Two Wheels

The bicycle is one of the most successful machines ever made: simple, cheap, efficient and, in its basic form, almost unchanged for well over a century. Its story is also unusually tangled, with rival inventors, national pride and a few famous legends. This first chapter sets out why the bicycle matters, the main kinds of machine the course will meet, how to tell record from legend, and where the evidence can be seen. Dates and names are from general knowledge and flagged for checking.

Why the Bicycle Matters

• Efficiency. A person on a bicycle uses less energy to travel a given distance than almost any other means of travel, walking included (check the often-quoted comparisons).
• Reach. It gave ordinary people, for the first time, personal transport that needed no horse, no fuel and no licence.
• Engineering. Ball bearings, tension-spoked wheels, chain drive, the pneumatic tyre and lightweight tubular frames were developed or popularised for the bicycle, and several passed on to the motor car and the aeroplane (check how direct each link was).
• Society. It changed courtship, women's mobility, clothing, road-building and leisure (Chapter 6).

The Main Kinds of Machine

The course follows a rough sequence of designs. Each chapter takes one in turn (dates are approximate, check each):

Record Versus Legend

Few inventions have as many disputed origins. Some of the claims made in books and guides are well documented, and some are repeated without evidence. A careful reader keeps three categories apart:

• Documented. Patents, dated newspaper reports, surviving machines and makers' catalogues. Karl von Drais's 1817 machine and its 1818 patent are of this kind (check the dates).
• Attributed. Claims made long after the event, often by a family or a town. A well-known example is the story that a Scottish blacksmith built a pedal-driven machine in the 1830s; it is widely told, but the evidence is debated (check, and see Chapter 3).
• Legendary. Sketches or stories with no firm provenance. A drawing sometimes said to show a bicycle designed in the 1490s is generally treated by historians as not authentic (check).

Where to See the Evidence

• Museums. The Science Museum in London and national transport museums hold early machines; the Riverside Museum in Glasgow has a transport collection that includes cycles (check what is on display).
• Patents and catalogues. Digitised patent records and makers' price lists show how designs and prices changed.
• Period press. Nineteenth-century newspapers and cycling journals, many now searchable online, record races, accidents and fashions.
• Surviving machines. Private collectors and clubs keep and ride original high wheelers and boneshakers.

Exercises