1817 to 1819: the draisine or velocipede
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
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 avelocipede, 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.
Denis Johnson's son
riding a velocipede, Lithograph 1819.
3
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 introduce
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, this 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, 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 cranks and pedals 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
McCall's first (top) and improved velocipede of 1869 - later
predated to 1839 and attributed to MacMillan
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.
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 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 bicycles, was Thomas McCall, of Kilmarnock in
1869. The design was inspired by the French front-crank velocipede of the
Lallement/Michaux type. However, it was not as successful despite McCall's
all steel version of 1869, and some design advantages.
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 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 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". 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 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 favor.
Earliest unverifiable history
There are several early but unverifiable 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, 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. 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 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
