Originally Posted by T-Mar

Gendron has alway been near and dear to my heart, as Peter (born Pierre) Gendron was Canadian by birth. He learned the carriage trade at his father's Quebec based shop before movng to Toledo at age 21, where he took a job as a pattern maker with the Toldeo Novelty Works. Circa 1872, he would establish the Gendron Manufacturing Company in Toldeo and in 1895 he opened another bicycle manufacturing facility in Toronto. In 1899 the Canadian company would merge with four others to form a Canadian icon, the Canada Cycle & Motor Company Limited (CCM). CCM would continue to market Gendron branded bicycles into the 1920s.

As much as I would like to attribute the wire spoked bicycle wheel to a Canadian, the claim is somewhat tenuous. There were several European manufacturers that developed similar wheels more or less concurrently. The Europeans even improved on the concept by devising various methods to ensure that all the spokes were in tension, not just the one at the top. This allowed for thinner spokes and a lighter wheel, as the load was distributed among all the spokes.