Rob Van der Plas

Rob van der Plas is a professional engineer and a long-time bicycle enthusiast. He has authored more than 20 books on various aspects of bikes and biking in English, German, and Dutch.

His first English-language book was The Penguin Bicycle Handbook, published in the U.K. by Penguin Books in 1983. Other of his books were published by Sterling Publishing (U.S.), Spectrum and Elmar (both Netherlands), and BVA-Verlagsanstalt, BLV-Verlag, Falken Verlag, and Ravensburger Verlag (all Germany). Translations of his works have appeared in Swedish, Danish, Polish, Hungarian, French, and Spanish.

In 1984 he started his own publishing venture, initially called Velo Press, later renamed Bicycle Books, to publish books on the subject written by various authors (including himself). Bicycle Books was sold to Motor Books International in 1997, and in 1999 he formed Cycle Publishing / Van der Plas Publications, publishing both cycling books and books on other subjects.

He lives in San Francisco, and is still active both riding bicycles and writing on the subject. His latest book, Bicycle Technology, coauthored with Stuart Baird, is a pretty impressive tome comprising 320 pages with 800 illustrations that was published July 2010.

In addition to writing about the subject, he is also active as an expert witness in patent infringement and other cases involving the bicycle and bicycle technology.