Bicycles

History

Bicycle history has often suffered from nationalism, commercial exploitation, biased scholarship, and the occasional fraud. Leonardo da Vinci's alleged 1492 bicycle illustration was proven to be a forgery created between 1967 and 1974 by an Italian scholar seeking to displace a prior French claim of priority that was itself fictional. The first verified protobicycle was developed in Germany by Karl von Drais about 1817. His “running machine,” or draisine, had two in-line wheels and a steerable front wheel turned by a handlebar, but no transmission, as it was propelled by pushing with the feet directly against the ground.

The evolution of the pedal-driven bicycle is similarly contested. It is believed the first bicycle was probably created by adding cranks to the front wheel of a draisine. Long attributed to the Parisian father-and-son blacksmiths Pierre and Ernest Michaux in 1861, another city resident, Pierre Lallement, later claimed he was first in 1863. Lallement emigrated to the United States in 1865 and filed a U.S. patent for the “velocipede” in November 1866. He could not find a manufacturing sponsor and returned to Paris in 1868. Recent scholarship has supported Lallement's claim, suggesting that the Michauxs learned of the velocipede only after being hired by two wealthy students from Lyon, the Olivier brothers, to build them. The Oliviers, in turn, picked up the idea from Lallement prior to his American departure. However, others dispute this, asserting the Oliviers learned of the velocipede from the Michauxs, and still others believe that the Michauxs and Lallement both copied a now-forgotten predecessor.

All subsequent advances in bicycle design originated in Europe and were adopted in America only after achieving an initial commercial success. America's contributions were primarily in the form of improved methods of manufacturing and marketing. The high-wheeled or “ordinary” bicycle evolved between 1869 and 1871 after Eugene Meyer of Paris developed a front wheel using thin wire spokes, a technology adapted from waterwheels. A year later, two Britons, James Starley and William Hillman, invented a new method for maintaining uniform spoke tension that made even the largest front wheel practical. Similarly, the low-wheeled safety bicycle matured over a five-year period between 1885 and 1890. A first prototype, introduced by the British firm Rover, was not much of an improvement over existing “safety ordinaries.” However, a refined second version pointed the way to the future, and the third production version of 1886 was hugely successful.

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