Originally Posted by
jamesmustain
Hi,
They say the modern bicycle was invented only around 1800 plus though the wheel was invented thousands of years back. Why did it take so long for a natural evolution. Was it just the fear of balancing ?
Thanks!
It was largely due to materials. The laufmaschine...”running machine”... invented by Karl Drais in 1817 had to use the materials of the era. In 1817 all he had to work with was wood. Ball bearings had been invented in 1794 but they weren’t widely used. Wagon wheels used grease...likely animal grease...to reduce friction but that only went so far. Brakes of the era on wagons was a hide against the wheel that was mostly ineffective. They wouldn’t have been on a velocipede. Drais’s machine (usually called a draisinne) was thus heavy, slow, without a drivetrain because the roller chain wasn’t invented for another 63 years, and no brakes. It was a daring thing to get on one and something that only the “dandy” would do. Hence even another name for the laufmaschine...the dandy horse.
About 1840 a Scottish blacksmith put cranks through the front wheel...still wooden...so that the rider could propel the bike forward without the “running” part. But from pictures I’ve seen the wheel is about 24” in diameter which meant that it would have been slow even if the rider were pedaling like a demon was behind him. It likely still used the slip bearings from wagon wheels so it would have been a very hard slog to keep moving.
Wheels grew in size so that the rider could go faster but they were still made of wood and were heavy. In 1869, the wire wheel was invented and bicycles became significantly lighter. That started the first bike boom...the ordinary or penny farthing. The safety cycle came along in 1890 and that started a second bicycle boom.
Then cars came along and killed the whole industry for nearly 70 years.