A Perfect Gadget!

Boing Boing Gadgets has a nice list of perfect, can't-be-improved-upon machines. Of course my favorite, the bicycle, made the list. And they found some great quotes about the elegant invention.

There are a billion of them worldwide, serving dutifully in work, leisure and even artwork: "The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets," said Christopher Morley.

Though operating on a simple mechanism of wheels and pedals, their thermodynamic efficiency is so remarkable that almost nothing has changed in the basic design since the 1880s. And as Morley was drawn to write eloquently about our most eloquent form of transit, so were many others.

Einstein dreamed the theory of relativity while riding one. "Get a bicycle. You will not regret it. If you live," said Twain. "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race," said H. G. Wells.

To this day, their wonders inspire little but wonder: "I hope that cycling in London will become almost Chinese in its ubiquity," London mayor Boris Johnson recently remarked.

They also linked to this little video below. So this entire post is essentially stolen. Sue me!