History of the bicycle
Encyclopedia
Vehicles for human transport
that have two wheels and require balancing by the rider date back to the early 19th century. The first means of transport making use of two wheels, and thus the archetype of the bicycle, was the German
draisine
dating back to 1817. The term bicycle
was coined in France
in the 1860s.
There are several early but unverifiable claims for the invention of bicycle-like machines.
The earliest comes from a sketch said to be from 1493 and attributed to Gian Giacomo Caprotti, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci
. Hans-Erhard Lessing recently claimed that this last assertion is a purposeful fraud. However, the authenticity of the bicycle sketch is still vigorously maintained by followers of Prof. Augusto Marinoni, a lexicographer and philologist, who was entrusted by the Commissione Vinciana of Rome with the transcription of da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus
.
Later, and equally unverifiable, is the contention that Comte de Sivrac developed a célérifère in 1791, demonstrating it at the Palais-Royal in France. The célérifère supposedly had two wheels set on a rigid wooden frame and no steering, directional control being limited to that attainable by leaning. A rider was said to have sat astride the machine and pushed it along using alternate feet. We now know a two-wheeled célérifère never existed (though there were four-wheelers) and it was a misinterpretation by the well known French journalist Louis Baudry de Saunier in 1891.
The first verifiable claim for a practically-used bicycle belongs to German
Baron
Karl von Drais
, a civil servant to the Grand Duke of Baden in Germany
. Drais invented his Laufmaschine (German
for "running machine") of 1817 that was called Draisine (English) or draisienne (French) by the press. Karl von Drais patented this design in 1818, which was the first commercially successful two-wheeled, steerable, human-propelled machine, commonly called a velocipede
, and nicknamed hobby-horse or dandy horse
. It was initially manufactured in Germany and France. Hans-Erhard Lessing found from circumstantial evidence that Drais' interest in finding an alternative to the horse was the starvation and death of horses caused by crop failure in 1816 ("Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death
," following the volcanic eruption of Tambora
). On his first reported ride from Mannheim
on June 12, 1817, he covered 13 km (eight miles) in less than an hour. Constructed almost entirely of wood, the draisine weighed 22 kg (48 pounds), had brass bushings within the wheel bearings, iron shod wheels, a rear-wheel brake and 152 mm (6 inches) of trail of the front-wheel for a self-centering caster
effect. This design was welcomed by mechanically minded men daring to balance, and several thousand copies were built and used, primarily in Western Europe and in North America. Its popularity rapidly faded when, partly due to increasing numbers of accidents, some city authorities began to prohibit its use. However in 1866 Paris a Chinese visitor named Bin Chun could still observe foot-pushed velocipedes.
The concept was picked up by a number of British cartwrights; the most notable being Denis Johnson of London
announcing in late 1818 that he would sell an improved model. New names were introduced when Johnson patented his machine “pedestrian curricle” or “velocipede,” but the public preferred nicknames like “hobby-horse,” after the children’s toy or, worse still, “dandyhorse,” after the foppish men who often rode them. Johnson's machine was an improvement on Drais's, being notably more elegant: his wooden frame had a serpentine shape
instead of Drais's straight one, allowing the use of larger wheels without raising the rider's seat. During the summer of 1819 the "hobby-horse", thanks in part to Johnson's marketing skills and better patent protection, became the craze and fashion in London society.
The dandies, the Corinthians of the Regency, adopted it, and therefore the poet John Keats
referred to it as "the nothing" of the day. Riders wore out their boots surprisingly rapidly, and the fashion ended within the year, after riders on sidewalks were fined two pounds.
Nevertheless, Drais' velocipede provided the basis for further developments: in fact, it was a draisine which inspired a French metalworker around 1863 to add rotary crank
s and pedal
s to the front-wheel hub, to create the first pedal-operated "bicycle" as we today understand the word.
Though technically not part of 2-wheel "bicycle" history, the intervening decades of the 1820s-1850s witnessed many developments concerning human-powered vehicles
often using technologies similar to the draisine, even if the idea of a workable 2-wheel design, requiring the rider to balance, had been dismissed. These new machines had three wheels (tricycles) or four (quadracycles) and came in a very wide variety of designs, using pedals, treadles and hand-cranks, but these designs often suffered from high weight and high rolling resistance. However, Willard Sawyer in Dover
successfully manufactured a range of treadle operated 4 wheel vehicles and exported them worldwide in the 1850s.
, a Scottish blacksmith, in 1839. A nephew later claimed that his uncle developed a rear-wheel drive design using mid mounted treadles connected by rods to a rear crank, similar to the transmission of a steam locomotive
. Proponents associate him with the first recorded instance of a bicycling traffic offence, when a Glasgow
newspaper reported in 1842 an accident in which an anonymous "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design" knocked over a pedestrian in the Gorbals and was fined five British shillings. However, the evidence connecting this with MacMillan isn't even circumstantial, since the artisan MacMillan wouldn't have been termed a gentleman
, nor is the report clear on how many wheels the vehicle had. The evidence is unclear, and may have been faked by his son.
A similar machine was said to have been produced by Gavin Dalzell of Lesmahagow, circa 1845. There is no record of Gavin ever having laid claim to inventing the machine. It is believed that he copied the idea having recognised the potential to help him with his local drapery business and there is some evidence that he used the contraption to take his wares into the rural community around his home. A replica still exists today in the Glasgow Museum of Transport. The exhibit holds the honour of being the oldest bike in existence today. The first documented producer of rod-driven 2-wheelers, treadle bicycle
s, was Thomas McCall
, of Kilmarnock in 1869. The design was inspired by the French front-crank velocipede of the Lallement/Michaux type.
The velocipede's renaissance began in Paris
during the late 1860s. Its early history is complex and has been shrouded in some mystery, not least because of conflicting patent claims: all that has been stated for sure is that a French metalworker attached pedals to the front wheel; at present, the earliest year bicycle historians agree on is 1864. The identity of the person who attached cranks is still an open question at International Cycling History Conferences (ICHC). The claims of Ernest Michaux and of Pierre Lallement
, and the lesser claims of rear-pedaling Alexandre Lefebvre, have their supporters within the ICHC community.
Bicycle historian David V. Herlihy documents that Lallement claimed to have created the pedal bicycle in Paris in 1863. He had seen someone riding a draisine in 1862 then originally came up with the idea to add pedals to it. It is a fact that he filed the earliest and only patent for a pedal-driven bicycle, in the USA in 1866. Lallement's patent drawing
shows a machine which looks exactly like Johnson's draisine, but with the pedals and rotary cranks attached to the front wheel hub, and a thin piece of iron over the top of the frame to act as a spring supporting the seat, for a slightly more comfortable ride.
By the early 1860s, the blacksmith Pierre Michaux
, besides producing parts for the carriage
trade, was producing "vélocipède à pédales" on a small scale. The wealthy Olivier brothers
Aimé and René were students in Paris at this time, and these shrewd young entrepreneur
s adopted the new machine. In 1865 they travelled from Paris to Avignon on a velocipede in only eight days. They recognized the potential profitability of producing and selling the new machine. Together with their friend Georges de la Bouglise
, they formed a partnership with Pierre Michaux
, Michaux et Cie ("Michaux and company"), in 1868, avoiding use of the Olivier family name and staying behind the scenes, lest the venture prove to be a failure. This was the first company which mass-produced bicycles, replacing the early wooden frame
with one made of two pieces of cast iron
bolted together—otherwise, the early Michaux machines look exactly like Lallement's patent drawing. Together with a mechanic named Gabert in his hometown of Lyon, Aimé Olivier created a diagonal single-piece frame made of wrought iron
which was much stronger, and as the first bicycle craze took hold, many other blacksmiths began forming companies to make bicycles using the new design. Velocipedes were expensive, and when customers soon began to complain about the Michaux serpentine
cast-iron frames breaking, the Oliviers realized by 1868 that they needed to replace that design with the diagonal one which their competitors were already using, and the Michaux company continued to dominate the industry in its first years.
