Stopping was the hard part
Early riders spent most of their effort on going forward. The earliest machines, such as the walking machine of 1817, could be stopped by putting the feet on the ground, which is exactly how the rider had been moving. Once pedals were fixed to the front wheel, that option vanished. A rider could no longer simply coast and drag a foot, and braking became its own problem.
This article follows the stopping mechanisms in the order they appeared. How riders operated them is a separate story, and this page stays on the brake itself.
Pedals as brakes
On the pedal velocipedes of the 1860s and the high-wheelers that followed, the cranks were attached directly to the front wheel. If the wheel turned, the pedals turned. A rider who stopped pedaling could not freewheel. Many riders resisted the wheel by pushing back on the pedals, which could slow the machine but required care. On a high-wheeler, riders also lifted their legs over the handlebars on downhill stretches, so that they were not carried around by the pedals. This was a risky practice that contributed to accidents.
The spoon brake
The common mechanical brake of this period was the spoon brake. It was a curved metal shoe, shaped something like a spoon, that pressed on the top of the front tire when the rider pulled a lever or a cord. Because tires were solid rubber, the pressure could slow the wheel, and the design was simple enough for a small workshop to make.
The spoon brake had limits. It wore the tire, worked poorly in wet conditions and depended on the tire’s surface being clean. The arrival of air-filled tires made it less suitable, because pressing a metal shoe onto a soft tire could damage it. It remained in use for a while on cheaper machines but was gradually replaced.
Rod brakes and rim brakes
As the rear-wheel-driven safety bicycle became common in the late 1880s and 1890s, brake designs spread. One approach was the rod-operated brake, in which a rider’s lever pulled a metal rod that pressed a brake block or a pad against the wheel rim. Rod brakes were robust and are still associated with traditional roadster bicycles in some countries.
A second approach was the cable-operated caliper brake. A caliper has two arms that pivot and squeeze a rim between two pads. The cable idea was helped by the Bowden cable, patented in 1896 by Ernest Monnington Bowden, a flexible cable inside a sheath. It allowed a lever on the handlebar to act on a brake some distance away without a rigid rod. Caliper rim brakes became the standard pattern for road bicycles for much of the twentieth century. Over time, the pads, rims and cables improved, and light alloys from aluminum smelting made lighter rims possible, though the principle stayed the same.
The coaster brake
A different solution was to put the brake inside the rear hub. The coaster brake, also called a backpedal brake, is operated by pedaling backward. A clutch mechanism inside the hub engages brake surfaces when the rider reverses the pedals. Because the brake is enclosed, it is largely protected from rain and mud, and it does not depend on the rim being clean.
Patents for hub brakes began to appear in the 1890s and early 1900s, and the form spread widely in the United States and parts of Europe. One German design, the Torpedo hub by Fichtel & Sachs, introduced in the early 1900s, is a well-known example of a freewheel hub with a brake. Coaster brakes became especially common on children’s bicycles and American cruisers, and they remain familiar today. Their main limitation is that the rider’s feet must be in the right pedal position to apply them, and they offer less control for long descents.
Discs and other changes
Later in the twentieth century, new designs appeared. Hydraulic and cable-operated disc brakes, which clamp a metal rotor on the wheel hub, became widely used on mountain bikes and then on many other types of bicycle. Material improvements, such as heat-resistant pads and stainless steel cables, improved reliability. The basic historical sequence still holds: tire pressure, then rim friction, then hub friction, then rotor friction.
Why designs coexisted
It would be wrong to think each brake replaced the last in a straight line. Different riders and regions preferred different types. Rod brakes persisted where roads were poor and maintenance was minimal. Caliper brakes were favored by those wanting light weight. Coaster brakes were liked by people who wanted something simple and protected. The same logic applies to many parts of the bicycle: the “best” design depends on the use.
Brakes also reflect the fact that bicycles share roads with other wheeled vehicles. The rider’s need to stop quickly has always been tied to the speed and traffic of the time. As speeds increased with gears and pneumatic tires, brake design had to keep pace.