The Safety Bicycle

The History of the Bicycle

Course 1 · Chapter 5 · The Safety Bicycle

The machine we ride today arrived in the 1880s and was finished off in the early 1890s. It combined three ideas: a chain to the rear wheel, two wheels of similar size, and air-filled tyres. This chapter covers each, the makers behind them and the boom that followed the high wheeler described in The History of the Bicycle 4. Names, dates and details are flagged for checking.

Chain to the Rear Wheel

The key move was to separate the pedals from the wheel. If the pedals drive a chain, and the chain drives the rear wheel through a smaller sprocket, the rider can go as fast as on a huge wheel while sitting low on a small one. Several makers tried this in the 1870s and early 1880s, including H. J. Lawson with his "Bicyclette" (check). The model that settled the design is usually said to be the Rover Safety Bicycle, made in Coventry by John Kemp Starley (nephew of James Starley, Chapter 4) and shown in 1885 (check the date and the name Rover). It had two wheels of nearly equal size, a chain drive to the rear wheel, and a steering head in front of the rider, and it is often called the first commercially successful modern bicycle (check how it is credited).

Gearing

A larger chainring and a smaller rear sprocket gave a high gear without a large wheel.

Position

The rider sat low, between the wheels, with feet able to reach the ground.

Frame

A diamond frame of steel tubes, strong and light, became standard (check the date).

Name

"Safety" because it avoided the header of the high wheeler.

The Pneumatic Tyre

Early safety bicycles still had solid rubber tyres and rode hard. John Boyd Dunlop, a Scottish-born veterinary surgeon living in Belfast, made an air-filled rubber tyre for his son's tricycle and patented it in 1888 (check the dates and details). Others, including R. W. Thomson earlier, had patented similar ideas, and Dunlop's patent was later challenged (check). Racing success in Ireland in 1889 showed how much faster the tyre was (check), and a company to make them was formed in Dublin (check). Within a few years almost all bicycles used pneumatic tyres, and the idea was soon taken up for the motor car.

Credit and priority The pneumatic tyre is a good case for the record-versus-legend method of The History of the Bicycle 1. Thomson held a patent in the 1840s, and Dunlop's own patent was in time found to be weak, but Dunlop was the one who made the idea practical and commercial. "First" and "practical" are different things.

The 1890s Boom

  • Price. Mass production, with standard parts and cheaper steel, brought prices down, and a second-hand market grew (check).
  • Numbers. The 1890s are often called the golden age or "bicycle craze", with large numbers of makers and riders in Britain, France and the United States (check any figure given).
  • Gears and brakes. The freewheel, which let the rider stop pedalling while moving, and the coaster brake, together with early hub gears, came in about this time (check).
  • Bubble. The boom ended in a slump in the late 1890s, when too many firms had been created, and some investors lost money (check).
A British comparison Dunlop was Scottish by birth, from Ayrshire, and moved to Ireland, so the pneumatic tyre ties Scotland, Ireland and England together in one story (check his birthplace). A Dunlop name still appears on tyres today, though the company has changed hands several times (check).
Check the details Dates and credit for the chain drive, the Rover, the pneumatic tyre and the gear systems are disputed in places. Verify against a specialist cycle history before quoting.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain how a chain drive let a small-wheeled bicycle match the speed of a high wheeler.

→ Solution
Exercise 2

Describe what the pneumatic tyre changed, and why Dunlop is credited though he was not the first to patent the idea.

→ Solution
Exercise 3

Give two reasons the safety bicycle appealed to more people than the high wheeler.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

  • Layout: equal wheels, chain to rear wheel, diamond frame
  • Model: Rover safety, Coventry, about 1885 (check)
  • Tyre: Dunlop, Belfast, 1888 (check)
  • Boom: 1890s, then a slump (check)