On the new macadam
paved boulevards of Paris it was easy riding, although initially still using what was essentially horse coach
technology. It was still called "velocipede" in France, but in the United States, the machine was commonly called the "bone-shaker". Later improvements included solid rubber
tires and ball bearing
s. Lallement had left Paris in July 1865, crossed the Atlantic, settled in Connecticut and patented the velocipede, and the number of associated inventions and patents soared in the US. The popularity of the machine grew on both sides of the Atlantic and by 1868-69 the velocipede craze was strong in rural areas as well. Even in a relatively small city such as Halifax
, Canada
, there were five velocipede rinks, and riding schools began opening in many major urban centres. Essentially, the velocipede was a stepping stone that created a market for bicycles that led to the development of more advanced and efficient machines.
However, the Franco-Prussian war
of 1870 destroyed the velocipede market in France, and the "bone-shaker" enjoyed only a brief period of popularity in the United States, which ended by 1870. There is debate among bicycle historians about why it failed in the United States, but one explanation is that American road surfaces were much worse than European ones, and riding the machine on these roads was simply too difficult. Certainly another factor was that Calvin Witty had purchased Lallement's patent, and his royalty demands soon crippled the industry. The UK was the only place where the bicycle never fell completely out of favour.
. Meyer invented the wire-spoke
tension wheel in 1869 and produced a classic high bicycle design until the 1880s.
James Starley
in Coventry
added the tangent spokes and the mounting step to his famous bicycle named "Ariel." He is regarded as the father of the British cycling industry. Ball bearing
s, solid rubber tires and hollow-section steel frames became standard, reducing weight and making the ride much smoother. Depending on the rider's leg length, the front wheel could now have a diameter up to 60 in (1.5 m).
This type of bicycle was retronym
ed the "ordinary" (since there were then no other kind) and was later nicknamed "penny-farthing
" in England (a penny representing the front wheel, and a coin smaller in size and value, the farthing, representing the rear). They were fast, but unsafe. The rider was high up in the air and traveling at a great speed. If he hit a bad spot in the road he could easily be thrown over the front wheel and be seriously injured (two broken wrists were common, in attempts to break a fall) or even killed. "Taking a header" (also known as "coming a cropper"), was not at all uncommon. The rider's legs were often caught underneath the handlebars, so falling free of the machine was often not possible. The dangerous nature of these bicycles (as well as Victorian mores) made cycling the preserve of adventurous young men. The risk averse, such as elderly gentlemen, preferred the more stable tricycle
s or quadracycles. In addition, women's fashion of the day made the "ordinary" bicycle inaccessible. Queen Victoria
owned Starley's "Royal Salvo" tricycle, though there is no evidence she actually rode it.
Although French and English inventors modified the velocipede into the high-wheel bicycle, the French were still recovering from the Franco-Prussian war, so English entrepreneurs put the high-wheeler on the English market, and the machine became very popular there, Coventry
, Oxford
, Birmingham
and Manchester
being the centers of the English bicycle industry (and of the arms or sewing machine
industries, which had the necessary metalworking and engineering skills for bicycle manufacturing, as in Paris
and St. Etienne, and in New England
). Soon bicycles found their way across the English Channel
. By 1875, high-wheel bicycles were becoming popular in France, though ridership expanded slowly.
In the United States, Bostonians such as Frank Weston started importing bicycles in 1877 and 1878, and Albert Augustus Pope
started production of his "Columbia"
high-wheelers in 1878, and gained control of nearly all applicable patents, starting with Lallement's 1866 patent. Pope lowered the royalty (licensing fee) previous patent owners charged, and took his competitors to court over the patents. The courts supported him, and competitors either paid royalties ($10 per bicycle), or he forced them out of business. There seems to have been no patent issue in France, where English bicycles still dominated the market. By 1884 high-wheelers and tricycles were relatively popular among a small group of upper-middle-class people in all three countries, the largest group being in England. Their use also spread to the rest of the world, chiefly because of the extent of the British Empire
.
Pope also introduced mechanization and mass production (later copied and adopted by Ford
and General Motors
), vertically integrated, (also later copied and adopted by Ford), advertised aggressively (as much as ten percent of all advertising in U.S. periodicals in 1898 was by bicycle makers), promoted the Good Roads Movement
(which had the side benefit of acting as advertising, and of improving sales by providing more places to ride), and litigated on behalf of cyclists (It would, however, be Western Wheel Company of Chicago
which would drastically reduce production costs by introducing stamping to the production process in place of machining, significantly reducing costs, and thus prices.) In addition, bicycle makers adopted the annual model change (later derided as planned obsolescence
, and usually credited to General Motors), which proved very successful.
Even so, bicycling remained the province of the urban well-to-do, and mainly men, until the 1890s, and was an example of conspicuous consumption
.
was arguably the most important change in the history of the bicycle. It shifted their use and public perception from being a dangerous toy for sporting young men to being an everyday transport tool for men—and, crucially, women—of all ages.
Aside from the obvious safety problems, the high-wheeler's direct front wheel drive limited its top speed. Accordingly, inventors tried a rear wheel chain drive
. Although Henry Lawson invented a rear-chain-drive bicycle in 1879 with his "bicyclette", it still had a huge front wheel and a small rear wheel. Detractors called it "The Crocodile", and it failed in the market.
John Kemp Starley
, James's nephew, produced the first successful "safety bicycle" (again a retrospective name), the "Rover," in 1885, which he never patented. It featured a steerable front wheel that had significant caster, equally sized wheels and a chain drive
to the rear wheel.
Widely imitated, the safety bicycle completely replaced the high-wheeler in North America and Western Europe by 1890. Meanwhile John Dunlop
's reinvention of the pneumatic bicycle tire
in 1888 had made for a much smoother ride on paved streets; the previous type were quite smooth-riding, when used on the dirt roads common at the time. As with the original velocipede, safety bicycles had been much less comfortable than high-wheelers precisely because of the smaller wheel size, and frames were often buttressed with complicated bicycle suspension
spring assemblies. The pneumatic tire made all of these obsolete, and frame designers found a diamond pattern to be the strongest and most efficient design.
The chain drive improved comfort and speed, as the drive was transferred to the non-steering rear wheel and allowed for smooth, relaxed and injury free pedaling (earlier designs that required pedalling the steering front wheel were difficult to pedal while turning, due to the misalignment of rotational planes of leg and pedal). With easier pedaling, the rider more easily turned corners.
The pneumatic tire and the diamond frame improved rider comfort but do not form a crucial design or safety feature. A hard rubber tire on a bicycle is just as rideable but is bone jarring. The frame design allows for a lighter weight, and more simple construction and maintenance, hence lower price.
With four key aspects (steering, safety, comfort and speed) improved over the penny farthing, bicycles became very popular among elites and the middle classes in Europe and North America in the middle and late 1890s. It was the first bicycle that was suitable for women, and as such the "freedom machine" (as American feminist Susan B. Anthony
called it) was taken up by women in large numbers.
Bicycle historians often call this period the "golden age" or "bicycle craze." By the start of the 20th Century, cycling had become an important means of transportation, and in the United States an increasingly popular form of recreation. Bicycling clubs for men and women spread across the U.S. and across European countries. Chicago
immigrant Adolph Schoeninger with his Western Wheel Works became the "Ford of the Bicycle" (ten years before Henry Ford
) by copying Pope's mass production methods and by introducing stamping to the production process in place of machining, significantly reducing production costs, and thus prices. His "Crescent" bicycles thus became affordable for working people, and massive exports from the United States lowered prices in Europe. The Panic of 1893
wiped out many American manufacturers who had not followed the lead of Pope and Schoeninger, in the same way as the Great Depression
would ruin car makers who did not follow Ford.
The impact of the bicycle on female emancipation should not be underestimated. The safety bicycle gave women unprecedented mobility, contributing to their larger participation in the lives of Western nations. As bicycles became safer and cheaper, more women had access to the personal freedom they embodied, and so the bicycle came to symbolise the New Woman
of the late nineteenth century, especially in Britain and the United States. Feminists and suffragists recognised its transformative power. Susan B. Anthony
said, "Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood." In 1895 Frances Willard
, the tightly-laced president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, wrote a book called How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle (described in Bicycling magazine as "the greatest book ever written on learning to ride"), in which she praised the bicycle she learned to ride late in life, and which she named "Gladys", for its "gladdening effect" on her health and political optimism. Willard used a cycling metaphor to urge other suffragists to action, proclaiming, "I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum." Elizabeth Robins Pennell
started cycling in the 1870s in Philadelphia, and from the 1880s onwards brought out a series of travelogues about her cycling journeys around Europe, from A Canterbury Pilgrimage to Over the Alps on a Bicycle. In 1895 Annie Londonderry
became the first woman to bicycle around the world.
