The History of Bicycles | Industry study

I am going to take you through today’s video, which is a brief discussion on the subject of bicycles. Yes, bicycles, from the time the first of them was built back in the beginning of the 19th century. The first bicycles, which you would laugh at, if you happened to see them, and ask, ‘Why would anyone create such a strange vehicle?’   

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OK. With that brief message, let me return to the subject of the history of bicycles. The vehicles that many of us have used in the past, and many of us use even today. Vehicles that are as much a fitness exercise as they are a means of transport.

So let's begin – but not with the bicycle, but with the wheel.

The wheel, as you might know, was invented by the Sumerian people in Mesopotamia (the ancient civilization that existed in the area that is modern-day Iraq) – sometime in the 5th millennium BC. That is, some 7,000 years ago.

The wheels used on their carts were solid wooden discs in which rotating axles were inserted to move the wheels forward or backward. Around 2000 BC the discs began to be carved out to create lighter, hub-and-spoke wheel arrangements.

While images of the Mesopotamian wheel have been recorded, there is evidence of wheeled carts having been used in other areas too – across Persia and the Middle East, and in India, China, and Eastern Europe. Whether the Chinese, Indians and Europeans invented the wheel independently or after learning from one another is not known.

What we do know is that the wheel was invented a long, long time ago.

If the wheel was invented several thousand years ago, and used on a variety of barrows, carts and carriages, isn’t it a little odd that it was only in the early 19th century that the bicycle was invented – roughly two hundred years ago? 

Why did it take so long between the wheel and the bicycle? 

Between two-wheeled carts and two-wheeled bicycles? From two wheels placed side by side to two wheels placed in tandem (that is, one behind the other)? 

But such is life. What might seem like a simple changing of the axis of two wheels from left-right to front-back was clearly far more complex in reality. For a cart, the axis was the axle. In other words, it was not just the wheels that made the two-wheel cart. It was a combination of an axle and wheels.

For a bicycle, the axis is front to back, and you cannot use an axle in a front-and-back configuration.

But a bicycle is not merely its wheels. It has a handle, and it has a fork below the handle that allows the rider to turn the front wheel in order to change direction. So it was a bit more complicated than merely putting two wheels together, one in front of the other.

And, as you can see in the image of a very early ‘bicycle’ – without these other accessories the vehicle was more like a child’s toy than a vehicle that could ply on city or village roads.

Now let’s go back a bit. OK, quite a bit.

A long, long time to get there!

The wheel was invented somewhere between 4500 BCE and 3300 BCE, that is, possibly as long ago as 6,500 years ago! 

History had plenty of examples of two-wheeled vehicles with both wheels running parallel (i.e., side by side, on the left and right). All kinds of carts and carriages, pushed or pulled by humans, and animal-driven ones, pulled by bulls, horses, camels, llamas – and even goats! 

The first means of transport making use of two wheels arranged in tandem, i.e., one behind the other, and hence the first form of the bicycle, was the German ‘draisine’ dating back to 1817. That two-wheeler did not have a chain or pedals.

Now if you thought the bicycle that was invented two hundred years ago had any resemblance to the bicycles we see on our roads today, then think again. That would be like comparing an old land-line telephone instrument with the latest mobile phones! A world of difference between them.

Further, as you will see with the images that follow, the first bicycles had no tyres. They were simply wooden wheels, not very different from cart wheels. 

Did you know that the first ‘bicycle’ to be invented, called the ‘draisine’, was made of wood? A bit odd, isn’t it, considering that humans had learned to make copper and bronze 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, and were making iron 2,500 years ago, and steel soon after that. 

Why wood? I can only guess – that, for someone trying to make such a prototype, making a wooden frame at home was easy, compared to casting a metal wheel, which would need a small industrial unit. And a cast-iron wheel would be highly questionable as a bicycle wheel, you can be sure. It would be far too heavy.

Another thing. The first bicycles didn’t even have pedals! 

The draisine had to be moved forward by the ‘rider’ actually walking on the ground and pushing it. The ‘dandy horse’, as it was also called in some places, was powered by the rider's feet running on the ground. 

So what was it? In 1817, German inventor Karl von Drais (after whom the vehicle got its name) designed and built a two-wheeled, wooden vehicle that had to be straddled and driven forward by walking rapidly. The rider would mount the bicycle and then kick off with his feet to gain momentum.

