Jobst Brandt is a mechanical engineer (Stanford) with extensive experience, having worked for Porsche automobiles, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Hewlett-Packard and Avocet bicycle products.

He is best known in the bike industry as the author of The Bicycle Wheel, the definitive text on the theory and practice of building spoked bicycle wheels.

Brandt is a regular contributor to the rec.bicycles.tech Newsgroup. Most of the material below originally appeared in the rec.bicycles FAQ. The material is reproduced here in an HTML format by permission.

Brandt is well-known for trenchant and to-the-point comments on mechanical issues, based on a deep reservoir of engineering knowledge. He is not always right -- but almost always. He did not suffer fools gladly -- thin-skinned people, buckle up and take what's coming!

Sheldon has interspersed comments into some of the messages linked below, in brown (Brown) text. When Brandt's opinion is open to question -- or a message has gone out of date -- Sheldon generally has a response well worth reading. I'm using green.

Brandt suffered a broken leg in what appears to have been a single-bicycle crash (no witness reports) in January, 2011. He also suffered brain injury. According to one report, this was from a stroke while he was in the hospital, rather than the crash itself -- though he famously did not wear a helmet. He has not posted messages since. He is sorely missed in discussions of bicycling issues.

There is also a different -- and larger -- selection of Brandt's messages, nicely indexed like this one, on another site, Norman Yarvin's yarchive.net. Thanks, Norman! -- John Allen