The backlash against the New (bicycling) Woman was demonstrated when the male undergraduates of Cambridge University chose to show their opposition to the admission of women as full members of the university by hanging a woman in effigy
in the main town square—tellingly, a woman on a bicycle—as late as 1897.
Since women could not cycle in the then-current fashions for voluminous and restrictive dress, the bicycle craze fed into a movement for so-called rational dress, which helped liberate women from corsets and ankle-length skirts and other encumbering garments, substituting the then-shocking bloomers
.
Cycling steadily became more important in Europe over the first half of the twentieth century, but it dropped off dramatically in the United States between 1900 and 1910. Automobiles became the preferred means of transportation. Over the 1920s, bicycles gradually became considered children's toys, and by 1940 most bicycles in the United States were made for children. In Europe cycling remained an adult activity, and bicycle racing, commuting, and "cyclotouring
" were all popular activities. In addition, specialist bicycles for children appeared before 1916.
Bicycles continued to evolve to suit the varied needs of riders. The derailleur developed in France between 1900 and 1910 among cyclotourists, and was improved over time. Only in the 1930s did European racing organizations allow racers to use gearing
; until then they were forced to use a two-speed bicycle. The rear wheel had a sprocket on either side of the hub. To change gears, the rider had to stop, remove the wheel, flip it around, and remount the wheel. When racers were allowed to use derailleurs, racing times immediately dropped.
At mid-century there were two predominant bicycle styles for recreational cyclists in North America. Heavyweight cruiser bicycle
s, preferred by the typical (hobby) cyclist, featuring balloon tires, pedal-driven "coaster" brakes and only one gear, were popular for their durability, comfort, streamlined appearance, and a significant array of accessories (lights, bells, springer forks, speedometers, etc..). Lighter cycles, with hand brakes, narrower tires, and a three-speed hub gear
ing system, often imported from England, first became popular in the United States in the late 1950s. These comfortable, practical bicycles usually offered generator-powered headlamps, safety reflectors, kickstands, and frame-mounted tire pumps. In the United Kingdom, like the rest of Europe, cycling was seen as less of a hobby, and lightweight but durable bikes had been preferred for decades.
In the early 1980s, Swedish
company Itera invented a new type
of bicycle, made entirely of plastic. It was a commercial failure.
In the late 1960s, spurred by Americans' increasing consciousness of the value of exercise and later the advantage of energy efficient
transportation led to the American bike boom
of the 1970s. Annual U.S. sales of adult bicycles doubled between 1960 and 1970, and doubled again between 1971 and 1975, the peak years of the adult cycling boom in the United States, eventually reaching nearly 17 million units. Most of the these sales were to new cyclists, who overwhelmingly preferred models imitating popular European derailleur-equipped racing bikes
, variously called sports models, sport/tourers, or simply ten-speeds. These lighter bicycles, long used by serious cyclists and by racers, featured dropped handlebars, narrow tires, derailleur gears, five to fifteen speeds, and a narrow 'racing' type saddle. By 1980, racing and sport/touring derailleur bikes dominated the market in North America.
In 1934, the development of the bicycle was truncated by the Union Cycliste Internationale
's banning of the recumbent bicycle
from all forms of racing. This stemmed from discomfort at Francis Faure, a mere category 2 racer, humiliating many class 1 racers while riding Mochet
's Velocar
. The clear superiority of this frame geometry for level races made upright bicycle manufacturers (the sponsors of the Union Cycliste Internationale) uncomfortable, who lobbied for a ban. This motion was passed after a long and heated meeting, and by only a handful of votes in a near split decision. This resulted in the stagnation of the upright racing bike's frame geometry which has remained essentially unchanged for 70 years. This stagnation finally started to reverse with the formation of the International Human Powered Vehicle Association
which holds races for "banned" classes of bicycle. One such vehicle
currently holds the human powered speed record of 132 km/h (82 mph) on level ground.
, a form of cycling on specially designed bicycles which usually have 16 to 24-inch wheels (the norm being the 20-inch wheel), originated in the state of California
, United States
in the early 1970s, when teenagers imitated their motocross
heroes on their bicycles. Children were racing standard road bikes off-road, around purpose-built tracks in the Netherlands
. The 1971 motorcycle racing documentary On Any Sunday
is generally credited with inspiring the movement nationally in the US. In the opening scene, kids are shown riding their Schwinn Stingrays off-road. It was not until the middle of the decade the sport achieved critical mass, and manufacturers began creating bicycles designed specially for the sport.
It has grown into an international sport with several different disciplines.
appeared, intended for use off-pavement over a variety of surfaces. It was an immediate success, and examples flew off retailers' shelves during the 1980s, their popularity spurred by the novelty of all-terrain cycling and the increasing desire of urban dwellers to escape their surroundings via mountain biking and other extreme sports. These cycles featured sturdier frames, wider tires with large knobs for increased traction, a more upright seating position (to allow better visibility and shifting of body weight), and increasingly, various front and rear suspension designs. By 2000, mountain bike sales had far outstripped that of racing, sport/racer, and touring bicycles.
bicycle, sometimes marketed as a city bike, cross bike, or commuter bike. Hybrid bicycles combine elements of road racing and mountain bikes, though the term is applied to a wide variety of bicycle types. Hybrid bicycles and commuter bicycles can range from fast and light racing-type bicycles with flat bars and other minimal concessions to casual use, to wider-tired bikes designed for primarily for comfort, load-carrying, and increased versatility over a range of different road surfaces. Enclosed hub gears
have become popular again - now with up to 8, 11 or 14 gears - for such bicycles due to ease of maintenance and improved technology.
Recent years have also seen a resurgence of interest in balloon tire cruiser bicycle
s for their low-tech comfort, reliability, and style.
In addition to influences derived from the evolution of American bicycling trends, European, Asian, and African cyclists have also continued to use traditional roadster
bicycles, as their rugged design, enclosed chainguards, and dependable hub gearing make them ideal for commuting and utility cycling
duty.
. Recent discoveries about bicycle stability have been facilitated by computer simulation
s. Once designed, new technology is applied to manufacturing such as hydroforming
and automated carbon fiber
layup. Finally, electronic gadgetry has expanded from just cyclocomputer
s to now include cycling power meter
s and electronic gear-shifting system
s.
Transport
Transport or transportation is the movement of people, cattle, animals and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations...
that have two wheels and require balancing by the rider date back to the early 19th century. The first means of transport making use of two wheels, and thus the archetype of the bicycle, was the German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
draisine
Dandy horse
The dandy-horse, also known as hobby-horse, is a human-powered vehicle that, being the first means of transport to make use of the two-wheeler principle, is regarded as the forerunner of the bicycle. The dandy horse was invented by Baron Karl Drais in Mannheim, Germany, and patented in January 1818...
dating back to 1817. The term bicycle
Bicycle
A bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist, or bicyclist....
was coined in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in the 1860s.
Earliest unverifiable history
The earliest comes from a sketch said to be from 1493 and attributed to Gian Giacomo Caprotti, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
. Hans-Erhard Lessing recently claimed that this last assertion is a purposeful fraud. However, the authenticity of the bicycle sketch is still vigorously maintained by followers of Prof. Augusto Marinoni, a lexicographer and philologist, who was entrusted by the Commissione Vinciana of Rome with the transcription of da Vinci's Codex Atlanticus
Codex Atlanticus
The Codex Atlanticus is a twelve-volume, bound set of drawings and writings by Leonardo da Vinci, the largest such set; its name indicates its atlas-like breadth. It comprises 1,119 leaves dating from 1478 to 1519, the contents covering a great variety of subjects, from flight to weaponry to...
.
Later, and equally unverifiable, is the contention that Comte de Sivrac developed a célérifère in 1791, demonstrating it at the Palais-Royal in France. The célérifère supposedly had two wheels set on a rigid wooden frame and no steering, directional control being limited to that attainable by leaning. A rider was said to have sat astride the machine and pushed it along using alternate feet. We now know a two-wheeled célérifère never existed (though there were four-wheelers) and it was a misinterpretation by the well known French journalist Louis Baudry de Saunier in 1891.
1817 to 1819: the draisine or velocipede
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
Baron
Freiherr
The German titles Freiherr and Freifrau and Freiin are titles of nobility, used preceding a person's given name or, after 1919, before the surname...
Karl von Drais
Karl Drais
Karl Drais was a German inventor and invented the Laufmaschine , also later called the velocipede, draisine or "draisienne" , also nicknamed the dandy horse. This incorporated the two-wheeler principle that is basic to the bicycle and motorcycle and was the beginning of mechanized personal...
, a civil servant to the Grand Duke of Baden in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Drais invented his Laufmaschine (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
for "running machine") of 1817 that was called Draisine (English) or draisienne (French) by the press. Karl von Drais patented this design in 1818, which was the first commercially successful two-wheeled, steerable, human-propelled machine, commonly called a velocipede
Velocipede
Velocipede is an umbrella term for any human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels. The most common type of velocipede today is the bicycle....
, and nicknamed hobby-horse or dandy horse
Dandy horse
The dandy-horse, also known as hobby-horse, is a human-powered vehicle that, being the first means of transport to make use of the two-wheeler principle, is regarded as the forerunner of the bicycle. The dandy horse was invented by Baron Karl Drais in Mannheim, Germany, and patented in January 1818...
. It was initially manufactured in Germany and France. Hans-Erhard Lessing found from circumstantial evidence that Drais' interest in finding an alternative to the horse was the starvation and death of horses caused by crop failure in 1816 ("Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death
Year Without a Summer
The Year Without a Summer was 1816, in which severe summer climate abnormalities caused average global temperatures to decrease by about 0.4–0.7 °C , resulting in major food shortages across the Northern Hemisphere...
," following the volcanic eruption of Tambora
Mount Tambora
Mount Tambora is an active stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia. Sumbawa is flanked both to the north and south by oceanic crust, and Tambora was formed by the active subduction zone beneath it. This raised Mount Tambora as high as , making it...
). On his first reported ride from Mannheim
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
on June 12, 1817, he covered 13 km (eight miles) in less than an hour. Constructed almost entirely of wood, the draisine weighed 22 kg (48 pounds), had brass bushings within the wheel bearings, iron shod wheels, a rear-wheel brake and 152 mm (6 inches) of trail of the front-wheel for a self-centering caster
Caster angle
thumb|250px|θ is the caster angle, the red line is the pivot line, and the grey area is the tire.Caster angle or castor angle is the angular displacement from the vertical axis of the suspension of a steered wheel in a car, bicycle or other vehicle, measured in the longitudinal direction...
effect. This design was welcomed by mechanically minded men daring to balance, and several thousand copies were built and used, primarily in Western Europe and in North America. Its popularity rapidly faded when, partly due to increasing numbers of accidents, some city authorities began to prohibit its use. However in 1866 Paris a Chinese visitor named Bin Chun could still observe foot-pushed velocipedes.
Denis Johnson of London
Denis Johnson a coachmaker of Long Acre, London, created an improved version of Karl Drais's Draisine, the archetypal bicycle. Johnson's machine was patented in London in December 1818, and featured an elegantly curved wooden frame, allowing the use of larger wooden wheels...
announcing in late 1818 that he would sell an improved model. New names were introduced when Johnson patented his machine “pedestrian curricle” or “velocipede,” but the public preferred nicknames like “hobby-horse,” after the children’s toy or, worse still, “dandyhorse,” after the foppish men who often rode them. Johnson's machine was an improvement on Drais's, being notably more elegant: his wooden frame had a serpentine shape
Serpentine shape
Serpentine refers to the curved shape of an object or design which resembles the letter s, a sine wave or a snake; the latter is the derivation of the term.- Examples :* The Serpentine River...
instead of Drais's straight one, allowing the use of larger wheels without raising the rider's seat. During the summer of 1819 the "hobby-horse", thanks in part to Johnson's marketing skills and better patent protection, became the craze and fashion in London society.
The dandies, the Corinthians of the Regency, adopted it, and therefore the poet John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
referred to it as "the nothing" of the day. Riders wore out their boots surprisingly rapidly, and the fashion ended within the year, after riders on sidewalks were fined two pounds.
Nevertheless, Drais' velocipede provided the basis for further developments: in fact, it was a draisine which inspired a French metalworker around 1863 to add rotary crank
Crank (mechanism)
A crank is an arm attached at right angles to a rotating shaft by which reciprocating motion is imparted to or received from the shaft. It is used to change circular into reciprocating motion, or reciprocating into circular motion. The arm may be a bent portion of the shaft, or a separate arm...
s and pedal
Bicycle pedal
A bicycle pedal is the part of a bicycle that the rider pushes with their foot to propel the bicycle. It provides the connection between the cyclist's foot or shoe and the crank allowing the leg to turn the bottom bracket spindle and propel the bicycle's wheels...
s to the front-wheel hub, to create the first pedal-operated "bicycle" as we today understand the word.
The 1820s to 1850s: an era of 3 and 4-wheelers
Human-powered transport
Human-powered transport is the transport of person and/or goods using human muscle power. Like animal-powered transport, human-powered transport has existed since time immemorial in the form of walking, running and swimming...
often using technologies similar to the draisine, even if the idea of a workable 2-wheel design, requiring the rider to balance, had been dismissed. These new machines had three wheels (tricycles) or four (quadracycles) and came in a very wide variety of designs, using pedals, treadles and hand-cranks, but these designs often suffered from high weight and high rolling resistance. However, Willard Sawyer in Dover
Dover
Dover is a town and major ferry port in the home county of Kent, in South East England. It faces France across the narrowest part of the English Channel, and lies south-east of Canterbury; east of Kent's administrative capital Maidstone; and north-east along the coastline from Dungeness and Hastings...
successfully manufactured a range of treadle operated 4 wheel vehicles and exported them worldwide in the 1850s.
The 1830s: the reported Scottish inventions
The first mechanically-propelled 2-wheel vehicle was believed to have been built by Kirkpatrick MacMillanKirkpatrick Macmillan
Kirkpatrick Macmillan was a Scottish blacksmith generally credited with inventing the rear-wheel driven bicycle.-Invention of pedal driven bicycle?:...
, a Scottish blacksmith, in 1839. A nephew later claimed that his uncle developed a rear-wheel drive design using mid mounted treadles connected by rods to a rear crank, similar to the transmission of a steam locomotive
Steam locomotive
A steam locomotive is a railway locomotive that produces its power through a steam engine. These locomotives are fueled by burning some combustible material, usually coal, wood or oil, to produce steam in a boiler, which drives the steam engine...
. Proponents associate him with the first recorded instance of a bicycling traffic offence, when a Glasgow
Glasgow
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom. The city is situated on the River Clyde in the country's west central lowlands...
newspaper reported in 1842 an accident in which an anonymous "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design" knocked over a pedestrian in the Gorbals and was fined five British shillings. However, the evidence connecting this with MacMillan isn't even circumstantial, since the artisan MacMillan wouldn't have been termed a gentleman
Gentleman
The term gentleman , in its original and strict signification, denoted a well-educated man of good family and distinction, analogous to the Latin generosus...
, nor is the report clear on how many wheels the vehicle had. The evidence is unclear, and may have been faked by his son.
A similar machine was said to have been produced by Gavin Dalzell of Lesmahagow, circa 1845. There is no record of Gavin ever having laid claim to inventing the machine. It is believed that he copied the idea having recognised the potential to help him with his local drapery business and there is some evidence that he used the contraption to take his wares into the rural community around his home. A replica still exists today in the Glasgow Museum of Transport. The exhibit holds the honour of being the oldest bike in existence today. The first documented producer of rod-driven 2-wheelers, treadle bicycle
Treadle bicycle
A treadle bicycle is a bicycle powered by a treadle instead of the more-common crank. Treadles were one of the mechanisms inventors tried in order to position the pedals away from the drive wheel hub before the development of the bicycle chain or in lieu of it...
s, was Thomas McCall
Thomas McCall
Thomas McCall was a Scottish cartwright. Born in Penpont he came to Kilmarnock at age 20, where he lived until his death ....
, of Kilmarnock in 1869. The design was inspired by the French front-crank velocipede of the Lallement/Michaux type.
