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The Attic -
Attic What IZIT
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 #44
 Lets get the obvious out of the way, it is a crankset. The interesting part is how it works. If you dont remember make up a creative answer and you just might win a Runner Up prize. Do you remember what ITIZ? The winning answer will include the Make, Model and Functionality of the item. Personal experience is worth big bonus points. A winner has been crowned! Thanks to everyone for all the great answers!
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Thanks to all for a great response on this edition of Bikeman's Attic What IZIT. After much deliberation we have crowned a winner. The first hand personal exposure to the product, in one form or another, was the key to victory. Both the winner and runner up where neck and neck coming to the line but the tie goes to the BMX reference that Bikeman had forgotten about.
WINNER - Christian Seeley: "This is the Browning Automatic Bicycle Transmission. It has been around, in one form or another, since the late '70's. The chainrings are split and hinged (that is the silver portion). The split/hinged portion are pushed into the next lower chainring when shifting and the chain just rolls off onto the next chainring as the rider pedals. As I said, the product has been around for a while, but it never has caught on, except for maybe some comfort/hybrid type applications. Probably not durable enough for hard mountain biking or road riding. My first exposure to it was in the '80s when I was a BMX rat, my hero Harry Leary was testing a 2 speed Browning transmission for BMX racing. He went back to using a regular 1 ring set-up the next season, if that tells you anything."
RUNNER UP - Greg Balco: "Awesome. That thing is either a Browning Automatic Transmission or Suntour's later attempt to make a production version of the Browning. The hinged sector of the crank flops back and forth to pick up or deliver the chain directly to or from a different ring -- the flopping is driven by an electromagnetic actuator with a battery and a handlebar switch. I walked into a bike shop in Golden, Colorado on a Sunday morning in 1993 and the shop owner had a prototype bike that had one of these on the front and, even more amazingly, a similar one on the rear end that had four gears and replaced the rear cluster. Two sets of handlebar-mounted buttons and, if I'm remembering right, an automatic-shift mode that tried to maintain pedal RPM in some range. This design is one of the most impressive machining accomplishments ever put on a bike...it's too bad Suntour never managed to deliver a production model."
HONORABLE MENTION - David Hamlow: "The photo looks to be the second or third generation of the Browning Automatic Transmission (by the Browning Rifle folks) that was tested extensively for a couple of years by Ned Overend and a few other pros (back when Ned was Schwinn's star racer). I think it's late '80s vintage ('88-'89) but memory doesn't serve too well. It shifted by a "gate" (the hinged quarter of the chainring set) which was actuated via a tab or finger on the gate by a seat tube mounted solenoid. It was said to great for shifting under power, but was slow beacause it could only be actuated at one point in the pedal revolution. I remember drooling over the pictures in Mountain Bike Action and Mountain Bike (a now defunct publication that ran for 4 or so years in the golden years of mountain biking - yeah, I know, what a nostalgic retro grouch loser!) back in the day when WTB and Bontrager weren't OEM names and roller cams were still cool!"
HONORABLE MENTION - Telford Crisco: "That is the swinging gate crankset developed by Browning and licensed and produced by SunTour in 1990. It was known as the Browning Electronic AccuShift Transmission or BEAST. The chain was shifted by hinged gates instead of a front derailleur. The system is controlled by a bar mounted control with two buttons. Hit "H" to shift to a higher gear or hit "L" to shift to a lower gear. The button sent an electronic signal to a control box mounted on the lower down tube next to the crank. The box actualted a railroad type switch mounted on the seat tube that engaged a tab on the crank and moved the hinged assembly, shifting the chain. SunTour production and delivery of the crankset was delayed for over a year and very few of the systems ended up on bikes."
HONORABLE MENTION - Aki Sato: "I'll try again since it seems that no one got it. Initially I could have sworn it was the Browning Automatic Transmission (which makes me think of the unrelated Browning Automatic Rifle, but that's a different story). But a quick (and wrong) Google search dissuaded me from saying it. But with my head working again, I did another Google and my hunch had been right. Apparently they are called Browning Component and their shifting system is called the Browning SmartShift. It came out a long time ago, at least before 1995, probably in the late 80's. Back then it was simply an alternative front derailleur - in otherwords, a front derailleur that would work under pressure. This was the beginning of indexed shifting and the front shifting systems were not very refined or reliable. Suntour's was terrible and Shimano sort of gave up for a while - in fact, the only front shifter that seemed to work well was the low end Front Freewheeling System (basically the chainrings freewheeled, the "freewheel" was basically fixed, and you could coast and shift). The BAT was a smooth shifting alternative, accurate, quiet, primarily because it moved the chainring over versus forcing the chain to move over. I only saw it work in demonstrations and it seemed to make sense. The only thing was you had to get the very expensive crank. I believe the initial ones were mechanical (cable actuated), not electrical, but they are now "computerized" and "automatic". They are marketing their product as an automatic bicycle transmission now."
HONORABLE MENTION - Sean Bell: "IZIT a SunTour BEAST (Browning Electronic AccuShift Transmission) crankset, from about 1991? Cutaway sections of chainring swing in and out to seamlessly move the chain from one ring to another sans front derailleur. A nifty idea, seems a lot more useful than a machinegun to me, but it was one of the things that killed SunTour (okay, probably played an infintely small role, but it was just too complicated to manufacture and deliver on schedule, and was one of the distractions that let Shimano come in and eat their lunch)."
HONORABLE MENTION - Geof Yeo: "Browning 'automatic transmission'? I never had personal experience with this thing, but it was an electronic shifter for the front chainrings. (obviously). If i recall correctly, they also made a BMX version which was a double chainring model. That must have been in the mid/late 80's? Sorry, this one's still a bit fuzzy..."
HONORABLE MENTION - Charlie Wicker: "I stared at that photo for a few minutes and then said "No way" about ten times. Yes it has to be a shifter. The silver 90 degrees of gear section rotate inward/outward to send the chain up or down. I'm guessing it worked really well when it did but when things went wrong the rider would have to go and manually get the chain back where it belongs. Otherwise the death of the front derailleur would have already occurred. It probably cratered if the shift was initated at the wrong moment in the rotation."
PACK FODDER - Shayne Santi, Hwe Pang, Mark Chandler, Peter Sandretto, Darrell Swiger: "...All came up with the manufacturer and model but did not elaborate"
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