WHAT THE FORK? THE SEARCH FOR SOME NON-TAPERED SUSPENSION.

Check out any road bike from 1950 and then one from 1985. That 1950 bike precedes the 1985 bike by the same time period as the 1985 bike does a showroom-new one, now in 2020. However, the two older bikes look identical to each other. Steel frames, downtube gear shifting, etc. If you look closely, the 1985 bike probably has different brakes and a different spacing for the rear hub (6mm wider to accommodate extra gears). Basically, a long time went by with almost no change.

Since 1985 it has been all change, all the time. Frames changed to aluminium and then to carbon. Rear hub spacing increased twice more (up 4mm for yet more gears and then up 5mm for disc rotors). Some of the changes, like disc brakes, were borrowed from mountain bikes. But early