1860s and the Michaux or "boneshaker"
The first really popular and commercially successful design was a French one (an example of the style is held in the Museum of Science and Technology (Ottawa)). Initially developed around 1863, it sparked a fashionable craze briefly during 1868-70. Its design was simpler than the Macmillan bicycle; it used rotary cranks and pedals mounted to the front wheel hub. Pedaling made it easier for riders to propel the machine at speed, but the rotational speed limitation arising from stability and comfort concerns would lead to the large front wheel of the "penny farthing". It was difficult to pedal the wheel that was used for steering. The use of metal frames reduced the weight and provided sleeker, more elegant designs, and also allowed mass-production. Different braking mechanisms were used depending on the manufacturer. In England, the velocipede earned the name of "bone-shaker" because of its rigid frame and iron banded wheels that resulted in a "bone-shaking experience for riders."The velocipede's renaissance began in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
during the late 1860s. Its early history is complex and has been shrouded in some mystery, not least because of conflicting patent claims: all that has been stated for sure is that a French metalworker attached pedals to the front wheel; at present, the earliest year bicycle historians agree on is 1864. The identity of the person who attached cranks is still an open question at International Cycling History Conferences (ICHC). The claims of Ernest Michaux and of Pierre Lallement
Pierre Lallement
Pierre Lallement is considered by some to be the inventor of the bicycle.-Early years:Lallement was born on October 25, 1843 in Pont-à-Mousson near Nancy, France....
, and the lesser claims of rear-pedaling Alexandre Lefebvre, have their supporters within the ICHC community.
Patent drawing
A patent application or patent may contain drawings, also called patent drawings, illustrating the invention, some of its embodiments , or the prior art...
shows a machine which looks exactly like Johnson's draisine, but with the pedals and rotary cranks attached to the front wheel hub, and a thin piece of iron over the top of the frame to act as a spring supporting the seat, for a slightly more comfortable ride.
By the early 1860s, the blacksmith Pierre Michaux
Pierre Michaux
Pierre Michaux was a blacksmith who furnished parts for the carriage trade in Paris during the 1850s and 1860s. He started building bicycles with pedals in the early 1860s. He, or his son Ernest, may have been the inventor of this machine, by adapting cranks and pedals on the front wheel of a...
, besides producing parts for the carriage
Carriage
A carriage is a wheeled vehicle for people, usually horse-drawn; litters and sedan chairs are excluded, since they are wheelless vehicles. The carriage is especially designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, though some are also used to transport goods. It may be light,...
trade, was producing "vélocipède à pédales" on a small scale. The wealthy Olivier brothers
Olivier brothers
The Olivier brothers, Aimé, René, and Marius, were the first people responsible for recognizing the commercial potential of a new invention : the bicycle....
Aimé and René were students in Paris at this time, and these shrewd young entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
s adopted the new machine. In 1865 they travelled from Paris to Avignon on a velocipede in only eight days. They recognized the potential profitability of producing and selling the new machine. Together with their friend Georges de la Bouglise
Georges de la Bouglise
Georges-Alfred de la Bouglise was a French mining engineer who as a student played an important role in the gestation of the front-cranked velocipede named Michaux'....
, they formed a partnership with Pierre Michaux
Pierre Michaux
Pierre Michaux was a blacksmith who furnished parts for the carriage trade in Paris during the 1850s and 1860s. He started building bicycles with pedals in the early 1860s. He, or his son Ernest, may have been the inventor of this machine, by adapting cranks and pedals on the front wheel of a...
, Michaux et Cie ("Michaux and company"), in 1868, avoiding use of the Olivier family name and staying behind the scenes, lest the venture prove to be a failure. This was the first company which mass-produced bicycles, replacing the early wooden frame
Bicycle frame
A bicycle frame is the main component of a bicycle, on to which wheels and other components are fitted. The modern and most common frame design for an upright bicycle is based on the safety bicycle, and consists of two triangles, a main triangle and a paired rear triangle...
with one made of two pieces of cast iron
Cast iron
Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...
bolted together—otherwise, the early Michaux machines look exactly like Lallement's patent drawing. Together with a mechanic named Gabert in his hometown of Lyon, Aimé Olivier created a diagonal single-piece frame made of wrought iron
Wrought iron
thumb|The [[Eiffel tower]] is constructed from [[puddle iron]], a form of wrought ironWrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon...
which was much stronger, and as the first bicycle craze took hold, many other blacksmiths began forming companies to make bicycles using the new design. Velocipedes were expensive, and when customers soon began to complain about the Michaux serpentine
Serpentine shape
Serpentine refers to the curved shape of an object or design which resembles the letter s, a sine wave or a snake; the latter is the derivation of the term.- Examples :* The Serpentine River...
cast-iron frames breaking, the Oliviers realized by 1868 that they needed to replace that design with the diagonal one which their competitors were already using, and the Michaux company continued to dominate the industry in its first years.
On the new macadam
Macadam
Macadam is a type of road construction pioneered by the Scotsman John Loudon McAdam in around 1820. The method simplified what had been considered state-of-the-art at that point...
paved boulevards of Paris it was easy riding, although initially still using what was essentially horse coach
Carriage
A carriage is a wheeled vehicle for people, usually horse-drawn; litters and sedan chairs are excluded, since they are wheelless vehicles. The carriage is especially designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, though some are also used to transport goods. It may be light,...
technology. It was still called "velocipede" in France, but in the United States, the machine was commonly called the "bone-shaker". Later improvements included solid rubber
Rubber
Natural rubber, also called India rubber or caoutchouc, is an elastomer that was originally derived from latex, a milky colloid produced by some plants. The plants would be ‘tapped’, that is, an incision made into the bark of the tree and the sticky, milk colored latex sap collected and refined...
tires and ball bearing
Ball bearing
A ball bearing is a type of rolling-element bearing that uses balls to maintain the separation between the bearing races.The purpose of a ball bearing is to reduce rotational friction and support radial and axial loads. It achieves this by using at least two races to contain the balls and transmit...
s. Lallement had left Paris in July 1865, crossed the Atlantic, settled in Connecticut and patented the velocipede, and the number of associated inventions and patents soared in the US. The popularity of the machine grew on both sides of the Atlantic and by 1868-69 the velocipede craze was strong in rural areas as well. Even in a relatively small city such as Halifax
City of Halifax
Halifax is a city in Canada, which was the capital of the province of Nova Scotia and shire town of Halifax County. It was the largest city in Atlantic Canada until it was amalgamated into Halifax Regional Municipality in 1996...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, there were five velocipede rinks, and riding schools began opening in many major urban centres. Essentially, the velocipede was a stepping stone that created a market for bicycles that led to the development of more advanced and efficient machines.
However, the Franco-Prussian war
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
of 1870 destroyed the velocipede market in France, and the "bone-shaker" enjoyed only a brief period of popularity in the United States, which ended by 1870. There is debate among bicycle historians about why it failed in the United States, but one explanation is that American road surfaces were much worse than European ones, and riding the machine on these roads was simply too difficult. Certainly another factor was that Calvin Witty had purchased Lallement's patent, and his royalty demands soon crippled the industry. The UK was the only place where the bicycle never fell completely out of favour.
1870s: the high-wheel bicycle
The high-bicycle was the logical extension of the boneshaker, the front wheel enlarging to enable higher speeds (limited by the inside leg measurement of the rider), the rear wheel shrinking and the frame being made lighter. Frenchman Eugene Meyer is now regarded as the father of the High Bicycle by the ICHC in place of James StarleyJames Starley
James Starley was an English inventor and father of the bicycle industry. He was one of the most innovative and successful builders of bicycles and tricycles. His inventions include the differential gear and the perfection of chain-driven bicycles.-Early life:Starley was born in 1831 at Albourne,...
. Meyer invented the wire-spoke
Spoke
A spoke is one of some number of rods radiating from the center of a wheel , connecting the hub with the round traction surface....
tension wheel in 1869 and produced a classic high bicycle design until the 1880s.
James Starley
James Starley was an English inventor and father of the bicycle industry. He was one of the most innovative and successful builders of bicycles and tricycles. His inventions include the differential gear and the perfection of chain-driven bicycles.-Early life:Starley was born in 1831 at Albourne,...
in Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
added the tangent spokes and the mounting step to his famous bicycle named "Ariel." He is regarded as the father of the British cycling industry. Ball bearing
Ball bearing
A ball bearing is a type of rolling-element bearing that uses balls to maintain the separation between the bearing races.The purpose of a ball bearing is to reduce rotational friction and support radial and axial loads. It achieves this by using at least two races to contain the balls and transmit...
s, solid rubber tires and hollow-section steel frames became standard, reducing weight and making the ride much smoother. Depending on the rider's leg length, the front wheel could now have a diameter up to 60 in (1.5 m).
