Paul de Vivie


Paul de Vivie, who wrote as Vélocio, was the publisher of Le Cycliste, a developer and early champion of derailleur gears, and father of French bicycle touring and randonneuring.

Background

De Vivie was born at Pernes-les-Fontaines, France. His youth was unremarkable except for a love for the classics. His father was a prosperous Gascon with links to the nobility. He came from Saint-Germain-de-la-Sauvetat and worked as the head of post. His mother, Marthe Roman, came from Arles. Paul de Vivie lived at Tarascon, Meyzieu, and studied at Lachassagne, near Lyon until 1870.
De Vivie went into the silk industry as an apprentice and then opened his own business in St-Étienne before he was 30. He married in St-Étienne in 1876. He lived at 6 rue Brossard.
He bought his first bicycle, a penny-farthing when he was 28, in 1881. In that year he became the founding secretary of Les Cyclistes Stéphanois. The club held its first meeting at 1 rue des Arts, St-Étienne, on 23 October 1881. The address was the home of a member, A. Jourjon, and became the club's address when it was registered as a new organisation at the préfecture on 11 March 1882. Evidence that de Vivie was a reasonably prosperous man is shown in a club rule that allowed membership only to amateurs, a definition which excluded ordinary working men. Further evidence is the writer Jean-Pierre Baud's calculation that a bicycle cost 200 francs or 56 times the daily wage of an everyday worker.
Club membership cost 17 francs the first year and 12 francs in subsequent year. Membership was open not only to those who pedalled but others who preferred machines "furnished by steam, electricity and any other propulsion."
A friend challenged de Vivie to ride his new bicycle 100 km in six hours and he set out to the mountain resort of Chaise-Dieu. The peace, adventure and countryside changed his life - and persuaded him he needed a better bike. A year later he bought a Bayliss tricycle, followed by a tandem tricycle and others. His work in the silk industry required trips to England and it was there, in Coventry, then the centre of the world cycle industry, that he was inspired by British bicycles and joined the Cyclists' Touring Club. In 1887, he sold his business, opened the Agence Générale Vélocipédique in St-Étienne to import bikes from Coventry, and began a magazine, Le Cycliste Forézien, renamed Le Cycliste the following year.

Campaign for multiple gears

De Vivie imported machines from England. In 1889 he made a bike of his own, called La Gauloise. It had a diamond frame, chain and a single gear. De Vivie was riding the col de la République in 1889 when one of his readers overtook him - smoking a pipe. De Vivie felt challenged but also trapped: if he lowered his gear, he would go slower on the flat. But on the gearing that he had, he could not climb hills fast enough either. British thinking favoured epicyclic and planetary gears, concealed in the rear hub. De Vivie created the derailleur. His first had two chain wheels; the chain had to be lifted by hand from one to the other. He then placed two chain wheels on the left side. The combination gave him four gears. In 1901 Velocio combined his invention with the four-speed proteon gear of the English Whippet, which used a split chain wheel. Pedalling backwards made the two halves of the chain wheel open. Pawls then secured them in one of four positions. De Vivie's development appeared in his Cheminot in 1906, the first derailleur. He overlooked taking out a patent and made barely any money from an invention which changed cycling.
It has been said that de Vivie invented something which already existed, in Britain, and simply made the derailleur better known.
Traditional cyclists did not appreciate his gears. The organiser of the Tour de France, Henri Desgrange, dismissed them in L'Auto as fit only for invalids and women. De Vivie campaigned for his invention and rode every morning up the col de la République for the joy of passing riders without them.
The Touring Club de France organised a challenge in 1902 in which a female rider, Marthe Hesse, participated riding a Gauloise with a three-speed derailleur. Hesse was one among only four riders crossing the Tourmalet without setting foot to the ground. Desgrange, though, wrote:
De Vivie's invention is in the museum of art and industry at St-Étienne. His friend, Albert Raimond, developed the idea and started the Cyclo gear company. Raimond, like Vivie, was fond of hilly rides.

Advocacy for small wheels

De Vivie was also an early advocate of tires of up to 57mm cross-section on rims as small as 500mm, preceding modern advocates of small wheel bicycles such as Alex Moulton. In 1911 he wrote:
Velocio died at St-Étienne, France. His obituary in the Gazette of the Cyclists' Touring Club pictured him with an open-framed small-wheel bicycle.

Writing

Vélocio wrote of his tours in a language that inspired a nation - France - in which holidays with pay were unknown:
Or again:

Death and memorial

De Vivie was a vegetarian, a speaker of Esperanto and a strict man who started every day of his later life by reading ancient Greek. On February 27, 1930, the last words he read were from Seneca to Lucius:
Then he collected his bike and began pushing it across the road. He stepped back to avoid a car and was hit and killed by a tram. His memorial is at the top of the col de la République. Its inscription reads: "Paul de Vivie, alias Vélocio. Apostle of cycle-touring and promoter of gears . Monument erected by the town of Pernes-les-Fontaines on the 150th anniversary of his birth. Inaugurated 20 April 2003."
He coined the French term cyclo-tourisme, which continues in use. He is buried in the cemetery at Loyasse, near Lyon. His plaque reads: "To their venerable master, the cyclo-tourists of St-Étienne." A road is named after him in St-Étienne.
The American writer Clifford Graves said in May 1965: