Who invented Bicycles?

Pierre Michaux, 1861

Why did the invention of the bicycle take so long? For 5000 years, wheels had been used in various combinations, including two side by side. But no one had put two wheels in one line and sat between them until the Frenchman de Sivrac around 1690. Yet it did not take off. For one thing, de Sivrac could not steer his machine.

History of Bicycles:

Around 1816 the German inventor Karl Drais marketed his’ running machine’ or ‘Draisine’ often dubbed a ‘hobbyhorse’. Steerable, it had no pedals; the rider had to propel the machine by kicking the ground on either side. It was not a comfortable ride; the wooden wheels had iron rims.

In 1839 the Scotsman Kirkpatrick Macmillan connected the back wheel to pedals with crank, and a rider could easily move faster than they could walk. But the bicycle boom did not come until the French carriage maker Pierre Michaux, asked to repair a Draisine, proposed a pair of pedals fixed to the front wheel, producing the ‘velocipede’. That was 1861.

The machine moved forward by only the circumference of the front wheel at every turn of the pedals, so manufacturers mad the front wheel larger and larger, producing the ‘Penny-farthing’. With a very large wheel, the rider perched on top and a small trailing wheel for balance, these were easy to ride, but tumbles were common. Thomas Stevens rode such a bicycle across the USA.

The propulsion breakthrough also came in the 1880s, with the first ‘bicycle chain’ with metal links to drive the back wheel from pedals. Different sized gearwheels had the back wheel running faster than the pedals; a ‘freewheeling’ mechanism let the rider stop peddling without stopping moving.

With the addition of inflatable rubber tyres in 1888, ball bearings to reduce friction in the works and many experiments with the form of the steel tubes- bicycles such as John Stanley’s Rover gained the form we see today, and unprecedented popularity. People now had the speed and freedom of movement they once had riding horses, till bicycles were overtaken, by the next big thing in personal transport, the automobile.