I hold in my hand a piece of history. Some fortunate cyclist rode the hub shown below nearly a century ago. It turned up in the basement bike parts stash of my good friend, the late Sheldon Brown.
These hubs were made to last. Despite the rusted shell and the heavy wear to the inch-pitch sprocket, the gears and brake still engage. Clean oil seeps out — probably Sheldon’s work, and maybe he cleaned and reassembled the internals too, who knows. But even if so, the hub isn’t quite ready to lace up into a wheel and ride away — an indicator spindle and chain would need to be found or fabricated. Without them to shift the gears, the hub is a one-speed.
This looks very much like a Sturmey-Archer type F Tricoaster hub, made between 1907 and 1921 — as shown on the excellent Sturmey-Archer Heritage Web site.
However, the hub is labeled as a Type S rather than Type F, and it has 36 spoke holes rather than the 40 usual in British production. The lettering stamped onto the shell reads, in its entirety,
S
STURMEY-ARCHER
TRICOASTER
(patented)
I inquired of Tony Hadland, author of the book The Sturmey-Archer Story, and he replied:
A 36-hole rear hub in the UK would be odd in those days – 40 was the norm. However, consulting my ‘The Sturmey-Archer Story’, I read that on 7 May 1914 Sturmey-Archer did a deal with Sears Roebuck & Co. Sears were to pay £500 for use of Sturmey-Archer’s US patents, plus a royalty on each hub. So I’m guessing the ‘S’ stands for Sears.”
If you are interested in this kind of history, I can recommend Hadland’s book highly. I found it selling at a highly-inflated price on amazon.com, but Hadland pointed me to a much more reasonable source:
My Sturmey book … is still listed by the Veteran-Cycle Club at £13.75, same price its been since 1987! I suggest you email their book sales lady, Bibi Bugg, at bibibugg*at*uk2.net.
Don’t forget to read it in conjunction with the extensive supplement on my website.
And also, you might read Hadland’s history of Raleigh in the last quarter of the 20th Century.