This type of bicycle was retronym
Retronym
A retronym is a type of neologism that provides a new name for an object or concept to differentiate the original form or version of it from a more recent form or version. The original name is most often augmented with an adjective to account for later developments of the object or concept itself...
ed the "ordinary" (since there were then no other kind) and was later nicknamed "penny-farthing
Penny-farthing
Penny-farthing, high wheel, high wheeler, and ordinary are all terms used to describe a type of bicycle with a large front wheel and a much smaller rear wheel that was popular after the boneshaker, until the development of the safety bicycle, in the 1880s...
" in England (a penny representing the front wheel, and a coin smaller in size and value, the farthing, representing the rear). They were fast, but unsafe. The rider was high up in the air and traveling at a great speed. If he hit a bad spot in the road he could easily be thrown over the front wheel and be seriously injured (two broken wrists were common, in attempts to break a fall) or even killed. "Taking a header" (also known as "coming a cropper"), was not at all uncommon. The rider's legs were often caught underneath the handlebars, so falling free of the machine was often not possible. The dangerous nature of these bicycles (as well as Victorian mores) made cycling the preserve of adventurous young men. The risk averse, such as elderly gentlemen, preferred the more stable tricycle
Tricycle
A tricycle is a three-wheeled vehicle. While tricycles are often associated with the small three-wheeled vehicles used by pre-school-age children, they are also used by adults for a variety of purposes. In the United States and Canada, adult-sized tricycles are used primarily by older persons for...
s or quadracycles. In addition, women's fashion of the day made the "ordinary" bicycle inaccessible. Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
owned Starley's "Royal Salvo" tricycle, though there is no evidence she actually rode it.
Although French and English inventors modified the velocipede into the high-wheel bicycle, the French were still recovering from the Franco-Prussian war, so English entrepreneurs put the high-wheeler on the English market, and the machine became very popular there, Coventry
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...
, Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
and Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
being the centers of the English bicycle industry (and of the arms or sewing machine
Sewing machine
A sewing machine is a textile machine used to stitch fabric, cards and other material together with thread. Sewing machines were invented during the first Industrial Revolution to decrease the amount of manual sewing work performed in clothing companies...
industries, which had the necessary metalworking and engineering skills for bicycle manufacturing, as in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and St. Etienne, and in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
). Soon bicycles found their way across the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
. By 1875, high-wheel bicycles were becoming popular in France, though ridership expanded slowly.
In the United States, Bostonians such as Frank Weston started importing bicycles in 1877 and 1878, and Albert Augustus Pope
Albert Augustus Pope
Albert Augustus Pope was a Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel who founded the Pope Manufacturing Company in 1877. -Birth:...
started production of his "Columbia"
Pope Manufacturing Company
Pope Manufacturing Company was founded by Albert Augustus Pope in Hartford, Connecticut. The company began with the introduction of the "Columbia High Wheeler" bicycle in 1878.-History:...
high-wheelers in 1878, and gained control of nearly all applicable patents, starting with Lallement's 1866 patent. Pope lowered the royalty (licensing fee) previous patent owners charged, and took his competitors to court over the patents. The courts supported him, and competitors either paid royalties ($10 per bicycle), or he forced them out of business. There seems to have been no patent issue in France, where English bicycles still dominated the market. By 1884 high-wheelers and tricycles were relatively popular among a small group of upper-middle-class people in all three countries, the largest group being in England. Their use also spread to the rest of the world, chiefly because of the extent of the British Empire
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
.
Pope also introduced mechanization and mass production (later copied and adopted by Ford
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
and General Motors
General Motors
General Motors Company , commonly known as GM, formerly incorporated as General Motors Corporation, is an American multinational automotive corporation headquartered in Detroit, Michigan and the world's second-largest automaker in 2010...
), vertically integrated, (also later copied and adopted by Ford), advertised aggressively (as much as ten percent of all advertising in U.S. periodicals in 1898 was by bicycle makers), promoted the Good Roads Movement
Good Roads Movement
The Good Roads Movement occurred in the United States between the late 1870s and the 1920s. Advocates for improved roads led by bicyclists turned local agitation into a national political movement....
(which had the side benefit of acting as advertising, and of improving sales by providing more places to ride), and litigated on behalf of cyclists (It would, however, be Western Wheel Company of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
which would drastically reduce production costs by introducing stamping to the production process in place of machining, significantly reducing costs, and thus prices.) In addition, bicycle makers adopted the annual model change (later derided as planned obsolescence
Planned obsolescence
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period of time...
, and usually credited to General Motors), which proved very successful.
Even so, bicycling remained the province of the urban well-to-do, and mainly men, until the 1890s, and was an example of conspicuous consumption
Conspicuous consumption
Conspicuous consumption is spending on goods and services acquired mainly for the purpose of displaying income or wealth. In the mind of a conspicuous consumer, such display serves as a means of attaining or maintaining social status....
.
The 1880s and 1890s
The development of the safety bicycleSafety bicycle
A safety bicycle is a type of bicycle that became very popular beginning in the late 1880s as an alternative to the penny-farthing or ordinary and is now the most common type of bicycle. Early bicycles of this style were known as safety bicycles because they were noted for, and marketed as, being...
was arguably the most important change in the history of the bicycle. It shifted their use and public perception from being a dangerous toy for sporting young men to being an everyday transport tool for men—and, crucially, women—of all ages.
Aside from the obvious safety problems, the high-wheeler's direct front wheel drive limited its top speed. Accordingly, inventors tried a rear wheel chain drive
Chain drive
Chain drive is a way of transmitting mechanical power from one place to another. It is often used to convey power to the wheels of a vehicle, particularly bicycles and motorcycles...
. Although Henry Lawson invented a rear-chain-drive bicycle in 1879 with his "bicyclette", it still had a huge front wheel and a small rear wheel. Detractors called it "The Crocodile", and it failed in the market.
John Kemp Starley
John Kemp Starley was an English inventor and industrialist who is widely considered the inventor of the modern bicycle, and also originator of the name Rover....
, James's nephew, produced the first successful "safety bicycle" (again a retrospective name), the "Rover," in 1885, which he never patented. It featured a steerable front wheel that had significant caster, equally sized wheels and a chain drive
Chain drive
Chain drive is a way of transmitting mechanical power from one place to another. It is often used to convey power to the wheels of a vehicle, particularly bicycles and motorcycles...
to the rear wheel.
Widely imitated, the safety bicycle completely replaced the high-wheeler in North America and Western Europe by 1890. Meanwhile John Dunlop
John Boyd Dunlop
John Boyd Dunlop was a Scottish inventor. He was one of the founders of the rubber company that bore his name, Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company....
's reinvention of the pneumatic bicycle tire
Bicycle tire
A bicycle tire is a tire that fits on the wheel of a bicycle, unicycle, tricycle, quadracycle, bicycle trailer, or trailer bike. They may also be used on wheelchairs and handcycles, especially for racing...
in 1888 had made for a much smoother ride on paved streets; the previous type were quite smooth-riding, when used on the dirt roads common at the time. As with the original velocipede, safety bicycles had been much less comfortable than high-wheelers precisely because of the smaller wheel size, and frames were often buttressed with complicated bicycle suspension
Bicycle suspension
A bicycle suspension is the system or systems used to suspend the rider and all or part of the bicycle in order to protect them from the roughness of the terrain over which they travel...
spring assemblies. The pneumatic tire made all of these obsolete, and frame designers found a diamond pattern to be the strongest and most efficient design.
The chain drive improved comfort and speed, as the drive was transferred to the non-steering rear wheel and allowed for smooth, relaxed and injury free pedaling (earlier designs that required pedalling the steering front wheel were difficult to pedal while turning, due to the misalignment of rotational planes of leg and pedal). With easier pedaling, the rider more easily turned corners.
The pneumatic tire and the diamond frame improved rider comfort but do not form a crucial design or safety feature. A hard rubber tire on a bicycle is just as rideable but is bone jarring. The frame design allows for a lighter weight, and more simple construction and maintenance, hence lower price.
Susan B. Anthony
Susan Brownell Anthony was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President...
called it) was taken up by women in large numbers.
