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Sheldon Brown
Sheldon Brown, icebiking
Born	(1944-07-14)July 14, 1944 Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Died	February 4, 2008(2008-02-04) (aged 63) Newton, Massachusetts, USA
Cause of death	Heart attack
Nationality	American
Other names	Christopher Joyce (nom de plume); Carapace Completed Umber (alter ego)
Occupation(s)	Bicycle mechanic, Webmaster, Writer, Photographer
Employer	Harris Cyclery
Spouse	Harriet Fell
Children	Tova and George
Parent(s)	George Matson Brown and Madalyn Joyce Brown
Website	http://www.sheldonbrown.com/
Notes

Sheldon Brown (July 14, 1944 – February 4, 2008) was an American bicycle mechanic and technical authority on bicycles. He contributed to numerous print and online sources related to bicycling, bicycle mechanics and maintenance, including his own website, and received numerous awards for his contributions.

Biography

Brown was the parts manager, webmaster and technical consultant of Harris Cyclery, a bike shop in West Newton, Massachusetts. He was an enthusiast for old and classic bicycles and cycling including Raleigh and English three-speed bicycles, Sturmey-Archer hubs, tandems, and fixed-gear cycles. He repaired cameras, and was an accomplished amateur photographer and his site features his photographic work.

Brown, a francophile, lived and cycled extensively in France. He maintained a English-French cycling dictionary and wrote extensively of his family's travels in France.

After developing nerve deterioration over the last years of his life, Brown lost his ability to balance an upright bicycle and continued riding with a recumbent tricycle. In August 2007, Brown was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis. Brown died on February 4, 2008 after a heart attack.

Online

Brown's website, developed with Harris Cyclery, includes technical information, with an emphasis on do-it-yourself customization of bicycles. The site remains current - the commercial pages are maintained and updated by Harris Cyclery employees, and the informational pages by his widow, Harriet Fell and his friend, John Allen, a noted bicycle authority.

Brown was noted for developing and maintaining the site's glossary of bicycling terminology, his online guide to wheelbuilding, as well as the mirror sites of the technical work of Damon Rinard and others.

With Galen Evans and Osman Isvan, Brown developed a method to determine and compare bicycle gear ratios. For any combination of front chainring, rear cog, wheel size and crank length, his method results in a number that Brown terms the "gain ratio" . This method purports to be the only formula that takes into account crank length in addition to chainring, cog and wheel size, and has the advantage of producing a unitless quantity and is thus independent of the choice of units for the contributing quantities.

Also, he wrote extensive argumentation about chain cleaning, lubrication and wear, a topic which is often a source of disagreement among riders and among lubricant manufacturers.

Brown was a frequent participant in online cycling forums such as the rec.bicycles.tech Usenet newsgroup and bikeforums.net, and he was noted for his April Fool's Day articles. On some groups, links to his site in response to technical questions were flagged with the abbreviation AASHTA (As Always, Sheldon Has The Answer). His signature style was to sign off with a whimsical nickname related to the topic at hand. When discussing an internal planetary gear hub (such as the Sturmey-Archer or the Shimano Nexus hubs), he might be Sheldon "Totally Enclosed" Brown or, for a page on gears and drivetrain, Sheldon "Shifty" Brown.

Brown was an early proponent of fixed-gear, single-speed bicycles for ordinary street use — after such designs had, for many years, been supplanted by multi-speed models in industrialised countries.

Print Publications, Awards

Brown was a contributing writer for Bike World magazine (USA) in the late 1970s and for Bicycling magazine (USA) in the early 1980s, then for the trade magazine American Bicyclist and Motorcyclist from approximately 1988 through 1992. For several years until shortly before his death, he wrote the "Mechanical Advantage" column for Adventure Cyclist, the magazine of the Adventure Cycling Association. In 2004, Brown was recognized for his contribution to cycling by the UK's Cyclists' Touring Club (CTC). Reference is made to his site in the technical library of the CTC.

References

1. ^ Commonwealth of Massachusetts Standard Certificate of Death
2. Brown, Sheldon. "Sheldon Brown's Home Page". Sheldon Brown. Retrieved 2008-02-04.
3. Kerber, Ross (2008-02-08). "Homespun wisdom". The Boston Globe. NY Times Co. Retrieved 2008-02-08. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
4. Brown, Sheldon. "Servicing English Three Speeds". Sheldon Brown. Retrieved 2008-02-05.
5. Brown, Sheldon. "The Bright Side of MS by Sheldon Brown". Sheldon Brown. Retrieved 2008-02-05.
6. "Sheldon Brown: 1944 - 2008". Retrieved 2008-02-05.
7. Boulanger, Gary (2008-02-04). "Sheldon Brown: 1944 - 2008". BikeRadar. Bath, England: Future Publishing Limited. Retrieved 2008-02-04.
8. "Sheldon Brown Obituary". The Times. 2008-03-03.
9. Fell, Harriet. "What's New on sheldonbrown.com". Harriet Fell and John Allen. Retrieved 2010-12-22.
10. Brown, Sheldon. "Gain Ratios". Sheldon Brown. Retrieved 2008-02-08.
11. http://sheldonbrown.com/chains.html
12. Brown, Sheldon. "Bicycle Humor". Sheldon Brown. Retrieved 2008-02-05.
13. Brown, Sheldon. "Nexus Gearhub". Sheldon Brown. Retrieved 2009-02-08.
14. Brown, Sheldon. "Gears and Drivetrain". Sheldon Brown. Retrieved 2009-02-08.
15. http://sheldonbrown.com/singlespeed.html
16. Juden, Chris. "Cranks & Bottom Brackets Q&A". Retrieved 2007-05-24.

External links

• Sheldon Brown's homepage
• Harris Cyclery homepage
• Memorial page

Template:Persondata

• 1944 births
• 2008 deaths
• American cyclists
• Deaths from myocardial infarction
• Touring cyclists
• People from Marblehead, Massachusetts