Air Miseries,
The way I heard the story was a little different. The Raleigh Company went back much further than you mention in Nottinghamshire. Essentially, Sir Walter Raleigh raised the taxes so much in his lands that all of the peasants had to give up driving their MiniCoopers and take to riding two-wheel contraptions that they called “Raleighs” for obvious disparaging reasons. Contraptions which blew tires made of rotten rubber at an amazing rate, and which risked life and limb regularly when a bit of mud or water confounded the pushrod-enabled Sturmey-Archers. All of which production set off an economic boom in the ‘Shire, despite it not being declared an economic enterprise zone.
Later, some linguist skilled in Latin came up with the idea of calling these Raleighs “bi-cycles,” and the name stuck. But by then Sir Robin Hood and most of the countryside had switched over from driving electric MiniCoopers to eBikes with carbon composite wheels (better for Labor’s carbon credits) and the merry men fell on hard times—no one was buying many Raleighs any more, much to the consternation of Master Richard Woodenhead. (No relation to any current politicians.) Thusly and therefore, there were several fabricators, I think some have mentioned Little John, who while of great strength of arm, did not have much adaptability of skills, and kept making these metal spokes but had to find new uses for them.
No, Sir Hooker could not use them in Merlins. No, Sir Sidney (the famous Camm grinder of mid-century) could not use them. There have long been rumors that a great quantity were purchased for the TSR2 program—not for any traditional use—but for shrapnel in the secret WoodenBomb program, but that is likely just hearsay. That left Little John of Nottingham with no choice but to pedal (so to speak) his spokes to the likes of BSA, and when that dried up, to the clever blokes at the SMAE. And here we are today fighting the battle over the use of carbon-tube pushrods (which will clearly save the planet) or Sir Walter Raleigh’s despotic plan to infest all of the world with steel pushrods in control line modeling.
Or so the story was explained to me by those involved in Heavy Stunt….