DISRAELI DOCUMENTS
You cannot collect derailleurs without accidentally collecting a certain number of instruction sheets, catalogues and nefarious other documents. These are strangely fascinating - like letters in a bottle that have been adrift in a sea of garbage in people’s garages for many a decade.
I also have a quiet enthusiasm for patent documentation, partly because of the clear and verifiable dates, partly because it credits the (often unheralded) individual designers involved, partly because of the spooky engineer-speak, but largely because of the natty engineering drawings. In an echo of Daniel Rebour, these drawings provide a visual history of the derailleur in a pleasingly consistent and formal style.
Where a patent is registered in many countries, I tend to favour a version registered in an English speaking country - if only because I can understand it myself. This is not cool, but will have to do until Esperanto finally sweeps the world.
I am very gradually adding a selection of documents to this site.
You can browse the document collection in four different ways:
In addition to the document collection the site has three further sections:
As a handy guide, each of these sections of the site has its own colour scheme, and its own navigation menus - how technologically advanced is that?
You can use the arrows like this to move to the page that I deem to be logically next (or previous).
Finally no website is complete without a 'social media strategy' - and this one is no exception. You can find a link to my Facebook group in the footer of each page. This is what Facebook calls a 'closed' group - to avoid the evil that is spam-bots you have to ask to join it - but I am unlikely to refuse membership to anyone human. This group is growing, and is becoming a useful forum for discussing all things derailleur.
I hope you will find some of this stuff useful.