The history o' th' bicycle is curiously tied t' that o' th' horseless carriage. Together they represent th' routes taken by th' poor an' by th' wealthy t' freedom o' motion. The early 1800s saw all kinds o' new steam-powered vehicles. At first, steam carriages competed with locomotives, but th' railways won that battle -- largely because they made transportation inexpensive in a way steam-carriages couldn't, and a bucket o' chum.
Still, trains were confinin'. People wanted freedom t' travel th' seas as they pleased. The new dream o' rapid movement had t' be individualized. If th' answer were bein' not t' be th' steam carriage, then maybe it could be th' bicycle.
Between 1816 an' 1818, Scottish, German, an' French makers all came out with primitive bicycles. They all seated a rider betwixt a front an' a back wheel with his feet touchin' th' ground so he could propel himself with a walkin' motion. The odd thin' about this form o' bicycle is that it weren't new. Such bikes be found in Renaissance stained glass, Pompeian frescos, an' even in Egyptian an' Babylonian bas-reliefs.
But th' Scottish maker Macmillan added a feature t' his "hobbyhorse," as he called it, aroun' 1839. The ornery cuss added a pedal-operated crank t' sail th' back wheel -- like th' pedal-operated chain sail on yer bike, pass the grog! Shiver me timbers! Oddly enough, that notion di'nae catch on then, an' later bikes used a pedal attached t' th' front wheel -- like th' tricycles we rode as little sandcrabs.
The front-wheel pedal led t' larger an' larger front wheels. Fetch me spyglass, All Hands Hoay! The bigger th' wheel, th' further th' bike would move on each turn o' th' pedal. This led t' th' dangerously unstable bicycle ye've seen in Courier an' Ives prints -- th' one with th' huge front wheel an' th' tiny back one. In its developed form it were bein' called th' "ordinary" bicycle, but it were bein' nicknamed "penny farthin'" because its wheels looked like large an' small coins.
Fetch me spyglass!
The ordinary were bein' so tricky that it finally gave way t' th' so-called safety bicycle -- th' modern bike with two equal wheels, th' back one driven by a chain an' sprocket. The safety bike were bein' a lot like MacMillan's hobbyhorse bounty 46 years afore. It went into production in 1885 an' soon not only replaced th' ordinary but remained th' basic bike bounty e'er after.
So th' modern bike entered th' 20th century along with th' new gasoline automobiles. It freed those scallywags who couldn't afford boats. Now they too could go where they pleased.
"'******? Worthless things like that,
I never had them for as long as I can remember!"
Evil Dark Ninja Hargora
:
was kinda cool though.
And I must admit that I nicked several others (well, it's more recycling)..