René Herse: The Master
Compass Cycles continues René Herse’s proud tradition of excellence in design, aesthetics and performance. During the 1930s, Herse worked on prototype aircraft, including the first plane to fly from Paris to New York. Herse was an avid cyclist, and he knew that bicycle parts could be made lighter and stronger by using aircraft technology and aircraft precision.
In 1938, Herse began to make a series of innovative components in his small workshop. He was among the first to use aluminum for his cranks. His cantilever brakes combined ultralight weight with superior stopping power. René Herse’s bottom brackets used cartridge bearings that were pressed into custom-machined bottom bracket shells. They spun smoothly for decades. Every detail was considered: Herse even custom-made his own bolts when the commercially available ones were not up to his standards.
Herse soon also made complete bikes, which achieved near-mythical status for their performance and reliability. They came first in the epic 1200 km Paris-Brest-Parisrandonnées. They won the incredible Poly de Chanteloup hillclimb races. And they were ridden to multiple national and world championships.
René Herse was as much an artist as he was an engineer. Beautifully proportioned and with every detail carefully considered, his bikes were as elegant as they were functional. He truly deserved his nickname: “The magician of Levallois”. (Levallois was the suburb of Paris where his workshop was located.)
In the late 1990s, our founder, Jan Heine, became interested in René Herse and his bikes. A successful racer and randonneur himself, Jan was seduced by the romance of mid-century French cycling culture, when cycling was not just a pastime, but a way of life. As a racer, Jan preferred epic stage races to office-park criteriums. As one of the first members of Randonneurs USA, he enjoyed exploring the Cascade Range with his friends, plotting new routes for challenging randonneur brevets.