Alex Moulton
Oxford Dictionary of Modern Design:
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Alex Moulton
(1920- )
Most widely known for his distinctive, small-wheeled Moulton bicycle of 1962, Moulton was an inventive British designer and engineer. Having studied engineering at the University of Cambridge on either side of a period in the research department of British Aerospace during the Second World War, he went to work in the family rubber business. He worked with Alec Issigonis on the rubber suspension for the Austin Mini (1959), an idea that was carried through for the suspension of his Moulton Standard cycle of 1960. For a while this distinctive new form of bicycle caught the public imagination, with figures such as the architectural and design critic Reyner Banham seen riding around London on his Moulton and celebrating its revolutionary features. He even wrote a eulogistic essay, ‘A Grid on Two Farthings’, for the New Statesman magazine in October 1960 where he claimed that ‘bicycle thinking can never be the same again, and there can be no more nonsense about permanent and definitive forms’. The Raleigh bicycle manufacturing firm purchased the Moulton bicycle patent and produced the Mark 3. However, when the company was looking to capture a larger share of the children's bicycle market, its consultant designers Ogle Associates came up with the idea of the Chopper. Production energies were expended on the latter at the expense of the Moulton. Moulton later produced the steel AM GT (1983) and New Series in 1998.
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Alex Moulton
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Alex Moulton
Dr. Alexander Eric ("Alex") Moulton CBE (born 9 April 1920) is an English engineer and inventor, specialising in suspension design.
Moulton is the great-grandson of the rubber pioneer Stephen Moulton, the founder of the family business George Spencer Moulton & Co. Ltd., in which he worked after World War II, specialising in rubber suspension systems for vehicles.
In the late 1950s, after the acquisition of the family business by the Avon Rubber Company, Moulton started up a new company, Moulton Developments Limited, to design the suspension system for British Motor Corporation's new small car, the Mini, being designed by his friend Sir Alec Issigonis. The combination of conical rubber springs and small wheels was one of the many innovative developments which allowed Issigonis to achieve the Mini's small overall size. This was later refined into the hydrolastic and hydragas suspension systems used on later British Leyland cars such as the Austin Maxi and Rover Metro, and more recently on the MGF.
Moulton also designed the Moulton Bicycle, again using rubber suspension and small wheels. Alex Moulton Bicycles is based in Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, England.
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Contents
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Golden Book of Cycling
He has an entry in the Golden Book of Cycling, which he signed when he was 71.
Honours
In 1976, Moulton was awarded the CBE for services to industry. Other honours include:
- The Diploma di Medagli d'Oro, Milan (1964)
- Queen's Award for Technical Innovation (1967)
- Honorary Doctorates from the Royal College of Art (1967), University of Bath (1971) and Cranfield University (1994)
- Elected to the Faculty of Royal Designers for Industry (1968), Master of the Faculty from 1981–1983
- Fellow of The Royal Academy of Engineering (1980)
- Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering from 1985 to 1988.
See also
External links
- Alex Moulton's Memoir
- Moulton Bicycles corporate website
- Loughborough University Honorary Degree Oration presenting Dr. Moulton the degree of Doctor of Technology.
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Oxford Dictionary of Modern Design
A Dictionary of Modern Design. Copyright © 2004, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
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