Earliest unverifiable history

There are several early but unreliable claims for the invention of bicycle-like
machines.

The earliest comes from an illustration found in a church window in Stoke Poges,
installed in the 16th Century, showing a naked angel on a bicycle-like device,[1] and
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.[2]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[3].

Later, and equally unreliable, is the allegation 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.[4] A rider was
said to have to 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.[5][6]

817 to 1819: the draisine or velocipede

Wooden draisine (around 1820), the earliest two-wheeler

Drais' 1817 design made to measure

The first reliable 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
hisLaufmaschine (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, nick-named
hobby-horse or dandy horse.[7] It was initially manufactured in Germany and France.
It was constructed almost entirely of wood. 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).[8] On his first
reported ride fromMannheim on June 12, 1817, he covered 13 km (eight miles) in less
than an hour.[9] The wooden draisine weighed 22 kg (48 pounds), had brass bushings
within the wheel bearings, 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.[10]
Denis Johnson's son riding a velocipede, Lithograph 1819.

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. [11]
. We can assume a name change occurred when Johnson
patented his vehicle and named it “pedestrian curricle” or “velocipede,” but the
public preferred nick-names like “hobby-horse,” after the children’s toy or, worse still,
“dandyhorse,” after the foppish men who often rode them. [7]
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, which allowed the use of larger
wheels without raising the seat higher. 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, 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 sideways 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 cranks and pedals to the front-wheel hub, to create the first pedal-
operated "bicycle" as we today understand the word.

[edit]The 1820s to 1850s: an era of 3 and 4-wheelers

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. [12]

[edit]The 1830s: the reported Scottish inventions

The first mechanically-propelled 2-wheel vehicle was believed to have been built
by Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a Scottish blacksmith, in 1839. A nephew later claimed that
his uncle developed a rear-wheel drive design using mid mounted treadlesconnected
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. A similar machine was said to have been
produced by Gavin Dalzell of Lesmahagow, but evidence is unclear, and may have
been faked by his son. [13]
The first documented producer of rod-driven 2-wheelers
was Thomas McCall, of Kilmarnock in 1869. The design was inspired by the French
front-crank velocipede of the Lallement/Michaux type. [14]
However, it was not as
successful despite McCall's all steel version of 1869, and some design advantages.

[edit]1860s and the Michaux or "Boneshaker"

he first really popular and commercially successful design was a French one (an
example of the style is held in theMuseum 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 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 be 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.

The original pedal-bicycle, with the serpentine frame, from Pierre Lallement's US Patent No.
59,915drawing, 1866

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 entrepreneurs 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," because its ride was so rough. Later improvements included
solid rubber tires and ball bearings. 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 thevelocipede 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 to opening throughout 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 favor.

1870s: the high-wheel bicycle

Main article: Penny-farthing

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),[15][16][17][18] 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 Starley. Meyer invented the wire-spoke tension wheel in 1869
and produced a classic high bicycle design until the 1880s.

A penny-farthing or ordinarybicycle photographed in the Škoda museum in the Czech Republic

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 bearings, 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).

Starley's "Royal Salvo" tricycle, as owned by Queen Victoria

This type of bicycle was retronymed the "ordinary" (since there were then no other
kind)[19] 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)[20] or even killed. "Taking a header" (also known as "coming a cropper"),
which was not at all uncommon, was no laughing matter. 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. Elderly gentlemen preferred, and
women had to ride, the more stable tricycles or quadracycles. Queen Victoriaowned
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 Manchesterbeing 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).[21] 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 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),[22] vertically integrated,[23] (also later copied and
adopted by Ford), advertised aggressively[24] (as much as ten percent of all
advertising in U.S. periodicals in 1898 was by bicycle makers),[25] promoted theGood
Roads Movement (which had the side benefit of acting as advertising, and of
improving sales by providing more places to ride),[26] and litigated on behalf of
cyclists[26] (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.)[27] In
addition, bicycle makers adopted the annual model change[28](later derided
as planned obsolescence, and usually credited to General Motors), which proved very
successful.[29]

Even so, bicycling remained the province of the urban well-to-do, and mainly men,
until the 1890s,[30] and were examples of conspicuous consumption.[31]

[edit]The 1880s and 1890s

The development of the safety bicycle 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
a 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.

Bicycle in Plymouth at the start of the 20th Century

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.[32]

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 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.[33] 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 better
stability, lesser gyrscopic forces and 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 ridable but is
bone jarring. The frame design allows for a lighter weight, and more simple
construction and maintenance, hence lower price.

1890s Hotchkiss Bicycle Railroad

With four key aspects ( steerability, safety, comfort and speed ) improved over
the penny farthing, bicycles become 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's
immigrant Adolph Schoeningerwith 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.[27] 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 carmakers who did not follow Ford.[34]

1897 ad, showing unskirted garment for women's bicycle riding

In 1895 Annie Londonderry became the first woman to bicycle around the world.

The impact of the bicycle on female emancipation should not be underestimated. The
diamond-frame 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 suffragistsrecognised 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,
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." [1]

Bicycle suit vs conventional clothing

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.
[2]

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.

Bicycles for public use in a Netherlands national park

[edit]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" were all popular activities. In
addition, specialist bicycles for children appeared before 1916.[35]

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. Interestingly, only in the 1930s did European racing
organizations allow racers to use derailleurs; until then they were forced to use a
two-speed bicycle. The rear wheel had a cog 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.
See bicycle gearing.

At mid-century there were two predominant bicycle styles for recreational cyclists in
North America. Heavyweight cruiser bicycles, preferred by the typical (hobby) cyclist,
[36]
featuring balloon tires, pedal-driven "coaster" brakes and only one gear, were
popular for their durability, comfort, streamline appearance, and a significant array of
accessories (lights, bells, springer forks, speedometers, etc.). Lighter cycles, with
hand brakes, thinner tires, and a three-speed hub gearing 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.[36]

In the early 1980s, Swedish company Itera invented a new type of bicycle, made
entirely of plastic. It was a commercial failure.

[edit]Bicycle sales in North America

This racing bicycle has aluminum tubing, carbon fiberstays and forks, a drop handlebar, and thin
tires and wheels

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.[37] 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.[37][38]These lighter bicycles,
long used by serious cyclists and by racers, featured dropped handlebars, narrow
tires, derailleurs 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.[37][39]

[edit]Recumbent Bicycle