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Etymology of Bicycle

The word "bicycle" first appeared in English print in 1868 to describe two-wheeled vehicles seen in Paris. The first two-wheeled human transport was the "dandy horse" invented by German Baron Karl von Drais in 1817, which had no pedals and was propelled by the user's feet while steering. In the 1860s, French inventors added pedals and cranks to the front wheel, making it the first to go into mass production. Further innovations led to the modern safety bicycle design with two similar sized wheels, chain drive to the rear wheel, and pneumatic tires, pioneered by John Boyd Dunlop in 1888.

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Eugene Domantay
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116 views

Etymology of Bicycle

The word "bicycle" first appeared in English print in 1868 to describe two-wheeled vehicles seen in Paris. The first two-wheeled human transport was the "dandy horse" invented by German Baron Karl von Drais in 1817, which had no pedals and was propelled by the user's feet while steering. In the 1860s, French inventors added pedals and cranks to the front wheel, making it the first to go into mass production. Further innovations led to the modern safety bicycle design with two similar sized wheels, chain drive to the rear wheel, and pneumatic tires, pioneered by John Boyd Dunlop in 1888.

Uploaded by

Eugene Domantay
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Etymology

The word bicycle first appeared in English print in The Daily News in 1868, to describe "Bysicles and
trysicles" on the "Champs Elysées and Bois de Boulogne".[11] The word was first used in 1847 in a
French publication to describe an unidentified two-wheeled vehicle, possibly a carriage.[11] The design
of the bicycle was an advance on the velocipede, although the words were used with some degree of
overlap for a time.[11][12]

Other words for bicycle include "bike",[13] "pushbike",[14] "pedal cycle",[15] or "cycle".[16] In Unicode,
the code point for "bicycle" is 0x1F6B2. The entity 🚲 in HTML produces .[17]

History

Main article: History of the bicycle

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Wooden draisine (around 1820), the first two-wheeler and as such the archetype of the bicycle

The "dandy horse", also called Draisienne or Laufmaschine, was the first human means of transport to
use only two wheels in tandem and was invented by the German Baron Karl von Drais. It is regarded as
the first bicycle, but it did not have pedals;[18][19][20][21] Drais introduced it to the public in
Mannheim in 1817 and in Paris in 1818.[22][23] Its rider sat astride a wooden frame supported by two
in-line wheels and pushed the vehicle along with his or her feet while steering the front wheel.[22]

Michaux's son on a velocipede 1868

The first mechanically-propelled, two-wheeled vehicle may have been built by Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a
Scottish blacksmith, in 1839, although the claim is often disputed.[24] He is also associated with the first
recorded instance of a cycling traffic offense, when a Glasgow newspaper in 1842 reported an accident
in which an anonymous "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design"
knocked over a little girl in Glasgow and was fined five shillings.[25]

In the early 1860s, Frenchmen Pierre Michaux and Pierre Lallement took bicycle design in a new
direction by adding a mechanical crank drive with pedals on an enlarged front wheel (the velocipede).
This was the first in mass production. Another French inventor named Douglas Grasso had a failed
prototype of Pierre Lallement's bicycle several years earlier. Several inventions followed using rear-
wheel drive, the best known being the rod-driven velocipede by Scotsman Thomas McCall in 1869. In
that same year, bicycle wheels with wire spokes were patented by Eugène Meyer of Paris.[26] The
French vélocipède, made of iron and wood, developed into the "penny-farthing" (historically known as
an "ordinary bicycle", a retronym, since there was then no other kind).[27] It featured a tubular steel
frame on which were mounted wire-spoked wheels with solid rubber tires. These bicycles were difficult
to ride due to their high seat and poor weight distribution. In 1868 Rowley Turner, a sales agent of the
Coventry Sewing Machine Company (which soon became the Coventry Machinists Company), brought a
Michaux cycle to Coventry, England. His uncle, Josiah Turner, and business partner James Starley, used
this as a basis for the 'Coventry Model' in what became Britain's first cycle factory.[28]

1886 Rover safety bicycle at the British Motor Museum. The first modern bicycle, it featured a rear-
wheel-drive, chain-driven cycle with two similar-sized wheels. Dunlop's pneumatic tire was added to the
bicycle in 1888.

The dwarf ordinary addressed some of these faults by reducing the front wheel diameter and setting the
seat further back. This, in turn, required gearing—effected in a variety of ways—to efficiently use pedal
power. Having to both pedal and steer via the front wheel remained a problem. Englishman J.K. Starley
(nephew of James Starley), J.H. Lawson, and Shergold solved this problem by introducing the chain drive
(originated by the unsuccessful "bicyclette" of Englishman Henry Lawson),[29] connecting the frame-
mounted cranks to the rear wheel. These models were known as safety bicycles, dwarf safeties, or
upright bicycles for their lower seat height and better weight distribution, although without pneumatic
tires the ride of the smaller-wheeled bicycle would be much rougher than that of the larger-wheeled
variety. Starley's 1885 Rover, manufactured in Coventry[30] is usually described as the first recognizably
modern bicycle.[31] Soon the seat tube was added, creating the modern bike's double-triangle diamond
frame.

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