Bike Pacemeter takes high-flying ride

It was l967, about the time Walt entered the 11th grade at University High School. Walt was soon selling bicycles and supplies. He rented a vacant barber shop - complete with big "pump-up" chair and a pink lavatory in the sales room! That location is now part of Jefferson Junior High School’s lower sports field.

The bike business was booming. By l970, our friend Bud Stone helped Walt buy a lot on Rogers Street; he borrowed money for that and a new building. A few years later he rented a building in Warrensburg, near the campus of Central Missouri State University, and opened a second shop with Dave Erisman as manager.

Walt and Dave, innovative bicyclists, saw the serious bicyclist’s need for a device that would measure two things: miles per hour and cadence, to monitor the speed and regularity of pedaling. Walt and Dave set out to create a device they called "The Pacemeter."

Most people understood the novelty of knowing how many miles per hour they were traveling, but some cyclists had discovered the advantage of humming a tune as they pedaled in time with the music.

Walt and Dave planned for their Pacemeter to have two dials, a speedometer and a tachometer to register the rate and rhythm of pedaling. A glance at the handlebars would help the rider get "more miles for less muscle."

For two years, Walt and Dave worked on the Pacemeter, often for hours at my dining table sketching designs for wiring, mountings for sensors and magnets, and designing the attractive black meter container for the handlebars. They "whittled" the final weight down to only 9 ounces! They let me test prototypes on my Peugeot bicycle.

A representative of a widely respected British bicycle manufacturing company had planned to promote the Pacemeter to the industry. The young inventors borrowed money and patented the device, which sold for $70. But, at the crucial moment of placing it on the market, the prospective British promoter quit selling bicycles and went into tennis rackets! Walt and Dave had little money for national promotion but advertised briefly in a popular bicycling magazine. They sold Pacemeters to racers, Olympic trainers, summer camps for serious bicyclists and others, shipping them to 38 states.

One morning, Walt received a call from a California fellow who was vying for the Henry Kremer prize - $87,000 for the first person in the world to invent a successful plane propelled by human power. It had to take off, clear a 10-foot pylon, fly a half-mile, turn around, return and land safely. Paul MacCready explained they were working on a human-powered plane and thought the Pacemeter could help them. They flew many unsuccessful trials, always improving the design and reducing the weight to attempt to earn the Kremer prize. A bicycle racer who weighed twice as much as the plane was set to try again in MacCready’s "Gossamer Condor," a flimsy, 70-pound bird with a 96-foot wingspread. At 7:37 a.m. on Aug. 23, 1977, like a silent movie, the Gossamer Condor moved forward and lifted upward.It now hangs in the Smithsonian with the Pacemeter attached.


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