Contemporary bicycles have many parts made of aluminum (or "aluminium," if you prefer) for lightness, strength and corrosion resistance. Contemporary bicycles that have steel rims, or cranks, or handlebars, or brakes do so as a way of cutting corners and saving a little bit of money, for a low-end bicycle. Modern steel rims, cranks, etc are of low quality, because they are aimed at the cheapest possible price point.

From the mid 19th century, well into the 20th, the word "steel" was magic in Britain. Britain's rise to an industrial superpower on the crest of the Industrial Revolution was based, as much as anything else, on the steel industry and the new technologies it made possible: steel ships, steel bridges, steel buildings...and steel bicycles. Raleigh originally introduced the slogan "The All Steel Bicycle" to differentiate Raleighs from competitors who used cast iron for some critical parts, a heavier and cruder technology.

The mystique of steel caused the British cycle industry to be slow to adopt newfangled materials such as aluminum, and many British cyclists believed, even well into the 1960's, that steel rims, for instance, were superior to aluminum ones. These days, this seems laughable...but if you look at an older Dunlop steel rim, you'll find a very respectable, well-made product.

The fact that Raleigh 3-speeds are made of steel shouldn't fool you into thinking that these bikes were cheap or inferior in any way...they were not...they were the finest utility bicycles money could buy.

Raleigh 3-speed bicycles were introduced around the turn of the century, and kept improving in technology over the years, reaching a peak in quality probably in the mid-to-late 1950s. They continued to be built in Nottingham until the mid-1970's, when the glamour of the 10-speed fad pushed them out of favor with the rising baby boom generation.

When a modern company sets out to build a bicycle, what they really build is the frame (if that.) They buy sets of tubing from a tubing company, cut and weld them together into a frame, paint it and install parts which they buy different specialized parts companies. Actually, many well-known brands don't even do that; they order bicycle frames to be built to their specifications, with their name painted on, and equipped with parts from a variety of vendors. These companies are actually trading companies, even though their image is that of a manufacturer.

Raleigh, in its glory years (up into the 1960's) was the absolute opposite. In their enormous Nottingham factory covered 40 acres and employed nearly 7000 workers. A Raleigh bicycle of this era would have a Raleigh frame, made of Raleigh Tubing conected with Raleigh lugs, with a Raleigh bottom bracket, Raleigh cranks, Raleigh pedals, Raleigh headset, Raleigh handlebars, Raleigh stem, Raleigh seatpost, Raleigh hubs (Sturmey-Archer was a Raleigh subsidiary) and even Raleigh spokes. All of these parts would have been made in the same factory.

The saddles would be from Brooks, another Raleigh division, and the rims and tyres would be from Dunlop, a company closely related to Raleigh.

This level of integration has never been surpassed in the bicycle industry, though Schwinn came close in the same era.

If your bicycle has a Sturmey-Archer hub (c1903-1990s), it should have on the hub a date of manufacture, which would normally also be the cycle's date of manufacture. In the 1930s, they only used a single digit, i.e. "6" for "1936." After that, they started using two-digit date stamps.

If you are not sure the rear wheel on your bike is original, the charts below should help you determine the approximate date of manufacture.

It may also be possible to date your frame by its serial number. Note that the serial number information below is fragmentary and incomplete, and many bikes have proven to be much newer than the serial numbers would suggest.

The tables below are being compiled by examining bicycles that come in for service, and appear to be in original condition. It is possible that some of the equipment listed is anachronistic, but I believe this information is good.

In general, the quality reached its peak in the 1950s, and quality started to go down around the early 1960's, as management kept searching for ways to make the bicycles cheaper.

This table is focussed on the mainline Raleigh/Rudge/Humber "Sports" model. The luxury "Superbe" models were very similar, except for the saddles, the use of a locking front fork, and the inclusion of a Dynohub lighting system. (The Dynohub was also available as an extra-cost option on the Sports.)

Lower end models, such as Dunelt, Phillips, Robin Hood, Triumph etc. usually shared similar technology, though these models tended to have mattress saddles, Endrick rims, no chainguard braze-ons, fender stays bolted (not welded) to the fenders, and anchor-bolt type brake cables.