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Alpine gearing
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Originally, this term applied to any gear system that provided a seriously low gear. One older definition was "anything that used a 36-tooth or smaller chainwheel". The term was also used for a shift pattern that had a very low gear that was a big jump down from the main cruising gears.
For instance, my 1957 OTB came with a 14/16/19/26 freewheel. The 14/16/19 gave a pretty good cruising range with the 48 tooth chainwheel, the 26 was for climbing hills (there was also a 30 tooth chainwheel for climbing serious hills).
Sometime in the early '70's, advertisers co-opted the term "alpine" and started to apply it to the 40/52-14/28 setups common on mass-produced 10-speeds of the '70's bike boom. As a result, the term became essentially meaningless.
