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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.
This type of bicycle was known in its day as the "ordinary", but people later began calling it a "penny-farthing" because of the resemblance of its wheel sizes to the largest and smallest English copper coins of the time; it is also known as a "high-wheel". Front-wheel sizes quickly grew to as much as 5 feet (1.5 metres), and the bicycles were ...
Solid rubber tires and the long spokes of the large front wheel provided a much smoother ride than its predecessor. This type of velocipede was the first one to be called a bicycle ("two wheel"), and its shape led to the nickname penny-farthing in the United Kingdom. They enjoyed a great popularity among young men in the 1880s who could afford ...
The term 'safety bicycle' was used in the 1880s for any alternative to the penny-farthing. The front and rear wheel were not necessarily the same size. [3] Later historians began to use the term in a more restricted way for the design that was a direct ancestor to most modern bicycles.
Meyer invented the wire-spoke tension wheel in 1869 and produced a classic high bicycle design until the 1880s. A penny-farthing or ordinary bicycle photographed in the Škoda museum in the Czech Republic. James Starley in Coventry added the tangent spokes and the mounting step to his famous bicycle named "Ariel". He is regarded as the father ...
When the high wheeler or penny-farthing was the "ordinary" bicycle form, the comparative diameter in inches of the driven wheel was an indication of relative speed and effort. A 60-inch wheel propelled a bicycle faster than a 50-inch wheel when both were cranked at the same cadence. The technology of the high wheeler imposed a natural limit—a ...
High Wheel may refer to: Penny-farthing bicycle; High Entrance/Exit Turnstile (HEET) High wheeler, an early automobile body style This page was last edited on 8 ...
In 1884 he acquired a black-enameled Columbia 50-inch 'Standard' penny-farthing with nickel-plated wheels, built by the Pope Manufacturing Company of Chicago. He packed his handlebar bag with socks, a spare shirt, a raincoat that doubled as tent and bedroll, and a pocket revolver (described as a "bull-dog revolver", perhaps a British Bull Dog revolver) and left San Francisco at 8 o'clock on 22 ...