Inside the Factory S02E04 - Bicycles

Brompton's bicycle factory in West London is the largest in Britain, producing 150 of its distinctive folding bicycles every 24 hours.

In the fourth episode of Inside the Factory Gregg joins a multi-stage manual production line to make his very own bike. He'll learn how to put together 1200 individual parts. He'll also attempt to braze a bike frame together using extreme heat of a thousand degrees, a skill that takes years to master. He'll visit a leather saddle maker in Birmingham that's been making saddles for 150 years and discover how they use cowhide from UK and Ireland cows because the cold weather means they have thicker skins.

Meanwhile, Cherry Healey gets some tips from Cycling Team GB to help us all improve our pedal power. She also learns how to paint a bike frame fit for the British weather using an electro-static charge and a 180 degree hot oven. Cherry also investigates why cyclists and trucks are such a deadly combination: in London alone there have been 66 fatalities since 2011 and half of them were collisions with a truck.

And historian Ruth Goodman reveals that folding bikes date back to the 1870's, and how 70,000 folding 'parabikes' were manufactured during World War II, some of which played a role in the D-Day landings. She'll also find out how the invention of the safety bicycle in the late 1880's was used by Suffragettes to ride to rallies and spread the word in their fight for equality.