Jobst Brandt

Jobst Brandt (January 14, 1935 – May 5, 2015) was an American mechanical engineer, inventor, bicycle enthusiast, educator, and author.

Jobst Brandt
Jobst Brandt (front) in 2008
Born	(1935-01-14)January 14, 1935 New York City
Died	May 5, 2015(2015-05-05) (aged 80)
Notable work	The Bicycle Wheel
Father	Karl Brandt

Early life

Brandt was born in New York City, where his father, the German-born agricultural economist Karl Brandt, was a professor at the New School for Social Research.^[1][2] The family moved to Palo Alto in 1938. Jobst Brandt studied mechanical engineering at Stanford University, graduating in 1958.^[3] After two years of military service in the US Army Corps of Engineers, stationed near Frankfurt, Germany, he found employment at Porsche.^[4] His subsequent employers included Hewlett Packard, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and Avocet, a bicycle accessories brand.^[5] At Avocet, he was involved in the development of a cyclocomputer (patent 6,134,508), touring shoes (patent 4,547,983), and a high-performance bicycle tire, and published The Bicycle Wheel, a unique treatise on wheelbuilding, which became a best-seller.

Legacy

From the late 1980s until the early/mid 2000s, the era of the Usenet newsgroup, Jobst Brandt was a prolific contributor to rec.bicycles.tech and other public forums.^[6][7] His authoritative explanations and incisive, sometimes tart opinions on bicycle technology, as well as the detailed descriptions of his inspiring bike holidays in the Alps^[8] and epic one-day rides in the Santa Cruz Mountains,^[9] brought him a wide readership among avid bicyclists well beyond the Bay Area, in the nascent online community.