You never know when or where inspiration will strike, especially in the bicycle industry.
Take Harry Montague, who died at 77 earlier this month, for example. A professional architect for 30 years, it is his folding bicycle design that will be his legacy.
The Washington Post writes that Montague liked to ride a bicycle around his neighborhood in the 1970s and 1980s, but standard bicycles took up too much room at home. He said small, commuter bicycles were too wobbly for his big frame.
Garage
So what Montague did was start tinkering in his garage with a standard mountain bike. He added some hinges and hand-adjustable levers, and made it so it would fold it up small enough to fit in the trunk of his car. It could be zipped up in a bag and carried over his shoulder.
None of the 40 or so bike manufacturers he contacted were interested in the design, however, so he started building the custom bikes himself.
His son, David, was a grad student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the time, and used the folding bicycle as the subject of a college project on entrepreneurship. It was such a cool idea, the professor asked if he was interested in outside investors.
Company
The son launched the Montague Corp. in 1987 and was soon building 2,000 bikes a year. Now, the company sells 40,000 full-sized folding bikes a year in 10 different on-road and off-road styles. The 700c folding bikes for pavement riding was just added to the line-up last year.
Perhaps one of the most unique is the Paratrooper mountain bike series, a rugged bike originally developed for the US Marine paratroopers as the Tactical Electric No Signature Mountain bike.
Innovation
It's interesting how such a successful development as standard-size folding bicycles came out of someone's garage, instead of a bicycle manufacturer laboratory.
Maybe some of the next big things in bicycling will be on display this coming weekend at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show this Friday through Sunday in Austin.
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