Bicycle historians often call this period the "golden age" or "bicycle craze." By the start of the 20th Century, cycling had become an important means of transportation, and in the United States an increasingly popular form of recreation. Bicycling clubs for men and women spread across the U.S. and across European countries. Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
immigrant Adolph Schoeninger with his Western Wheel Works became the "Ford of the Bicycle" (ten years before Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
) by copying Pope's mass production methods and by introducing stamping to the production process in place of machining, significantly reducing production costs, and thus prices. His "Crescent" bicycles thus became affordable for working people, and massive exports from the United States lowered prices in Europe. The Panic of 1893
Panic of 1893
The Panic of 1893 was a serious economic depression in the United States that began in 1893. Similar to the Panic of 1873, this panic was marked by the collapse of railroad overbuilding and shaky railroad financing which set off a series of bank failures...
wiped out many American manufacturers who had not followed the lead of Pope and Schoeninger, in the same way as the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
would ruin car makers who did not follow Ford.
New Woman
The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century. The New Woman pushed the limits set by male-dominated society, especially as modeled in the plays of Norwegian Henrik Ibsen . "The New Woman sprang fully armed from Ibsen's brain," according to a joke by Max Beerbohm...
of the late nineteenth century, especially in Britain and the United States. Feminists and suffragists recognised its transformative power. Susan B. Anthony
Susan B. Anthony
Susan Brownell Anthony was a prominent American civil rights leader who played a pivotal role in the 19th century women's rights movement to introduce women's suffrage into the United States. She was co-founder of the first Women's Temperance Movement with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President...
said, "Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood." In 1895 Frances Willard
Frances Willard (suffragist)
Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard was an American educator, temperance reformer, and women's suffragist. Her influence was instrumental in the passage of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution...
, the tightly-laced president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, wrote a book called How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle (described in Bicycling magazine as "the greatest book ever written on learning to ride"), in which she praised the bicycle she learned to ride late in life, and which she named "Gladys", for its "gladdening effect" on her health and political optimism. Willard used a cycling metaphor to urge other suffragists to action, proclaiming, "I would not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum." Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Elizabeth Robins Pennell was an American writer who, for most of her adult life, made her home in London...
started cycling in the 1870s in Philadelphia, and from the 1880s onwards brought out a series of travelogues about her cycling journeys around Europe, from A Canterbury Pilgrimage to Over the Alps on a Bicycle. In 1895 Annie Londonderry
Annie Londonderry
Annie “Londonderry” Cohen Kopchovsky was the first woman to bicycle around the world. She was a free-thinking young woman, who reinvented herself as the daring “Annie Londonderry” — entrepreneur, athlete, and globetrotter.-Biography:...
became the first woman to bicycle around the world.
Effigy
An effigy is a representation of a person, especially in the form of sculpture or some other three-dimensional form.The term is usually associated with full-length figures of a deceased person depicted in stone or wood on church monuments. These most often lie supine with hands together in prayer,...
in the main town square—tellingly, a woman on a bicycle—as late as 1897.
Since women could not cycle in the then-current fashions for voluminous and restrictive dress, the bicycle craze fed into a movement for so-called rational dress, which helped liberate women from corsets and ankle-length skirts and other encumbering garments, substituting the then-shocking bloomers
Bloomers (clothing)
Bloomers is a word which has been applied to several types of divided women's garments for the lower body at various times.-Fashion bloomers :...
.
The 20th century
Cycling steadily became more important in Europe over the first half of the twentieth century, but it dropped off dramatically in the United States between 1900 and 1910. Automobiles became the preferred means of transportation. Over the 1920s, bicycles gradually became considered children's toys, and by 1940 most bicycles in the United States were made for children. In Europe cycling remained an adult activity, and bicycle racing, commuting, and "cyclotouring
Bicycle touring
Bicycle touring is cycling over long distances – prioritizing pleasure and endurance over utility or speed. Touring can range from single day 'supported' rides — e.g., rides to benefit charities — where provisions are available to riders at stops along the route, to multi-day...
" were all popular activities. In addition, specialist bicycles for children appeared before 1916.
Bicycles continued to evolve to suit the varied needs of riders. The derailleur developed in France between 1900 and 1910 among cyclotourists, and was improved over time. Only in the 1930s did European racing organizations allow racers to use gearing
Bicycle gearing
A bicycle gear or gear ratio refers to the rate at which the rider's legs turn compared to the rate at which the wheels turn. Bicycle gearing refers to how the gear ratio is set or changed. On some bicycles, there is only one gear so the ratio is fixed. Most modern bicycles have multiple gears,...
; until then they were forced to use a two-speed bicycle. The rear wheel had a sprocket on either side of the hub. To change gears, the rider had to stop, remove the wheel, flip it around, and remount the wheel. When racers were allowed to use derailleurs, racing times immediately dropped.
At mid-century there were two predominant bicycle styles for recreational cyclists in North America. Heavyweight cruiser bicycle
Cruiser bicycle
Cruiser bicycles, also known as beach cruisers, combine balloon tires, upright seating posture, single-speed drivetrains, and straightforward steel construction with expressive styling...
s, preferred by the typical (hobby) cyclist, featuring balloon tires, pedal-driven "coaster" brakes and only one gear, were popular for their durability, comfort, streamlined appearance, and a significant array of accessories (lights, bells, springer forks, speedometers, etc..). Lighter cycles, with hand brakes, narrower tires, and a three-speed hub gear
Hub gear
A hub gear, internal-gear hub, or just gear hub is a gear ratio changing system commonly used on bicycles that is implemented with planetary or epicyclic gears. The gears and lubricants are sealed within the hub-shell of the bicycle's rear wheel, as opposed to derailleur gears, where the gears and...
ing system, often imported from England, first became popular in the United States in the late 1950s. These comfortable, practical bicycles usually offered generator-powered headlamps, safety reflectors, kickstands, and frame-mounted tire pumps. In the United Kingdom, like the rest of Europe, cycling was seen as less of a hobby, and lightweight but durable bikes had been preferred for decades.
In the early 1980s, Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
company Itera invented a new type
Itera plastic bicycle
The Itera Plastic Bicycle was a 1980's Swedish attempt to modernize the bicycle by replacing metal with injection moulded plastic composite materials. The project ended in technical and commercial failure after three years.- History :...
of bicycle, made entirely of plastic. It was a commercial failure.
Bicycle sales in North America
Efficient energy use
Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the goal of efforts to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a home allows a building to use less heating and cooling energy to achieve and maintain a comfortable temperature...
transportation led to the American bike boom
Bike boom
Bike boom or bicycle craze refers to several different times when, for a period of a few years, many people in many parts of Europe and North America wanted to buy and ride a bicycle. In brief, they occurred in 1819, 1868, the decade of the 1890s, and the 1970s...
of the 1970s. Annual U.S. sales of adult bicycles doubled between 1960 and 1970, and doubled again between 1971 and 1975, the peak years of the adult cycling boom in the United States, eventually reaching nearly 17 million units. Most of the these sales were to new cyclists, who overwhelmingly preferred models imitating popular European derailleur-equipped racing bikes
Racing bicycle
A racing bicycle, also known as a road bike, is a bicycle designed for competitive road cycling, a sport governed by according to the rules of the Union Cycliste Internationale...
, variously called sports models, sport/tourers, or simply ten-speeds. These lighter bicycles, long used by serious cyclists and by racers, featured dropped handlebars, narrow tires, derailleur gears, five to fifteen speeds, and a narrow 'racing' type saddle. By 1980, racing and sport/touring derailleur bikes dominated the market in North America.
Recumbent bicycle
Union Cycliste Internationale
Union Cycliste Internationale is the world governing body for sports cycling and oversees international competitive cycling events. The UCI is based in Aigle, Switzerland....
's banning of the recumbent bicycle
Recumbent bicycle
A recumbent bicycle is a bicycle that places the rider in a laid-back reclining position. Most recumbent riders choose this type of design for ergonomic reasons; the rider's weight is distributed comfortably over a larger area, supported by back and buttocks...
from all forms of racing. This stemmed from discomfort at Francis Faure, a mere category 2 racer, humiliating many class 1 racers while riding Mochet
Mochet
Georges Mochet began to produce cycle-cars at his premises on the rue Roque-de-Fillol at Puteaux in approximately 1946 and by about 1952 had progressed to more modern looking two seater micro-cars...
's Velocar
Velocar
Velocar was the name given to velomobiles made in the 1930s and 40s by Mochet et Cie of Puteaux, France....
