A. In the summer of 1817, a German civil servant named Karl Drais set out from the city of Mannheim on a curious wooden machine. It had two wheels in a line, a seat and a simple steering bar, but no pedals: the rider moved forward by pushing against the ground with his feet. Drais reportedly covered about fourteen kilometres in roughly an hour, a speed that compared well with a horse-drawn coach. His 'running machine', as it became known, enjoyed a brief period of fashion among wealthy young men in Europe, but it was expensive, uncomfortable on rough roads and soon came to be regarded as a toy rather than a serious means of transport.
B. For several decades little progress was made. Then, in the 1860s, French mechanics began attaching pedals and cranks directly to the front wheel. These machines, called velocipedes, allowed riders to keep their feet off the ground for the first time. However, their iron-rimmed wooden wheels transmitted every bump in the road to the rider, and in English-speaking countries they earned the nickname 'boneshakers'. Despite the discomfort, riding schools opened in Paris, London and New York, and cycling became a popular pastime for those who could afford it.
C. Because the pedals were fixed to the front wheel, one turn of the pedals produced one turn of the wheel. The only way to go faster was therefore to make the front wheel bigger. By the 1870s, manufacturers were producing 'high-wheelers' with front wheels up to one and a half metres in diameter and tiny rear wheels. These machines, later nicknamed penny-farthings in Britain, were fast and surprisingly efficient, but they were also dangerous. The rider sat high above the front wheel, and a sudden stop could throw him over the handlebars head first. As a result, cycling remained largely a sport for athletic young men.
D. The solution came in 1885, when the English inventor John Kemp Starley produced the Rover. It had two wheels of similar size, and the rider pedalled a chain connected to the rear wheel. Gearing through the chain meant that speed no longer depended on the size of the wheel, so the rider could sit much closer to the ground. Advertisers called it the 'safety bicycle', and its basic design, with a diamond-shaped frame, a chain drive and equal wheels, is essentially the one still used today. Three years later, the Scottish vet John Boyd Dunlop developed a practical air-filled tyre, originally to make his son's tricycle more comfortable. The combination of the safety bicycle and the pneumatic tyre transformed cycling.
E. What followed was a cycling boom. In the 1890s, factories in Europe and the United States produced bicycles in huge numbers, and mass production brought prices down to a level that clerks and skilled workers could afford. Cycling clubs organised weekend rides into the countryside, and organisations representing cyclists campaigned for better road surfaces, years before the motor car became common. For women in particular, the bicycle offered a new degree of independence: it allowed them to travel without a chaperone and encouraged a move towards more practical clothing.
F. Historians of technology often point out that the bicycle also prepared the ground for later inventions. Techniques developed for making bicycles, such as ball bearings, steel tubing and chain drives, were later used in early cars and aircraft. The Wright brothers, who made the first powered flight in 1903, ran a bicycle shop in Ohio, and several early car manufacturers began as bicycle makers. The humble machine that Drais pushed along with his feet thus played a part in shaping the transport revolution of the twentieth century.