Drais called it the laufmaschine. No, not a laughing machine. The word ‘lauf’ in German means ‘run’. So a laufmaschine was a ‘running machine’. I cannot for my life of me imagine, if the purpose was to get some exercise, why couldn’t Herr Drais simply run without being encumbered by a wooden crutch!

Anyway, the contraption soon began to be known as a ‘draisine’, after its inventor. It was also known by various other names, such as ‘hobby horse’, ‘running-machine’, and ‘velocipede’.

Those of you who have seen the movie Jurassic Park and its sequels may have seen dinosaurs called velociraptors. The word means a fast bird of prey. So you might call an eagle or a hawk a velociraptor, for they are birds, and they have great speed, but velociraptor is not a word used for these birds. Anyway, let us proceed.

The early bicycles, such as draisines, which they called velocipedes, had nothing to do with velocity. They were utterly slow, and you would have preferred to walk instead of using the velocipede – except for its novelty.

With no pedals, drive chain or brakes, the early bicycles were, I imagine, mere contraptions used to avoid the monotony of long walks. Going downhill might have been faster than walking, but riding uphill would have been a pain!

This is what it looked like:

Sometimes they were designed to look like animals!

Sometimes not:

Can you imagine this? Adults behaving like children sitting on their rocking horses – and thinking they were very smart!?

By the way, today the word ‘draisine’ means something very different. What people call a draisine today is a light rail vehicle driven by railway service personnel, which is equipped to transport crew and material necessary for the maintenance of railway infrastructure. What you see in the picture is one version of today’s draisine”:

It took another four decades for the pedal-driven bicycle to come on the scene. After the launch of the first pedal-equipped bicycle, developed by Pierre and Ernest Michaux, Pierre Lallement and the Olivier brothers in the 1860s, the word ‘velocipede’ became a generic term for the bicycles of those days. 

The Michaux company was the first to mass-produce the velocipede, which it did from 1857 to 1871. The velocipede design, first made entirely of wooden tires, then later with metal tires, also became known as the boneshaker, because it really rattled the rider’s bones – especially on the cobblestone roads of the day – and made for an extremely uncomfortable ride. 

Then came the design of unicycles, or one-wheeled cycles. The first design for a unicycle was patented in 1869. A unicycle ride was a difficult one. For it needed great skill to mount a single wheel, usually a big wheel, with handlebars that could only provide balance but were not very good for steering. Almost like the skill circus acrobats need!

The ‘penny-farthing’

Then came the bicycle, with two wheels, but with the pedals on the front wheel. The turning point in such a bicycle design came in 1871, with the creation of the ‘penny-farthing’ bicycle, which had a large front wheel and small back wheel. 

One reason for the rough ride people got with some of the initial bicycles was that they had pedals attached to a larger front wheel. Every time the wheel went over a bump in the road, which was pretty often, the rider got a solid whack on his backside.

But, still, it was progress!

With a seat perched four feet high, not only was the penny-farthing difficult to mount but it was unsafe if a rider happened to fall.

Yet such was the excitement it created that, in 1884, Englishman Thomas Stevens set off on a journey around the globe on a penny-farthing.

Today you will not see a bicycle with pedals on its wheels. The pedals are always between the front and rear wheels, and they drive the rear wheel with the help of a chain. And this was the next step in the history of the bicycle. 

Here is a picture of the further development – a bicycle with a chain. You can see one at the Smithsonian Museum:

But we are running ahead of the actual series of events.

Modern bicycle

By the 1860s bicycles ceased to have different-sized wheels, and both wheels became the same size. Then, in 1885, John Kemp Starley, an English designer, invented the ‘safety bicycle’, which he called the ‘Rover’. This bicycle had equal-sized wheels and a chain drive. 

There was more to come yet. And that was the bicycle ‘drivetrain’. Soon these bikes began to have brakes and tyres too.

The first chain designs used on bicycles included the block chain, the skip-link chain, and the Simpson lever chain. These chains were of a simple design, without bushings. With decades of improvement, the chain system was improved, and this has made today’s bicycles far more efficient than their predecessors a century ago.

A major landmark in the history of bicycles was the introduction of pneumatic rubber tyres in 1888. These tyres helped bicycles become leaner and faster.

Not only did rubber tyres help bicycles shed weight but they also made the bicycle ride far more comfortable than the bone-shaking ride it used to be earlier.

Today we do not have just one bicycle design. We have a wide range of bicycles, starting from children’s bicycles with spare wheels attached to stabilise the bike to racers and mountain bikes used by experienced sportspeople.

We shall look at the variety of bicycles, and the companies that make them, in another video.