A Timeless History
John Kemp Starley's Rover of 1885 put equal wheels, a chain drive and a low saddle together and called it a safety bicycle, because you could stop without being thrown over the front. Dunlop's pneumatic tyre followed in 1888. By 1890 the diamond frame had settled into the form it still has, and the bicycle boom of that decade changed how ordinary people moved — by 1897 Amsterdam alone had several bicycle factories.
SourceScience Museum Group, cycling collection — collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk · Encyclopaedia Britannica — britannica.com, “bicycle” · Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RP-P-1912-2438 and RP-P-1912-2410 — rijksmuseum.nl
Science In Action
Triangles — a bicycle frame is built from them; a triangle cannot change shape unless a side changes length • Chain drive — separates how fast you pedal from how fast the wheel turns • Pneumatic tyres — air, not rubber, does the springing • Trail — the front wheel meets the ground a little behind the steering axis; that small gap, sketched below, pulls the steering straight
SourceKooijman, Meijaard, Papadopoulos, Ruina & Schwab, “A bicycle can be self-stable without gyroscopic or caster effects”, Science 332:339 (2011) — science.org · Science Museum Group, cycling collection — collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk
Arts
In 1896 Susan B. Anthony told a reporter that bicycling had done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. The machine forced the argument about what women were allowed to wear, and dress reform followed the bicycle rather than the other way round. Puck's centrefold of August 1895 already called it “the great dress reformer of the nineteenth century”.
SourceLibrary of Congress — loc.gov · interview with Nellie Bly, New York World, February 1896 · Puck, vol. 37, no. 961 (7 August 1895), Library of Congress PPMSCA-29031
Applications Today
Measured in energy per distance travelled, a cyclist beats every animal and every vehicle — published in Scientific American in 1973 and never overturned. The bicycle is still the most efficient converter of human effort into movement, which is why cities keep putting racks of them back on their streets.
SourceS. S. Wilson, “Bicycle Technology”, Scientific American, March 1973 · Encyclopaedia Britannica — britannica.com · Library of Congress, Carol M. Highsmith Archive
One more thingNobody fully agreed why a bicycle balances until recently. In 2011 researchers built one with gyroscopic and trail effects cancelled out. It balanced anyway.
SourceKooijman, Meijaard, Papadopoulos, Ruina & Schwab, “A bicycle can be self-stable without gyroscopic or caster effects”, Science 332:339 (2011) — science.org
Settled in 1890, barely improved since, and still the best way to move a person.
Hinde-Rijwielen Fabriek Amsterdam (poster: a woman on a step-through bicycle, two children watching) — Johann Georg van Caspel (designer); colour lithograph, Steendruk Amand, Amsterdam — c. 1896 – c. 1898 — Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam — RP-P-1912-2438
