History of the bicycle
The term bicycle arose in France in the late 1860s and replaced the term "velocipede" from the High Bicycle on.
There is no generally accepted evidence that the two-wheeler existed before the year 1817. There are a number of controversial claims of earlier existence. Comte de Sivrac has been said to have developed a two-wheeler in 1791, but it is most likely an error created by an illustration created by historian Baudry de Saunier in 1891. A church window in Stoke Poges that was installed in the 16th or 17th century shows an angel on a device that some argue looks like a bicycle. Medieval iconography however often associates angelic figures with a one-wheeled contraption. A drawing said to be from around 1493 of a bicycle that was attributed to Giacomo Caprotti, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, is accepted by most to be a hoax.
The invention of the bicycle has one trackable source. In Germany, Karl von Drais, a civil servant to the Grand Duke of Baden, who had studied mathematics, physics, and architecture at the university of Heidelberg, invented his Laufmaschine (running machine) of 1817 that was called draisine by the press and later velocipede. He did it in response to starvation and dying horses after a crop failure the year before ("eighteen hundred and froze to death," a snow summer due to the volcanic eruption of Tambora).
The requirement of balancing was nearly insurmountable for the average population, with only a few young men being ice skaters at that time. Therefore the velocipede was pushed by the feet against the ground and no attempt was undertaken by Drais nor by mechanics elsewhere to take the feet off safe ground and to put them on pedals (Drais had begun with four-wheeled Fahrmaschinen, i.e. driving machines, with a cranked axle between the rear wheels trodden by one passenger). On his first reported spin from Mannheim on June 12, 1817, he covered 8 miles (13 km) in less than an hour. The wooden draisine weighed 48 pounds (22 kg) or less, had brass bushings within the wheels, a rear-wheel brake and 6 inches (152 mm) trail of the front-wheel for a self-centering castor effect.
Several thousand copies have been built and used worldwide, and this is regarded to be the origin of horseless personal transport. The first cycling races were reported from Ipswich and elsewhere. Yet beginning with the good harvest in autumn 1817, riding velocipedes on side-roads was forbidden worldwide (nicknamed hobby-horses, they couldn't use the rutted carriageway), in Mannheim, Milan, London, New York and even Calcutta. This and the triumph of the upcoming railways plus the fear of balancing stopped further development for 50 years. Mechanics now built pedal- or handle-driven three- or four-wheeled iron velocipedes for stability, but with higher rolling resistance. Willard Sawyer in Dover was a successful manufacturer with exports worldwide.
It was in Paris during the late 1860s that a renaissance of the two-wheeled velocipede, now with pedals on the front wheel, took place: "le velocipede bicycle," as the French said, i.e. the two-wheeled velocipede. This was preceded by a roller skating boom as skating rinks began to open. Those who could survive with rollers on both feet no longer feared on a velocipede to take their feet off safe ground and leave them on the pedals. The origin of the idea is still an open question within the ICHC, the earliest year in Paris agreed upon being 1864 at present. The claims of Ernest Michaux and of the emigré Pierre Lallement, who obtained an US patent in 1866, and the lesser claims of rear-pedaling Alexandre Lefebvre, all have their partisans within the ICHC. On the new macadamized boulevards of Paris it was easy riding, although imitating the coach technology of massive iron frames doubled the weight to nearly 100 pounds (45 kg). Solid rubber tires and the first ball bearings brought further comfort and advantages for the now common bicycle races. The number of inventions and patents soared, especially in the US.
One reaction of inventors to the front-pedal velocipede was, "Why not drive the rear wheel?" Several designs were published, even using a chain, or Thomas McCall's velocipede of 1869 with pedal rods throwing cranks on the rear wheel. In a bizarre campaign of the late 1880s corn trader and tricyclist James Johnston predated McCall's rear-pedal velocipede to 1839 and attributed it to a distant relative, Kirkpatrick MacMillan. He also connected this with a newspaper clip reporting an anonymous person's accident on a hand-driven velocipede in Glasgow by hiding the latter detail. This "first true bicycle" claim can now be put to bed and safely ignored, according to the ICHC. And also the Lefebvre claim has to struggle with the belief that rear-pedal velocipedes came after the front-pedal ones.
While on foot-driven velocipedes, women had been seen only in England (where they also could ice-skate themselves), famous women like actress Sarah Bernhardt were now riding in France, and circus performers everywhere. Yet the machines, nicknamed "boneshakers" and as heavy as a motorcycle today, weren't easy to handle, and the booming roller-skating rinks offered a more social pleasure. Thus velocipede riding stagnated even before the onset of the Franco-Prussian war. In New York it was downright forbidden again, in Cologne (Germany) till 1894. Yet one man in Paris found the solution to make larger front wheels for speed without adding too much weight: Eugene Meyer, who 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 built a beautiful High Bicycle with it until the 1880s.
