Meantime a great development had gone on in England, where the hard, smooth macadam roads and beautiful by-paths for cyders without disturbing horses made all conditions more favorable. The bicycle under that name was patented 8 April 1869; it had steel rims and solid rubber tires, round or half round. To gain speed the front wheel was gradually enlarged and the rear reduced to a mere steerer, till the Ordinary was attained in 1871 with a 40- to 48-inch front wheel and 16-inch rear. The front wheel was gradually raised in proportion to the rider's height and skill, and in the early eighties attained 60 and even 64 inches. It still remains the perfection of grace and simplicity in bicycle construction: the motive power being applied direct, and the wheel, with cranks and pedals, forming a solid body. It is also the most exhilarating to ride, given strength and skill.
The Ordinary, however, could not be the bicycle of the future. It was hard to mount, except in favorable spots, and if the rider was dismounted had often to be walked long dis tances on streets or hillsides; both from this and the great air resistance due to the rider's elevation, it was merely the sport of a few athletic men, mostly young; headers were frequent from the rider's mass centre being directly over that of the large wheel, and liable to be serious from his high seat, though the danger was exaggerated. A safer build was therefore mooted. The first idea was to bring the rider's centre below that of the driving wheel; this could only be accom plished by operating the pedal with some kind of leverage, and a rear-driving safety with lowered front wheel was patented in 1879 by H. T. Lawson of England. A similar type, called the •Bicyclette,s followed in 1880. In the same year the `Star,' a reversed Ordinary with the small wheel in front, was introduced. A more popular form, which had high racing speed and made new records, was Starley's sKangaroos (1883), with diamond frame, inde pendent crankshafts and two chains gearing them to the front wheel, followed in 1884 by Starley's famous and still speedier for a long time the popular term for •safeties)) of any pattern. Here the cranks and pedals were on a separate axle, connected with the driving-wheel by a single chain which was therefore permanently tight; the seat was far back over the rear wheel, so that headers over the handle-bar were absolutely impossible. The front wheel was about one-fourth larger than the rear; later they were made of practically the same size as now, completing the evolution back to the velocipede, and making its general utility possible. This advent of the ))safety' has carried the bicycle into everyday business and the life of every household; carriers, police men, messengers, etc., find it of great service.
The enormous brain-power devoted to its per fection is shown by the fact that in the United States alone 7,573 patents had been granted up to 1900 for cycles and their parts, and prob ably double that in the world altogether. Of these, only 16 had been issued before 1865, and the great majority were granted after 1890. In 1892 the applications had grown so numerous that a special department of the Patent Office was created for them.
The greatest of all single inventions, and the one which has revolutionized the business and made cycling a delight rather than an exertion, is the pneumatic tire. It was originally in vented, not for bicycles, but road wagons, by an English civil engineer named R. W. Thompson, in 1843, and was patented in the United States in 1847; but was allowed to lapse. The first bicycle tires were. iron or steel; then a strip of rubber was fastened over the tire; later, a round or half-round piece of solid rubber was cemented or fastened into the hollow of the rim. But in 1889 an Irish veterinary sur geon, Dr. John B. Dunlop, fitted a piece of rubber hose on his son's bicycle; it worked so well that he patented it, not broadly, but for specific details now disused. About the same time P. W. Tillinghast, of Providence, R. L, patented a hollow tire in this country. But even this would have been ineffectual save for the enormous reduction in weight by the use of steel weldless tubing and wire, so that a machine of the incredibly small weight of nine pounds has been used for racing, with a wheel on whose spokes four men can stand without injuring it: these machines are too frail for road use, but even the average road ster does not reach 28 pounds, while in 1873 65 pounds, and even in 1885, 48 was thought fair, and 27 a racing wonder.
The ball-bearing, an Englishman named Bonn, is another e -making inven tion. The earliest bicycle aring was a plain one with a sleeve, known as the parallel bear ing. The friction was so heavy that the roller bearing was substituted, but did not work well; the next was the adjustable cone, which for a time was in universal use. But in all solid-sur face bearings the grinding of the sand which worked in made them irregular and rattling after a while, and the layers of gudgeon grease required a steady tax on time for cleaning. In the ball-bearing, the conical axle bears against a row of steel balls in a circle, tangent • to the bearing surface and to two other surfaces at right angles, so that the friction is only against three points, and the bearing parts roll over instead of sliding upon each other. The wear of the balls is astonishingly slight, and from the constant change of surface there is little irregularity, and from the small contact points scarcely any making of axle grease.