For those in the Bay Area I highly recommend the Marin Museum of Bicycling. They have an absolutely incredible collection and walking through it you can actually see the bicycle evolve from the direct pedal to today's designs. Truly wild to see some of the dead end evolutionary branches. Steering mechanisms, gearing, early chains, brakes -- people tried so many crazy approaches.

It was founded by a lot of the original mountain bikers so it has a lot of the evolution of mountain bikes as well.

Love that this is on Hacker News! INRNG has some of the best commentary about professional cycling online, as well as book reviews and travel pieces around famous climbs and races. If you are a fan of professional cycling, it’s a must-read.

I visited the Shimano Bicycle Museum two years ago and it was a delight. Their new museum is even better than the one they had about a decade ago (smaller building inside the large Daisen Park nearby).

When I purchased the ticket I was offered an English version of the history of bikes presentation in the main hall. I politely declined, but was later politely approached with a piece of paper handwritten with a time the English version would play. I attended and was so glad I did. It was a beautifully presented showcase of bikes across history (with individual bikes in the room being thoughtfully-timely lit up as the video described them).

Really worth going. And I super love Japan and the way I've been treated wherever I went. I've been to Japan about a dozen times now over the last 20 years - it's my favorite place to be.

Aha! maybe this is the time to finally resolve a question that has bugged me for years.

In Europe up to about 1983-ish I don't recall anything other than European manufacturers. For example, your commuter bike would have had a 3-speed Sturmey Archer gearbox inside the rear hub and your fancy road bike would have had Campagnolo (if you could afford it: they were infamously expensive).

And then out of (what seemed like) nowhere Shimano shows up with all these innovations. Index shifting, non-circular chainrings, cassette freewheels, 7-speed or more blocks.

Was there a reason that Shimano suddenly showed up in Europe with all these innovations?

“The bicycle is a curious vehicle. Its passenger is its engine. ” ― John Howard

Shimano make great fishing tackle especially reels, from applying their expert gear-engineering skills from bicycle manufacturing, plus is an outdoor sport.

I like the Shimano MTB stuff, usually I'm all in on the XT level stuff. I did have some XTR cranks back in the day, but they had this cool dark grey color. I especially like the XT disk brakes and their clipless XT trail pedals.

I live in Osaka, I did not know this existed so close by, I should go visit.

History of Kharkiv Bicycle Factory in Ukraine.

https://uk-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%A5%D0%B0%D1...

Praiseworthy because "Timo Noko" is mentioned as a customer. Those bicycles were good but dirt cheap, maybe even 1/10 of Raleigh or Shimano.

Spa World in Osaka is also worth a visit if you're in the area. For reasons beyond my understanding, Osaka happens to have _several_ bars serving ridiculously good absinthe cocktails.

I had a Shimano bike as a teenager and it was great, the breaks were amazing and I loved riding it until it got stolen right in front of a bank security guard. I still think about the bike.

They also have a museum in Singapore, which I highly recommend.

No rods or reels? As a Shimano fishing enthusiast, I feel slightly underrepresented here. :)

I'm going to Japan in a few weeks and was contemplating visiting this. I'm an avid cyclist and bicycle activist. However, not a big gearhead. What kinds of cyclists is it aimed for? Is it worth a detour?

https://www.moosfietsen.nl/museum.html also has a nice collection of old bicycles!

I'm a fairly enthusiastic road rider, and while I'd never trade the tech on my modern bike there's a beauty to those early derailleurs that is lost in modernity.

By coincidence I was oiling my Shimano Tourney and hour or so earlier. There's something satisfying about well made engineering.

3 years ago, I visited this museum during my cycling trip across South Korea and Japan. the staff were so friendly

I hope there's an exhibit on the first generation ten-speed dura ace group set, which was a legitimate jump ahead in capability and precision when it was introduced in 2004. Everything since then has been refining some of the same.