Vehicles with two wheels that require the rider to balance them date back to the early nineteenth century. The German draisine, which dates back to 1817, was the first mode of transportation with two wheels stacked sequentially, and hence the archetype of the bicycle. The term “bicycle” was coined in France in the 1860s, and the descriptive title “penny farthing” is a 19th-century term used to describe an “average bicycle.”
The first documented claim for a practically utilized bicycle is to a German government servant to the Grand Duke of Baden, Baron Karl von Drais. Drais invented his Laufmaschine (German meaning “running the machine”) in 1817, which the press dubbed the Draisine (English) or Parisienne (French). Karl von Drais patented this concept in 1818, and it was the first commercially successful two-wheeled, steerable, human-powered machine, known as a velocipede and dubbed the hobby horse or dandy horse.
Even though the idea of a viable two-wheel design needing the rider to balance had been abandoned, the decades of the 1820s-1850s saw several innovations concerning human-powered vehicles, frequently using technologies comparable to the draisine. These new machines featured three wheels (tricycles) or four wheels (quadricycles) and came in a wide range of designs, using pedals, treadles, and hand cranks, but they were often heavy and had significant rolling resistance. Willard Sawyer of Dover, on the other hand, successfully built and exported a range of treadle-operated 4-wheel vehicles throughout the world in the 1850s.
Cycling became increasingly popular in Europe throughout the first half of the twentieth century, but it declined severely in the United States between 1900 and 1910. Automobiles quickly became the most popular mode of mobility. Bicycles progressively were considered children’s toys during the 1920s, and by 1940, the majority of bicycles in the United States were made for children. Cycling remained an adult sport in Europe, with bicycle racing, commuting, and “cyclo touring” being popular activities. Furthermore, before 1916, children’s bicycles were available.
BMX bikes are specifically constructed bicycles with 16 to 24-inch wheels (the typical being a 20-inch wheel) that began in the state of California in the early 1970s when youths rode their bicycles to imitate their motocross idols. In the Netherlands, children raced normal road bikes off-road over purpose-built tracks.
The twenty-first century has witnessed the ongoing application of technology to bicycles (which began in the twentieth century): in designing, producing, and using them. Through the use of computer-assisted design, finite element analysis, and computational fluid dynamics, bicycle frames and components continue to become lighter and more aerodynamic without losing strength. Computer simulations have aided recent discoveries about bicycle stability.
