Jobst Brandt

Jobst Brandt (1935 to 2015) was an American mechanical engineer, inventor, bicycle enthusiast, educator and author. Born in New York City, the son of the German-born agricultural economist Karl Brandt, he grew up in Palo Alto from 1938 and studied mechanical engineering at Stanford University, graduating in 1958. After two years in the US Army Corps of Engineers near Frankfurt he worked at Porsche, and later at Hewlett Packard, the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the bicycle accessories brand Avocet. At Avocet he took part in developing a cyclocomputer, touring shoes and a high-performance bicycle tire, and he published The Bicycle Wheel, a treatise on wheelbuilding that became a best-seller. From the late 1980s to the mid 2000s his explanations of bicycle technology on Usenet, notably rec.bicycles.tech, earned him a wide readership among cyclists.