Re: I was cranked to a fifth gear

msb@xxxxxxx had it ...
Most consumer automobiles that still use standard (= not automatic)
transmissions...

A usage I always find annoying. "Standard" should (I say) be used to
mean "not optional". A non-automatic transmission is a manual one.

In the UK, manual transmission is standard on perhaps 90% of cars
((by number of actual cars) sold. A few, mostly very large, cars
have automatic transmission as standard. For the others, it's a
option for which you have to pay.

have three or four forward gears...

Do they really? I thought it was always four or more these days.
Not that I've ever driven one.

Could the author be talking about a bicycle? How many gears does a
bicycle have?

I had a bike with ten gears, and 16 or 24 are quite common...

I know the first kind as a "10-speed" bicycle. The ten speeds are
implemented using one set of 2 chainwheels on the axle the pedals rotate
around, and another set of 5 chainwheels on the rear wheel axle, shifted
independently to produce 10 combinations. (I'm told that only about
8 of these are useful.) Although in other contexts one uses "gear" to
identify a gear setting, with a 10-speed bike it's a little confusing
since the chainwheels may also be considered to be "gears".

When I was younger, 10-speeds competed with bikes that had a geared
transmission inside the rear hub -- I don't know if that's still true.
The traditional number of gears (settings) on these was 3, while some
had 5.

Until I was about 20, the "standard" gears on UK bicycles was the 3-
gear Sturmey-Archer hub at the centre of the rear wheel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmey_Archer

For the last 30 years, the "standard" has been the derailleur
(pronounced de-rail-er) as you describe above. I have two bikes,
with 10 and 15 gears respectively (2 x 5 and 3 x 5).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derailleur_gears

--
David
=====
.

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