Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
History of the bicycle. 1886 Swift Safety Bicycle. Vehicles that have two wheels and require balancing by the rider date back to the early 19th century. The first means of transport making use of two wheels arranged consecutively, and thus the archetype of the bicycle, was the German draisine dating back to 1817.
A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike, push-bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, with two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A bicycle rider is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. Bicycles were introduced in the 19th century in Europe. By the early 21st century there were more ...
Penny-farthing. The penny-farthing, also known as a high wheel, high wheeler or ordinary, is an early type of bicycle. [1] It was popular in the 1870s and 1880s, with its large front wheel providing high speeds, owing to it travelling a large distance for every rotation of the wheel. These bicycles had solid rubber tires and as a consequence ...
Safety bicycle. A safety bicycle (or simply a safety) is a type of bicycle that became very popular beginning in the late 1880s as an alternative to the penny-farthing (also known as an "ordinary" or "high wheeler") and is now the most common type of bicycle. Early bicycles of this style were known as safety bicycles because they were noted for ...
This was the earliest form of a bicycle, without pedals. His first reported ride from Mannheim to the "Schwetzinger Relaishaus" (a coaching inn, located in "Rheinau", today a district of Mannheim) took place on 12 June 1817 using Baden's best road. Karl rode his bike; [4] it was a distance of about 7 kilometres (4.3 mi). The round trip took him ...
An early pedal-bicycle, with the serpentine frame, from Pierre Lallement's U.S. patent 59,915 drawing, 1866 Perhaps owing to dispute over the invention, in 1865 Lallement emigrated to The United States, where, with the financial backing of James Carroll of Ansonia , Connecticut , he recorded the first U.S. patent on a bicycle, in 1866.
In the early 1860s the first true bicycle was created in Paris, France, by attaching rotary cranks and pedals to the front wheel hub of a dandy-horse. The Olivier brothers recognized the commercial potential of this invention, and set up a partnership with blacksmith and bicycle maker Pierre Michaux, using Michaux's name, already famous among enthusiasts of the new sport, for the company.
The history of cycling infrastructure starts from shortly after the bike boom of the 1880s when the first short stretches of dedicated bicycle infrastructure were built, through to the rise of the automobile from the mid-20th century onwards and the concomitant decline of cycling as a means of transport, to cycling's comeback from the 1970s onwards.