Vintage Brooks England

Brooks was founded in Birmingham, England, in 1866 by John Boultbee Brooks. The company says he made his first leather bicycle saddle in 1878 after an uncomfortable ride, and Wikipedia notes the first saddle patent was filed in 1882. Velobase cites a 1935 figure that about 60 percent of the cycle saddles made in Britain that year came from Brooks. Raleigh later owned the business; after Raleigh's collapse in 1999 Brooks was rescued, and in 2002 it was sold to the Italian saddle maker Selle Royal, with production remaining in England. The B17, which Brooks says was first introduced in the 1890s, is its longest-running model. Other leather saddles found on vintage road bikes include the narrower Team Professional, the thick-leather Professional, the Swallow and the B15 Champion. Brooks fits large hand-hammered copper rivets on its premium saddles and machine-pressed steel rivets on cheaper models. Every Brooks leather saddle has a tension nut under the nose; Brooks advises turning it only a quarter to half turn at a time, and Sheldon Brown warned that heavy tightening is the quickest way to ruin one.

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