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Speed kings: The double-action, four-wheel Velocipede
From Brompton, to Pashley, to Rayleigh: bicycle manufacturers are now household names. Demand and improved infrastructure drives innovation and popularity today just as it did during the first cycling revolution of the 1890s.
This boom was not confined to Britain; the same can be seen in New York, where races were held in suburban roads and at the Madison Square Garden, which was originally designed for cycle racing.
Claims to have invented the bicycle abound. In 1860, Ernest and Pierre Michaux added a crank and pedals to the front wheel of their frame: previously steering had been absent. This is largely considered the first modern design. Starley manufactured a pedalled-bicycle (or velocipede) which soon became known as the boneshaker.
The high-wheeler (or Penny Farthing, or Ordinary) soon followed: without gears, wheel size determined speed. This increased by up to 1.5m to achieve higher speeds. But with speed came danger: ‘tipping’ was common and women couldn’t ride them.
The solution was the Safety bicycle, popularised by Starley’s Rover featuring gears and equal-sized wheels. Another major development came in 1888 with the patenting of pneumatic tyres by John Boyd Dunlop.
It is impossible to say with total accuracy when the first fold-up appeared. In 1878, William Grout invented a ‘folding’ Penny Farthing but drawings show it disassembled rather than folded. The first credibly documented folding bike was designed by Emmit Latta and patented in 1888. The first folding tandem bicycle was probably by Julien Simon and Victor Dussault.
Folding tricycles predated all of these. By 1884 they were included in The Tricyclists’ Indispensible Annual. Tricycles were very popular until the 1920s. With rougher road surfaces, they provided more stability than two-wheelers. William Starley’s IMechE membership record states that he supplied Her Majesty with four tricycles and received a royal warrant.
Women could cycle thanks to modifications to frame design, allowing for skirts, which came with the Safety bike and tricycles. Irving Leonard claims that cycling in the 1890s was “a general intoxication, an eruption of exuberance... that shook the economic and social foundations of society and rattled...its moral outlook”.
Girl power: Cycling did more for emancipation than anything else
Suffragists and civil rights leaders such as Susan Brownell Anthony claimed that cycling had “done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world”. It gave women freedom to socialise, work and move independently. Cycling required a more practical dress, and large skirts and corsets gave way to bloomers, furthering claims to emancipation.
Improvements to road surfacing made cycling more comfortable and appealing. Cycling holidays and tours became popular, especially among mixed groups who could now socialise without chaperones; many portrayals of these as a liberating leisure activity appeared in novels, such as Brideshead Revisited.
Campaigns for improved road surfaces were largely run by cyclists. The Good Roads Movement in the US even published a magazine from 1892, and within three years circulation reached a million. Tar-bound macadam (tarmac) or concrete paving was applied to urban roads towards the end of the 19th century.
Improvements in materials and engineering have also played their part. The Champion Folder, for example, weighed in at 40.3kg in 1884, while the modern Brompton ranges from a mere 9 to 12½kg.
Frames are more lightweight now, allowing for greater speeds to be achieved. This year a Kevlar and glass-fibre bicycle, the Beastie, was used at the World Human Powered Speed Challenge, and reached 56.62mph.
From the 1980s the greatest evolutions in the bicycle since the introduction of the Safety machine have occurred owing to: wider availability of materials; improvements in manufacturing techniques; environmental and health concerns; and the increased popularity of cycling as a sport.