THE BOOK OF INVENTIONS: BICYCLE

 

    The first bicycle was just two wheels mounted on a rigid frame. It was built by French engineer J.N. Niepce and was the first ‘manpowered’ vehicle on wheels. Then in 1817, German nobleman Karl von Drais made a bicycle called the ‘Draisine’. This had handlebars and a front wheel that could be steered, so that the cyclist could change direction. Instead of pedals, the cyclist moved along by pushing with the tips of the feet. It had no brakes, which made it dangerous. In 1838 Scottish inventor Kirkpatrick Macmillan applied a system of gears to the wheels which were worked by the feet. But the modern bicycle was born in 1855, built by a young French workman, Ernest Michaux, who perfected Macmillan’s system by applying pedal directly on the front wheel. By 1860, the ‘michaudina’ had brakes. An important breakthrough came in 1896 when the first proper bicycle gears was patented by Englishman Edmund Hodgkinson. These enabled the cyclist to vary the numbers of spins the front wheel made, according to the type of ground covered. By this time, bicycles were faster, and in 1898 Alfred Reynolds patented his invention of a ‘butt-welding’ thin, strong tubes of steel for the purpose of building a light, yet strong, bicycle frame.