Many components now seen on everyday bicycles were once associated mainly with riding rough trails. In the mobility exhibition at Munich’s Deutsches Museum, the history of mountain biking offers a way to follow those ideas as they moved from sport into wider use.
Mountain biking emerged in the United States in the 1970s and spread rapidly around the world. It also influenced bicycle design: disc brakes and suspension forks, useful for control on demanding surfaces, later became common on many everyday models. The technology travelled alongside riders’ changing expectations of comfort and handling.
The museum’s “Bicycle Curtain”, with around twenty exhibits, sets that story within a longer line of development, from the early pedal-free hobby-horse to today’s bicycle. Seen in that context, the mountain bike is more than a sporting niche. A popular way of riding can also reshape the machine people use for ordinary journeys.