But the costs were indeed prohibitive. Something like a Shimano Nexus 8 speed hub with rollerbrake could have been made a couple hundred years ago (though ironically not the necessary teflon lined control cables). It just would have cost perhaps a lifetime of earnings for the common man.

When the copy of Babbage’s Difference Engine in the Science Museum in London was being made (about 20 years ago ?), I went to a presentation by Doron Swade who was doing this. He said then about how parts were being made to high precision using CNC machines and such like, though supposedly no more precision than was available in Victorian times. It would perhaps have been possible to make it back then, but it would have been fantastically expensive, and it’s easier now. BTW, if you like gleaming brass cogs, then this is a very very impressive machine and worth a visit if you’re in London:

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/onlinestuff/stories/babbage.aspx

The same goes for bikes. It’s so much easier to make them precisely now too. That’s a good part of the reason why bikes were very expensive a hundred years ago.

If you page through old books and patent applications you find that most of the modern innovations in bicycles have been thought of and probably also done long in the past. I’ve a (American) book from 1896 that shows bikes with two speed cranks, disk wheels, various suspension systems… the list goes on. Of course many of these features couldn’t be effectively produced and marketed until the materials and manufacturing technologies caught up.

http://hembrow.eu/personal/velorama.html#whitebike