A Brief History of the Technological Development of the Bicycle
From hobby horse through the safety bicycle
Other posts on the history of transportation:
The Genius of Henry Ford (as an amateur engineer)
Abutters’ Responsibilities for Streets and Sidewalks in Ancient Rome
Resource Guide for the History of Cars and Highways
A Brief History of Houston Freeways
Streets of Houston: Grant Street
Streets of Houston: Montrose Boulevard
Streets of Houston: Bagby Street
History of Sidewalks: An Introduction
Image 1. A photo depicting a version of a draisienne. Image source: Gun Powder Ma, Creative Commons, BY-SA 3.0.
Draisines
The development of the bicycle in the nineteenth century began with the draisine, draisienne, hobby horse. These names all refer to the two-wheeled machine invented and promoted by Karl von Drais, which was propelled when the rider pushed his feet against the ground. Some illustrations depicted von Drais demonstrating his invention appearing as if he had been walking while astride the vehicle. The French started calling these velocipedes, the probable etymology for a common French word for bicycle, velo. Velocipede has been both durable and problematic. English was among the many languages to adopt the word, which was sometimes applied exclusively to hobby horses, and other times applied broadly to vehicles with two wheels.1
The hobby horse fad in France and Germany withered after 1821, and it was no longer considered as a prospect for personal transportation. Yet hobby horses were still produced as children’s toys. In fact, a claimant to the title of the first inventors of the bicycle started by manufacturing hobby horses. Pierre Michaux, a blacksmith who worked as a carriage maker in France, built hobby horses on the side. Allegedly, one of his sons was riding a hobby horse in the shop when someone decided to experiment with attaching cranks to the front wheel. Many versions of this story emerged over several decades with various family members receiving credit for the inspiration and recognition as inventors of the bicycle.2
Image 2. Pierre Lallement, “Velocipede,” 20 November 1866, United States Patent Office, No. 59,915.
Boneshakers
Pierre Lallement submitted the first American patent for a two-wheeled vehicle propelled by foot cranks in April 1866, which was approved on November 20. Lallement placed the pedal-cranks on the hub of the front wheel, with steering similar to bicycles of today. This machine was a boneshaker, which was a bicycle in the sense that the rider propelled it by dual foot cranks. He probably built his first prototype in Paris in 1863, and transported its components to the United States in July 1865. For a period, hobby horses and boneshakers were being produced at the same time, and both were commonly known as velocipedes. Of these two, only the boneshaker is a bicycle: a two-wheeled machine propelled by foot cranks. So nineteenth century usages of “velocipede” do not always refer to bicycles.3
Lallement worked at a machine shop in Ansonia, Connecticut, where he continued to tinker with and test his invention. The first of these tests had unhappy results. He rode down a hill in Ansonia, where he encountered a horse and wagon in his path with no way to stop: his machine lacked brakes. He swerved around the wagon, but took a header into the ditch. Later he rode the village green at New Haven. Apocrypha suggest he was arrested twice, and he was cited for scaring horses with the machine. The bicycles based on Lallemont’s design were noted for their bumpy rides, justifying the sobriquet, boneshaker.4
Eventually, Lallement lost confidence in his invention and sought to abandon the project. Before returning to France, he sold half the patent rights to James Carroll, who sold them to the Brooklyn carriage-maker, Calvin Witty in 1868. After consulting with an attorney, Witty resolved to secure the other half of the patent rights. Witty hired an investigator to find Lallement in France in order to secure the other half of the patent rights.5
A boneshaker fad stormed the northeast in the winter of 1868, where agile entrepreneurs quickly opened indoor bicycle rinks, renting use of the rink and the vehicle, and selling tickets for the privilege of watching the hapless riders. Boneshakers were difficult to steer and jolted the rider on anything short of a perfectly smooth surface, so they were virtually useless on most American roads during the reconstruction period. In addition, Witty notified manufacturers that he would require a $10 license fee for every bicycle manufactured. This would not be the last time that a patent-holder would demand enormous rents for the rights to produce a machine that he did not invent himself. In conclusion, several factors contributed to the quick demise of the boneshaker in the United States: problems with the design, the poor state of roads, the technological limits of contemporary metallurgy, and Witty’s patent-trolling. These last two considerations made the vehicles expensive.6
Image 3. 1889 illustration of a man riding a high-wheeler.
