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1. Bicycling: its Rise & Development (1876)

1. Bicycling: its Rise & Development (1876)

First revision: Dec.24, 2013
Last change: Jan.16, 2014.

Bicycling: its Rise & Development

Chapter I: The Birth of the Bicycle.

That neither the means, nor the skill "to witch the world with noble horsemanship" has been granted to all, or to even most of us, is a mere truism. We were taught in our Mavor's Spelling to accept the fact that, "The horse is a noble animal and very useful to man, "but it was with a mental reservation, as the latter part of the axiom is not universally true. We had roads to travel on, too, and not seeing our way to pressing into our locomotive service, like other more favoured nations, elephants, camels, reindeer, or ostriches, it required but little time to arrive at the conclusion that wheels were necessary to supplement the services of that popular institution vulgarly known as "Shanks' pony"; and velocipedes of many wheels appeared, some as far back as the close of the eighteenth century. We do not propose to dwell on the polycycle, as we may call it. It had three, four, five, or six wheels in the various stages of its existence, and carried two or more persons sitting side by side, one behind the other, or even back to back.

The year 1818 has the credit of welcoming the de'but of the father of all bicycles, which furnished the caricaturists of that day with abundant matter for the exercise of their art, the veteran George Cruikshank, besides many others of infinitely smaller ability, extracting all the satirical fun possible from the new invention, which came originally from Paris; was, we believe published, so to speak, in London, and was jointly expoite'e by Mr.Johnson, a coach maker of Long Acre, and a certain Baron von Brais. It had been patented in Paris, and soon appeared in London, doubtless with all the "latest improvements" The popularity it enjoyed for a few years was probably due to the fact that London has a distinctly characteristic habit of adopting Parisian novelties with inexplicable avidity, simply because they are Parisian.

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