Gimme a break -- I had the exact same little generator on my Schwinn in 1949. It made it harder to pedal....

LOL! It reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons when Bart engages his bottle nose dynamo of his bike because it's getting dark and it all but stops him from moving! :-D

Demon, my sentiments exactly...lol What would be better is some type of generator in the axel, so as not to make it harder to pedal and less wear on the tire.

And this is a ".....stroke of genius" why, exactly?

Genius would be if the generator was used to power an electric motor driving the bicycle. Now that would be clever..... Still, an "over-unity" bike can't be that far off...... ;)

Yeah...riding a bike for 20 minutes for 20 KMH (about 12.5 mph) is not really that tough... but with a dynamo attached? Yeah right...I'm no Lance Armstrong!

Those dynamos had a bad reputation for wearing through the sidewall of the tire and causing blowouts. I'd consider this more a stroke of ignorance than genius.

This is a gag article....

The worst part of the situation is that these generators were the WORST designed things to generate electricity ever invented - 100W of effort to generate 5W of light.

And all the idiots kept on manufacturing them "just like that".

If they had nice free running ball bearings, instead of the one long HUGE shitty and poorly lubricated plain bearing, if they had a decent permanent magnet and fine little field windings on soft iron poles, like a proper AC generator......

But nooooooo the stupids kept on doing the really crappy me too brain dead design and they all did cheap versions of it....

That is why SOME companies made little dynamos's from proper components and these things spun like one winged blow flies, and made heaps of power.

I really hate STUPID designs, I hate CHEAP designs and I hate BADLY made cheap and stupid designs..... and I hate the people that make them.

I had a few of these abortions on my bikes when I was a kid and I still resent the pox bottle generator and the people all along the supply chain who make and distribute them.

Allowing for losses etc., it should only take about 12W of power to make 10W of light - but these bottle generators make 5W of light for 100W of power.

Crap.

I wanna put it on my Buddy 50 :)

To catch a rat digging a mountain -- more effort,less profit.

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India

There are good and bad dynamos, just as there were a few decades ago. In general dynamo hubs are more reliable and efficient than bottle dynamos, but they do add a little drag even with the lights off.

What has improved hugely is the performance of dynamo powered lights. A modern LED light is much much better than anything available decades ago - they've been getting better and better even over the last few years.

I began looking for a similar product after reading this post. A few days later I found this. http://www.bike2power.com/smartphone-bicycle-charger-kit.html

My husband loves to ride, and he wanted to use stats apps and gps on his HTC incredible. But the phone battery would be dead in just45 minutes into the ride!

I checked out other similar products. Some of them were a little too complicate, other over budget.

I wanted to share my find because my husband is very happy with the kit; his friends bought some as well. I think it is a good product. Check it out if you want.

This was actually introduced specifically for the central African market where the biggest issue for communication is not the mobile phones or network infrastructure, but rather the lack of power!!! So, given that African conditions are slightly harder than most places around the world, and that these are fairly cheap, a basic bottle dynamo was the best option available to meet the requirements.

Hub dynamos are great, but they still produce additional resistance and are hellish expensive compared to something like this

@Alex Madison

$80.00 for a bottle dynamo, friction driven from the side of the tyre? Surely these things went out of use when I was a kid 60 years ago? My current bike has a very efficient hub unit, which STILL needs a whole lot of effort to turn.....lift the wheel, spin it by hand, and then turn on the light!

Incidentally, I haven't seen any comments about expensive hub-mounted disc brakes on cycles. Let's face it, disc brakes were invented for bikes, but were much more efficient with calipers operating on the rims! More completely unecessary 'progress', still, it provides work for someone I suppose!

Terotech,

Something tells me you've never actually tried disc brakes on bikes. Especially in inclement weather.

@Gadgeteer

All cycle brakes operating on wheel rims ARE disc brakes! Something tells me you haven't realised this! I thought I'd made it clear when I said that disc brakes were invented for cycles. Of course, the leverage at the rim is so much greater as well.