Tachyon (Тахион) is a brand of specialist racing bikes developed by TSKTB in Kharkiv, Ukraine. In Cyrillic TSKTB may be ЦКТБB or Центральное конструкторско-технологическое бюро велостроения (possibly Central Design Office for Bicycle Construction).

A Tachyon is a hypothetical particle that can travel faster than the speed of light - the fastest object dreamt up by man. It was an appropriate name for bikes that were meant to use the very highest of high technology to achieve the very highest of high speeds.

The TSKTB was the premier centre for advanced bicycle design in the USSR. Two individuals, Georgy Panin and Reginald Vorontsov are closely identified with many of its achievements. While TSKTB had existed at least as long ago as the 1960s it really came into its own in the run up to the 1980 Moscow Olympic games. In particular it sought to create two 100% Soviet models, a world class road bike and and a world class track bike. These bikes were intended for the use of the USSR team at their home Olympics. TSKTB produced a set of stunning ‘Moscow 80’ (Москва 80) bikes which used radical materials (such as Titanium for the spokes). However I believe that the team managers were suspicious of the reliability of these machines, and wanted to (and probably did) use Italian bikes in the actual Olympic events. For the road bike TSKTB produced a high quality aluminium derailleur, with (I think) Titanium bolts.

Reginald Vorontsov had only joined the Olympic project in 1979, and continued to develop the bikes after the Olympics were over. In particular he developed a series of ultra low profile track and time trial bikes which had handlebars mounted on the fork crown. All these bikes were branded Tachyon. As with the Olympic bikes, they were constructed to the highest standards and made extensive use of titanium small parts. Between 1980 and 1992, I believe that 17 different variants of Tachyon bikes were manufactured and a total of 500 bikes were produced. After 1992 Reginald Vorontsov produced bikes using Boron-Aluminium alloy tubing under the ‘Vorontsov’ brand.

I have heard it said that the radical Tachyon ultra low profile bikes made a profound impression on western bike designers and that the designers of Francesco Moser’s radical 1984 world hour record bike were very aware of them. I have, however, no real evidence for this.

The first derailleur patent that I could find that mentioned TSKTB dates from 1966. It shows a a rather clean design by Georgy Panin that is reminiscent of the Simplex Juy Export 61, with two sprung pivots and thumbwheel limit adjusters.

Vadim Vorontsov (Reginald’s son) tells me that work on the derailleur for the Moscow 80 bikes began in 1977, and he sent me scans of technical drawings dating from 1979 and 1981. They show a clean simple derailleur much in the style of a Campagnolo Super Record of the time, but with both adjustment screws on the front knuckle, as seen on the steel Kharkov (2nd style) and Kharkov (3rd style) in this collection.

Georgy Panin was involved with two further derailleur patents, both in 1980. One was in association with Perm, the other was submitted jointly with Reginald Vorontsov.

Finally there are some photos on the web of some rather odd Tachyon derailleurs with very long hangers.