![]() ![]() ![]() No one person can really be labelled as the “inventor” of the bicycle, but Starley made it into a marketable product and is thought of as the founder of the trade. Then, in the 1860s, came the more practical Velocipede, which had pedals attached to the front wheel.ĭeveloped in France (where a bike is still a “velo”), the Velocipede was improved in Coventry by James Starley, a mechanical experimenter who at the time was running a successful sewing machine factory. In 1840 Kirkpatrick Macmillan of Scotland added a system of rods and cranks that meant it could be pedalled along. In the first 20 years there was the Hobby Horse - a contraption of wood with a leather saddle, propelled by pushing on the ground with the feet. The bicycle matured from toy to serious transport during the 19th century. It’s even been suggested that the bicycle made us all cleverer because with its aid boys and girls could more easily meet and marry partners from outside their immediate area, thus widening the genetic background of their descendants. By 1890, ownership of a bike in Europe and America meant freedom to live away from the shadow of the factory, to get far into the countryside at weekends, to escape from parental oversight (sometimes with members of the opposite sex), to meet new people and see new places. The story of the bicycle is as much about freedom as it is about technology. Gerald Haigh looks at the liberating effects of getting somewhere under your own steam. ![]()
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