Bicycles

The bicycle, bike, or cycle, is a pedal-driven, human-powered vehicle with two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. more...

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First introduced in 19th-century Europe, bicycles now number approximately one billion worldwide, providing the principal means of transportation in many regions, notably China and the Netherlands. They also provide a popular form of recreation, and have been adapted for use in many other fields of human activity, including children's toys, adult fitness, military and police applications, courier services, and cycle sports.

The basic shape and configuration of a typical bicycle has hardly changed since the first chain-driven model was developed around 1885, although many important details have been improved, especially since the advent of modern materials and computer-aided design. These have allowed for a proliferation of specialized designs for particular types of cycling.

The bicycle has affected history considerably, in both the cultural and industrial realms. In its early years, bicycle construction drew on pre-existing technologies; more recently, bicycle technology has, in turn, contributed ideas in both old and newer areas.

History

Several innovators contributed to the history the bicycle by developing precursor human-powered vehicles, including the velocipede. The documented ancestors of today's modern bicycle were known as pushbikes, Draisines or hobby horses. To use the Draisine, first introduced to the public in Paris by the German Baron Karl von Drais in 1818, the operator sat astride a wooden frame supported by two in-line wheels and pushed the vehicle along with his/her feet while steering the front wheel.

Scottish blacksmith Kirkpatrick MacMillan refined this in 1839 by adding a mechanical crank drive to the rear wheel, thus creating the first true "bicycle" in the modern sense. In the 1850s and 1860s, Frenchmen Pierre Michaux and Pierre Lallement took bicycle design in a different direction, placing the pedals on an enlarged front wheel. Their creation, of wrought iron and wood, developed into the "penny-farthing" (more formally an ordinary bicycle), featuring a tubular steel frame on which were mounted wire spoked wheels with solid rubber tires. These bicycles were not, however, for the faint hearted, due to the very high seat and poor weight distribution.

The subsequent dwarf ordinary addressed some of these faults by reducing the front wheel diameter and setting the seat further back, necessitating the addition of gearing, effected in a variety of ways, to attain sufficient speed. However, having to both pedal and steer via the front wheel remained a problem. Starley's nephew, J. K. Starley, J. H. Lawson, and Shergold solved this problem by introducing the chain drive connecting the pedals held with the frame to the back wheel. These models were known as dwarf safeties, or safety bicycles, for their lower seat height and better weight distribution. Starley's 1885 Rover is usually described as the first recognizably modern bicycle. Soon, the seat tube was added, creating the double-triangle diamond frame of the modern bike.

Read more at Wikipedia.org