Bicycle: The History

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Summary: From The Ride Magazine, Journal of East Coast Bike Culture
Review: It's been nearly a decade since the most recent release of a "definitive" account of the development of the bicycle. Since then, historian David V. Herlihy has spearheaded a debate about the origins of the pedal and exactly who first thought to add it to a two-wheeled contraption. By proving that Pierre Lallement, not the originally credited Pierre Michaux, was the originator, he proved that the handed-down understanding of the bicycle's growth holds surprising inaccuracies.

Herlihy's new book makes sense of the development of the bicycle not as a linear progression of incremental improvements, but as a series of fits and starts, some seemingly minor and other more clearly revolutionary, that took the contraption through several periods of public fascination. Like the development of Western art or design, where minor improvements were made to accepted techniques between periods of conceptual leaps forward, the birth of the bicycle we ride today was not a single evolutionary line.

Rather, Herlihy teaches us that the bicycle, as it came to be called after the 1860s, was subject to alternating waves of enormous enthusiasm and rejection by the fad-conscious buying public. Several versions of the two-wheeler, each deemed to be the perfect height of development, came and went along the way, while struggles for supremacy among inventors and manufacturers repeatedly threatened to kill the beast altogether.

Anchoring the early development of a two-wheeler as a quest to create a human-powered carriage, Herlihy delves into the complete history of the vehicle's early origins, starting with drawings in eighteenth-century engineering periodicals. The search for a "people's nag", a horse-like transportation available to everyone, reached its first notable peak in 1817, with the unveiling of Baron Karl von Drais's "running machine", a device with two wheels in line propelled by the rider pushing off the ground.

This invention quickly caught the public's eye, but fell out of fashion almost as fast. During the following half-century, tinkerers and inventors in Europe and America fussed with plans based on Drais's ideas, adding an additional wheel or two but not improving the design sufficiently to compel regular use. The key breakthrough required the introduction of foot-powered pedals on the front wheel. Until recently, received knowledge would have us believe that Michaux produced this innovation in 1867, but the facts are far more confusing.

Michaux had only peripheral involvement with the bicycle's production. The brothers Aimé and René Olivier controlled commercial and technical development behind the scenes in Michaux's factory. Meanwhile in America Pierre Lallement, a young mechanic, filed the sole patent on the pedal-driven design in the US in 1866. While the Michaux operation downplayed their lack of a patent, American companies manufacturing copies of the French velocipede had to contend with the imposition of Calvin Witty. After acquiring Lallement's controlling patents, Witty demanded royalties on every machine sold, practically crippling the industry. The public embraced this new wonder ­ but only for about two years.

In Europe, technical developments in construction continued apace, with English concerns exerting influence in the form of larger front wheels, which extended the distance of each pedalstroke. The public fell in love with the high-wheeler in the 1870s, but a mount that put riders so far from the ground wasn't particularly utilitarian, and ended up a recreational tool for the higher classes. In America, where Massachusetts native Albert A. Pope became the patron of a new upswing in the industry by acquiring important patents himself, many found the high-wheeler unsafe on rough roads.

In an era where women lacked any real political power, they could still vote with their wallet. The demand for lower profile, rear-driven "safety" frames by society women strengthened the market appeal for bicycles with two wheels of the same diameter in the early 1890s. The addition of the pneumatic tire made such a machine more comfortable, and with prices dropping, finally the rich man's tool of recreation could double as the transport of the poor man.

"Bicycle: The History" admirably details the public's fascination with the new "safety" bicycle in the rollercoaster boom years, as well as the inevitable industrial downturn and subsequent smaller booms in the twentieth century. Finishing with a study of the safety bicycle's legacy in utilitarian, recreational and competitive cycling, Herlihy takes us into the present day. Though these facts are less subject to debate and more widely known, his attention to the later development of the bicycle serves to remind just how much our modern steed still remains, in essence, a nineteenth-century tool.

Herlihy's volume is a work of real scholarly integrity, towering above most alternatives of the genre. The Yale imprint alone signifies the seriousness of this historical account of the development of an industry and an avocation. Though Herlihy turns his magnifying glass most closely at the machinations of industrial development prior to the 1890s, his exhaustive book puts the entire range of this tool's birth and fruition, both international and domestic, utilitarian and sporting, into focus. Other books might serve as more detailed guides to racing history, the science of cycling and bicycle construction, and questions of modern transportation, but Herlihy's vision keeps the bicycle itself in the center of the frame as the main subject of study.

Though some facts may seem familiar to avid readers of the genre, Herlihy's clean style and fluid presentation make complex sagas of legal struggles and technical design fascinating to any reader. Peppered throughout with lovely illustrations and boasting an impressive index, "Bicycle: The History" should serve as the standard for years to come.