James Starley in Coventry added the tangent spokes and the mounting step to his famous bicycle named "Ariel." He is rightly regarded as the father of the British cycling industry, then leading the world, with Coventry, Birmingham and Manchester being the centers. Ball bearings, solid tires and hollow frames became standard. Depending on the rider's leg length, the front wheel could now have a diameter up to 60 in (1.5 m). These Ordinaries were nicknamed "Penny Farthings" in England (a penny representing the front wheel, and a much smaller coin, the farthing, representing the rear wheel). They were fast, but unsafe. The rider was way 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 or even killed. "Taking a header," which was not at all uncommon, was no laughing matter. The dangerous nature of these bicycles meant that cycling was the preserve of adventurous young men. The American "Star" bicycle was an Ordinary turned-around to prevent those headers, but now there was the danger of being thrown backwards when riding uphill. Elderly gentlemen and women preferred the more stable tricycles or quadricycles, e.g. Queen Victoria rode Starley's "Royal Salvo," a true highlight of the gunsmiths' art. In the United States it was Bostonian Alexander Pope who monopolized Ordinaries from 1876 and initiated the good-roads movement.
Attempts to make the bicycle safer and reduce the size of the front-wheel finally led to a radical change of bicycle ergonomics. John Kemp Starley, James' nephew, set the fashion to the world with his "Rovers" from 1885 on (never patented) that featured equally sized wheels and a chain drive to the rear wheel. In the US Pope's safety bicycle was called "Columbia," and he tried again to monopolize the "Columbia Chainless" with a shaft drive. Meanwhile John Boyd Dunlop's re-invention of the pneumatic tire in 1888 had made for a much smoother ride. Chicago's immigrant Adolph Schoeninger with his Western Wheel Works became the "Ford of the Bicycle" (ten years before Henry Ford) and by rigorous use of sheet-metal stamping and mass production made his "Crescent" bicycles affordable for the working people.
By the start of the 20th century, bicycling had become an important means of transportation, and in the United States an increasingly popular form of recreation. Bicycling clubs for men and women sprouted across the nation. Cycling's growth slowed, and had virtually ceased by mid-century however, as automobiles became the preferred means of transportation. Nevertheless bicycles continued to evolve to suit the varied needs of riders. At mid-century there were two predominant bicycle styles for recreational cyclists in both Europe and North America. Heavyweight bikes, featuring balloon tires, pedal driven coaster brakes and only one gear, were popular for short trips on mostly flat surfaces. Lightweight cycles, with hand brakes, thinner tires, and a three-speed hub gearing system, developed in Europe and first became popular in the United States in the late 1950s. These comfortable, practical bicycles usually offered generator-powered headlamps, safety reflectors, kickstands, and tube-mounted tire pumps.
In the late 1960s, spurred by Americans' increasing consciousness of the value of exercise, bicycling enjoyed another boom. Sales doubled between 1960 and 1970, and doubled again between 1970 and 1972. Most of the new sales were of racing bikes. These lighter bicycles, long used by serious cyclists and by racers, featured dropped handlebars, five to fifteen speed derailleurs, and a narrower seat, but usually offered none of the extra features, including chain guards and fenders, found on their predecessors. By the 1980s, racing bikes dominated the market in North America, and companies such as Schwinn, which had continued to produce mostly the older styles, went out of business.
Mountain bikes appeared on retailers' shelves in the later 1980s, their popularity spurred by the evolution of mountain biking and other extreme sports. These cycles featured sturdier frames, more complex suspensions, and handlebar grips oriented perpendicular to the axis of the bicycle to enable the operator to resist the forward jolts of a bumpy downhill ride. By 2000, their sales had far outstripped that of racing bicycles, which were by then used only by long-distance road cyclists. Recent years have seen a consumer backlash in North America, as casual cyclists showed dissatisfaction with both the heavy mountain bikes and their more fragile, sometimes uncomfortable racing predecessors. Manufacturers responded with a hybrid, combining the best of the two styles and largely effecting a return to the lightweight cycles of the 1960s, albeit with a larger selection of gears and without the accessories found on earlier models. Through all these years of circular change in American bicycling, the less style-conscious European cyclists have largely stuck with their comfortable lightweight models, featuring practical accessories and dependable rear hub gearing.