Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The most common type of velocipede today is the bicycle. The term was probably first coined by Karl von Drais in French as vélocipède for the French translation of his advertising leaflet for his version of the Laufmaschine, also now called a 'dandy horse', which he had developed in 1817.
The bikes are also used to start a Keirin race for speed skating (replacing the Derny in a velodrome). In a keirin for skaters, the bike starts on the opposite side of the oval and the skaters then start from a standing start as the bike passes them. The bike then regulates the speed, which increases over two laps, before slowing and moving to ...
The name of the competition was changed several times before it was eventually titled the "World Short Track Speed Skating Championships" in 1989; the championships are now held annually. Short-track speed skating was introduced as a demonstration sport at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, Canada. It was upgraded to a full Olympic sport in ...
Racing skates, also known as speed skates, have long blades and are used for speed skating. A clap skate (or clapper skate) is a type of skate where the shoe is connected to the blade using a hinge. Short track racing skates have a longer overall height to the blade to allow for deep edge turns without the boot contacting the ice.
Although multiple-speed bicycles were widely known by this time, most or all military bicycles used in the Second World War were single-speed. Bicycles were used by paratroopers during the war to help them with transportation, creating the term "bomber bikes" to refer to US planes dropping bikes for troops to use. [61]
It was iron-bladed skates that led to the spread of skating and, in particular, speed skating. By 1642, the first known skating club, The Skating Club of Edinburgh, was born, and, in 1763, the first speed skating race known in any detail was held from Wisbech to Whittlesey on the Fens in England for a prize sum of 20 guineas, won by John Lamb ...
Haralds Silovs of Latvia became the first athlete in Olympic history to participate in both short track (1500m) and long track (5000m) speed skating, and the first to compete in two different disciplines on the same day. He competed in the 5000m and then raced across town to the 1500m event.
Wooden dandy horse (around 1820), a patent-infringing copy of the first two-wheeler Original Laufmaschine of 1817 made to measure.. The dandy horse, an English nickname for what was first called a Laufmaschine ("running machine" in German), then a vélocipède or draisienne (in French and then English), and then a pedestrian curricle or hobby-horse, [1] or swiftwalker, [2] is a human-powered ...