Derailleur gears several standards in use, and in each the product of the derailleur's actuation ratio and the length of cable pulled must equal the pitch of the rear sprockets. The following standards exist. Some rear derailleurs, especially for mountain bikes, incorporate a clutch to keep the lower length of chain in sufficient tension to prevent the chain from striking the bottom of the chain stay, called "chain slap", and which can damage the chain stay. Clutches are also helpful in preventing the chain from derailing from the chain ring on systems without a front derailleur. The front derailleur only has to
Derailleur gears cable-operated parallelogram rear derailleurs. In 1964, Suntour invented the "slant-parallelogram" rear derailleur, which let the jockey pulley maintain a more constant distance from the different sized sprockets, resulting in easier shifting. Once the patents expired, other manufacturers adopted this design, at least for their better models, and the "slant parallelogram" remains the current rear derailleur pattern. Before the 1990s many manufacturers made derailleurs, including Simplex, Huret, Galli, Mavic, Gipiemme, Zeus, Suntour, and Shimano. However, the successful introduction and promotion of indexed shifting by Shimano in 1985 required a compatible system of shift levers, derailleur, sprockets, chainrings, chain, shift cable, and