See also: Fichtel & Sachs documents

Country: Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland)

Founded in 1895 in Schweinfurt, by Ernst Sachs, a talented engineer, and Karl Fichtel an equally talented salesman, Fichtel & Sachs (F&S) was one of the great European bicycle component companies.

Their most famous products are the Torpedo series of hub gears. The first Torpedo 2 speed hub was produced in 1904, and its direct descendant, the SRAM T3 (T is widely understood to stand for Torpedo) 3 speed hub remains in production (possibly not in Schweinfurt) to this day. F&S produced many, many, millions of Torpedo hubs and a huge number of them are still in use all over the world. The canals of Amsterdam are also full of them - as they were a mainstay of the traditional ‘Dutch’ bicycle.

In addition to their hub gears, the F&S group of companies produced a myriad of other engineered products including bicycles, motorcycles and motorcycle engines.

F&S’s interest in derailleurs was always a trifle strange. They really believed that derailleurs were a way of broadening the appeal of their hub gears. The idea was to mount multiple cogs onto the hub gear to widen the range of available ratios. More...