious thing is to see that this propulsion was used on bicycles, also booming in those times, giving life to what we could call aerial cyclomotor.
To be more exact, Aerothrust was not only tested by bicycles, also in other vehicles such as ships and even cars, but we will stay with the part where some propellers boosted bicycles. A priori may seem like a relatively good idea in terms of effectiveness, and it allowed to circulate faster than if they were pedal.
Aerothrust problems were not just security
But in reality, applied to the bicycle or even a motorcycle, the Aerothrust had great disadvantages in those moments. The most obvious is that of security, because we talk about carrying a engine that moves a propeller. A propeller that revolves at high speed and that, therefore, can generate serious accidents, both careless from those who are uploaded in the vehicle and by pedestrians. And in those times, security measures are not really effective or valued either.
However, it was dynamically easy to manage, something much more difficult to solve than security issues. And it is that the acceleration depended on the speed of the propeller, which did not have an effective regulation mechanism and, therefore, it was difficult to maintain constant speeds or stop when it was needed
This problem, aggravated in urban environments where it was imperative to be able to stop and security, played very against them.
Even so, outside the city the thing did not improve and that is that high speed stability was not the best. Do not lose sight of the fact that the ingenuity, although relatively light, weighed a lathe at 23 kg, with a single cylinder, and was placed in the rear of the bicycle. To this we must add the drag that it generated, which subtracted efficiency and with all that the estimates, they talk that it could reach between 30 and 40 kilometers per hour.
That figure may sound good, but we take into account that at that time there were already cyclomotor in its most literal sense (bicycles with coupled engines) that with 1 or 2 hp achieved between 30 and 50 km/h, neither did they stand out.
Thus, it is not surprising that Aerothrust is an invention that has not permeated in the world of motorcycles. Of course, despite this there have been more attempts in more recent times, although with the same success …