. The clear superiority of this frame geometry for level races made upright bicycle manufacturers (the sponsors of the Union Cycliste Internationale) uncomfortable, who lobbied for a ban. This motion was passed after a long and heated meeting, and by only a handful of votes in a near split decision. This resulted in the stagnation of the upright racing bike's frame geometry which has remained essentially unchanged for 70 years. This stagnation finally started to reverse with the formation of the International Human Powered Vehicle Association
International Human Powered Vehicle Association
The International Human Powered Vehicle Association is dedicated to promoting the design and development of human powered vehicles.- History :...
which holds races for "banned" classes of bicycle. One such vehicle
Sam Whittingham
Sam Whittingham is a Canadian cyclist who has held several world records on recumbent bicycles., he holds the following world records under the sanction of the International Human Powered Vehicle Association:...
currently holds the human powered speed record of 132 km/h (82 mph) on level ground.
BMX
BMXBMX
Bicycle motocross or BMX refers to the sport in which the main goal is extreme racing on bicycles in motocross style on tracks with inline start and expressive obstacles, and it is also the term that refers to the bicycle itself that is designed for dirt and motocross cycling.- History :BMX started...
, a form of cycling on specially designed bicycles which usually have 16 to 24-inch wheels (the norm being the 20-inch wheel), originated in the state of California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
in the early 1970s, when teenagers imitated their motocross
Motocross
Motocross is a form of motorcycle sport or all-terrain vehicle racing held on enclosed off road circuits. It evolved from trials, and was called scrambles, and later motocross, combining the French moto with cross-country...
heroes on their bicycles. Children were racing standard road bikes off-road, around purpose-built tracks in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
. The 1971 motorcycle racing documentary On Any Sunday
On Any Sunday
On Any Sunday is a 1971 American documentary feature about motorcycle sport, directed by Bruce Brown. It was nominated for a 1972 Academy Award for Documentary Feature....
is generally credited with inspiring the movement nationally in the US. In the opening scene, kids are shown riding their Schwinn Stingrays off-road. It was not until the middle of the decade the sport achieved critical mass, and manufacturers began creating bicycles designed specially for the sport.
It has grown into an international sport with several different disciplines.
Mountain bikes
In 1981, the first mass-produced mountain bikeMountain bike
A mountain bike or mountain bicycle is a bicycle created for off-road cycling. This activity includes traversing of rocks and washouts, and steep declines,...
appeared, intended for use off-pavement over a variety of surfaces. It was an immediate success, and examples flew off retailers' shelves during the 1980s, their popularity spurred by the novelty of all-terrain cycling and the increasing desire of urban dwellers to escape their surroundings via mountain biking and other extreme sports. These cycles featured sturdier frames, wider tires with large knobs for increased traction, a more upright seating position (to allow better visibility and shifting of body weight), and increasingly, various front and rear suspension designs. By 2000, mountain bike sales had far outstripped that of racing, sport/racer, and touring bicycles.
Hybrid and commuter bicycles
In recent years, bicycle designs have trended towards increased specialization, as the number of casual, recreational and commuter cyclists has grown. For these groups, the industry responded with the hybridHybrid bicycle
A hybrid bicycle is a bicycle designed for general-purpose utility and commuting on a wide variety of surfaces, including paved and unpaved roads, paths and trails...
bicycle, sometimes marketed as a city bike, cross bike, or commuter bike. Hybrid bicycles combine elements of road racing and mountain bikes, though the term is applied to a wide variety of bicycle types. Hybrid bicycles and commuter bicycles can range from fast and light racing-type bicycles with flat bars and other minimal concessions to casual use, to wider-tired bikes designed for primarily for comfort, load-carrying, and increased versatility over a range of different road surfaces. Enclosed hub gears
Hub gear
A hub gear, internal-gear hub, or just gear hub is a gear ratio changing system commonly used on bicycles that is implemented with planetary or epicyclic gears. The gears and lubricants are sealed within the hub-shell of the bicycle's rear wheel, as opposed to derailleur gears, where the gears and...
have become popular again - now with up to 8, 11 or 14 gears - for such bicycles due to ease of maintenance and improved technology.
Other points of interest
While historically most bike frames have been steel, recent designs, particularly of high-end racing bikes, have made extensive use of carbon and aluminum frames.Recent years have also seen a resurgence of interest in balloon tire cruiser bicycle
Cruiser bicycle
Cruiser bicycles, also known as beach cruisers, combine balloon tires, upright seating posture, single-speed drivetrains, and straightforward steel construction with expressive styling...
s for their low-tech comfort, reliability, and style.
In addition to influences derived from the evolution of American bicycling trends, European, Asian, and African cyclists have also continued to use traditional roadster
Roadster (bicycle)
A roadster, aka English roadster, is a type of utility bicycle once common in Britain and still very common in Asia, Africa, Denmark and the Netherlands, however, during the past several years, traditionally styled roadster bicycles have gained considerable popularity in the United States and...
bicycles, as their rugged design, enclosed chainguards, and dependable hub gearing make them ideal for commuting and utility cycling
Utility cycling
Utility cycling encompasses any cycling not done primarily for fitness, recreation such as cycle touring, or sport such as cycle racing, but simply as a means of transport...
duty.
The 21st century
The 21st century has seen a continued application of technology to bicycles: in designing them, building them, and using them. Bicycle frames and components continue to get lighter and more aerodynamic without sacrificing strength largely through the use of computer aided design, finite element analysis, and computational fluid dynamicsComputational fluid dynamics
Computational fluid dynamics, usually abbreviated as CFD, is a branch of fluid mechanics that uses numerical methods and algorithms to solve and analyze problems that involve fluid flows. Computers are used to perform the calculations required to simulate the interaction of liquids and gases with...
. Recent discoveries about bicycle stability have been facilitated by computer simulation
Computer simulation
A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system...
s. Once designed, new technology is applied to manufacturing such as hydroforming
Hydroforming
Hydroforming is a cost-effective way of shaping malleable metals such as aluminum or brass into lightweight, structurally stiff and strong pieces. One of the largest applications of hydroforming is the automotive industry, which makes use of the complex shapes possible by hydroforming to produce...
and automated carbon fiber
Carbon fiber
Carbon fiber, alternatively graphite fiber, carbon graphite or CF, is a material consisting of fibers about 5–10 μm in diameter and composed mostly of carbon atoms. The carbon atoms are bonded together in crystals that are more or less aligned parallel to the long axis of the fiber...
layup. Finally, electronic gadgetry has expanded from just cyclocomputer
Cyclocomputer
A cyclocomputer or cyclometer is a device mounted on a bicycle that calculates and displays trip information, similar to the instruments in the dashboard of a car. The computer with display, or head unit, usually is attached to the handlebar for easy viewing.-History:In 1895 Curtis Hussey Veeder...
s to now include cycling power meter
Cycling power meter
A cycling power meter is a device on a bicycle that allows measuring of the power output of the rider. Most cycling power meters use strain gauges to measure torque applied, and, combined with angular velocity, calculate power...
s and electronic gear-shifting system
Electronic gear-shifting system
An electronic gear-shifting system is a method of changing gears on a bicycle, which enables riders to shift with electronic switches instead of using conventional control levers. The switches are connected by wire or wirelessly to a battery pack and to a small electric motor that drives the...
s.
Further reading
- Cycle History vol. 1-18, Proceedings of the ICHC, 1990–2007
- David Gordon Wilson Bicycling Science 3rd ed. 2004
- David V. Herlihy Bicycle - The History. 2004
- Hans-Erhard Lessing Automobilitaet - Karl Drais und die unglaublichen Anfaenge, 2003 (in German)
- Pryor Dodge The Bicycle 1996 (French ed 1996, German eds 1997, 2002, 2007)
External links
- International Cycling History Conference (ICHC)
- Karl-Drais memorial
- Menotomy Vintage Bicycles - Antique bicycle photos, features, price guide and research tools.
- Metz Bicycle Museum in Freehold, NJ
- Myths and Milestones in Bicycle Evolution by William Hudson (accessed 2005-11-17)
- A Quick History of Bicycles from the Pedaling History Bicycle Museum (accessed 2005-01-06)
- 1911 Britannica article about the bicycle
- Bicyclette of Harry John Lawson
- VeloPress has published dozens of books on the history of cycling and the bicycle.
- The Wheelmen organization