BICYCLE, a light steel vehicle consisting of two wheels arranged tandem, united by a frame with the rider s seat upon it; propelled by his feet acting on the pedals connected with one of the axles, at present that of the rear wheel; and steered by a handle-bar guiding the direction of the front wheel. As at present constructed the wheels are of equal size; the driving mechanism is usually a chain with the links fitting over a sprocket-wheel, but about one in 25 are chainless, mainly with a shaft and bevel driver; the weight is 23 to 271/2 pounds, complete; the frame is of hollow cold-drawn tubing, with brazed joints; the wheels are sus pension, with crossed tangent spokes, wooden rims, pneumatic tires and hall bearings. The name dates from about 1865, though first so spelled in a patent of 8 April 1869, and else where called Thysicle,)) %circle,'" "bicycular velocipede,)) etc.; but prior to 1870 the form of the machine was usually called a velocipede, a French name dating from 1779.
The pedomotor itself goes back perhaps to Egyptian and probably at least to classic times, winged figures astride of a stick connecting two wheels being found in the frescoes at Pompeii. In the 17th century it suddenly appears with surprising frequency; there is a picture of a bicycle in a stained-glass window at Stoke Pogis, England; in August 1665, John Evelyn writes in his diary of °a wheele to run races ins; in 1690 a Frenchman named De Sivrac invented a two-wheeled cilerifere having a horse-shaped wooden body with a saddle, and steered by the rider's feet; in 1693 Ozanarn de scribed before the Royal Society a vehicle ped aled by a foot traveler. In 1761 the Universal Magazine describes a similar one invented by an Englishman named Ovenden; in August 1769 the London Magazine describes chaise to go without horses?' On 27 July 1779, Le Jour nal de Paris describes a velocipede invented by MM. Blanchard and Magurier, which is merely the celerifere with an upright bar to support the hands; this gained considerable vogue. From France and England the idea spread to Germany, which added to it the one idea needed to vivify it. In March 1784 one Ignaz Trexler, of Gratz, Austria, invented a pedomotor cred ited with the speed of a galloping horse—un questionably meaning down hill. But the di rect progenitor of the modern Bicycle was one built in 1816 by Baron Karl von Drais, Freiherr von Sauerbronn (1784-1851), chief forester to the Grand Duke of Baden (to whose memory in 1891 the bicyclers erected a monument at (Karlsruhe), often called "the father of the bicycle?' It was designed to aid him in his daily journeys. The whole was of wood; the wheels of equal size, connected by a perch, astride which the rider sat in a saddle, and to the fore end of which was swiveled a fork into which the front wheel was axled; the rider propelled it on level ground or up hill by strik ing the ground with his feet, and coasted down hill. But the significant feature, the germ of the bicycle, was the pivoting of the front wheel and its steering by a handle-bar; for which there was a stuffed arm-rest on an elevated cross-piece. Drais patented this in Paris, 1816, and claimed that it would go up hill as fast as a man could walk, on a level, after a rain, at six or seven miles an hour, or courier's pace, the same when dry at eight or nine and down hill at a horse's gallop. It excited much atten tion and was called the sdraisines; and in 1818 one Dennis Johnson patented in England an improved form called the spedestrian curricle,' with adjustable saddle and elbow-rest. Mean
time, in June 1819, the curricle had been intro duced into the United States and became a craze in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, etc.• and many riding-schools were opened. On 26 June 1819 William K. Clarkson was granted a patent for an ((improved velocipede)); but the excitement soon subsided here also.
The real ancestor of our bicycle, the crank driven velocipede that led straight to better things, arose in France: the honor of the in vention is hotly disputed. According to one account it belongs to Ernest Michaux, the son of a Parisian carriage repairer (to whom a monument was erected in 1894) ; but if so, he did not make it public and it led to nothing, and it is generally accredited as theory, where it belongs as practical result, to Pierre Lallement, a Parisian blacksmith, said to have been, in Michaux's employ. It sprang, in fact, not from Michaux's, if that existed, but from a multi cycle invented in 1865 by one Marechal; a five wheeler, each wheel having an independent axle with cranks, loose pedals and a separate seat; the front was the guide-wheel, but it could be ridden by one or many. In September MM. Woirin and Leconde patented a tricycle, with two smaller rear wheels on the same axle, and a large front one with cranks and loose pedals, the whole connected with a wooden horse shaped body like De Sivrac's, on whose back the rider sat well over the front wheel; this was the progenitor of the modern tricycle. Lallement, against the judgment of his friends, who thought that keeping one's balance would be impracticable on two wheels tandem, applied the principle thus the same year, learned the art of balancing, and exhibited his machine and his skill at the Paris Exposition of that year; but thought too little of it to patent it. The next year (1866) he came to the United States to look for work, made a velocipede and rode it about New Haven, Conn., and was induced by one James Carroll to patent it with him, which was done 20 November. It had two wooden wheels, the front one slightly the larger, with iron tires; was a front-driver, and the saddle was on a steel spring midway be tween the wheels. But it was too crude and un pleasurable to attract much notice. In France, however, great improvements were shortly made on it, and in the winter of 1867 it became the sensation of Paris; riding schools sprang up all about, and straps to fasten the machines were part of the equipment of the great places of amusement. This continued till the Franco German War temporarily destroyed the busi ness, which had developed a large manufactur ing interest. Meantime, in England, Edward Gilman in 1866 had patented a rear-driver with a single treadle, and the chain gear had been broached. In 1869 the im proved velocipede and the reflex of the French enthusiasm brought it into sud den vogue in the United States, and American inventiveness was turned toward perfecting it : at the time the ((booms burst in 1870 the Patent Office was receiving half a dozen applications for new patents every week. The sport, how ever, collapsed, with the suddenness of a finan cial crash, within a single week; thousands of machines, worth $100 to $150 one day, could not be sold at any price the next, and were ultimately disposed of ro boys or the poorest classes at nominal prices, or allowed to become old iron; and manufactories crowded with orders had them countermanded in a mass. It was nearly a decade before America took it up again in any general way, and then with a dif ferent wheel, the bicycle proper.