High-Wheelers
The second type of bicycle was the wild and wooly high-wheeler, which was also called an ordinary bicycle, or simply an ordinary. They were also called wheels or penny farthings. Like the boneshaker, the pedals and cranks were attached to the front wheel. Unlike the boneshaker, the rider of an ordinary perches high in the air over an oversized front wheel. Mounting, riding, and stopping these machines required athletic ability and daring. These early ordinaries were expensive, and because the cranks and peddles were attached to the front wheel, they needed to be customized to the rider. These early riders were most often wealthy urban dwellers. These gained great popularity in England and France, which was never matched in the United States, though American high-wheeled bicycle ownership had reached 100,000 in 1886. If membership of the League of American Wheelmen (LAW) was representative of America, typical riders of ordinaries were middle-class or upper-class men from either metropolitan areas or larger towns of the northeast. For example, sixty percent of LAW members resided in Massachusetts or New York in 1886.7
Image 4. Advertisement for a safety bicycle. Image source: Library of Congress.
Safeties
The third type of bicycle of the nineteenth century is the safety bicycle, or simply, safety. Initially developed as early as 1868, it has the same basic design as most bicycles today, with equally-sized wheels and a diamond-shaped frame. Despite being invented about the same time as the ordinary, James K. Starley was the first manufacturer to successfully market a version of the safety, which he did under the brand name, Rover. Starley’s design for a safety included a chain-driven, rear-drive sprocket. The Rover-type safety is fundamentally the same as standard, present-day bicycles. Starley manufactured the Rover in England starting in 1885. Overman Wheel Company was the first US manufacturer of Rover-type safeties, which Overman started producing in Chicopee, Massachusetts late in 1887. As a practical matter, the beginning of the safety era of bicycling began in the US in 1888. Columbia followed Overman later that year with its own Rover-type safety. In 1889, Columbia sold more safeties than ordinaries.8
Evan Friss, The Cycling City: Bicycles and Urban America in the 1890s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 12; David V. Herlihy, Bicycle: The History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 19, 21; Epperson, Peddling Bicycles, 25; Smith, Social History of the Bicycle, 4‒5.
Various claims that the Michaux family first applied cranks to a hobby horse are implausible according to David Herlihy, “Who Invented the Bicycle—Lallemont in 1863 or Michaux in 1861?” in Cycle History 4: Proceedings, 4th International Cycle History Conference, Rob van der Plas, ed. (Mill Valley, CA: Bicycle Books, 1993), 11–26; cf. Herlihy, Bicycle: The History, 75‒6. Epperson, Peddling Bicycles, 26.
Bruce Epperson, Peddling Bicycles, 5; Herlihy, “Who Invented the Bicycle”; cf. Herlihy, Bicycle: The History, 86–7, 102.
Smith, Social History of the Bicycle, 6; cf. Epperson, Peddling Bicycles, 25; Herlihy, Bicycle: The History, 120.
Herlihy, Bicycle: The History, 108; Epperson, Peddling Bicycles, 40.
David V. Herlihy, “The Velocipede Craze in Maine,” in Cycle History 8: Proceedings, 8th International Cycle History Conference, Nicholas Oddy and Rob van der Plas, eds. (San Francisco: Bicycle Books, 1997), 9‒14; Epperson, Peddling Bicycles, 24, 40; Herlihy, Bicycle: The History, 107‒8.
Christopher Wells, “The Changing Nature of Country Roads,” Agricultural History 80 (Spring 2006): 149; Epperson, Peddling Cycling, 56; Herlihy, Bicycle: The History, 188–99.
Nick Clayton, “The Quest for the Safety: What took so Long?” in Cycle History 8: Proceedings, 8th International Cycle History Conference, Nicholas Oddy and Rob Van der Plas, eds. (San Francisco: Bicycle Books, 1997), 15–20; Herlihy, Bicycle: The History, 221–50; Epperson, Peddling Bicycles, 24, 73, 84‒5.