"Pedestrian Accelerators"

It’s Bay State Bike Week! Here’s a bit of bicycling history from David Gordon Wilson’s Bicycling Science:

It seems likely that the most important discovery in the development of the bicycle was made by chance. Baron Karl von Drais, a resident of Mannheim, studied mathematics and mechanics at Heidelberg and was an inventor of a binary digit system, a paper-strip piano-music recorder, a typewriter, and—during a series of bad harvests since 1812—two human-powered “driving machines” on four wheels. In 1815 the Indonesian volcano Tambora exploded, expelling the greatest known mass of dust in the atmosphere (estimated at seven times the amount from Krakatoa in 1883) and making 1816 “the year without a summer” in central Europe and the New England states. Starvation was widespread, and horses were killed for lack of fodder, the price of oats then playing the same role as the oil price today…The constant shortage of horses led von Drais to develop his two-wheeled “running machine” with front-wheel steering from the outset…

However it was attained, the major discovery in bicycle history had been made, and it was scarcely recorded. Von Drais’s vehicle was, however, noted in the German newspapers in 1817 and those of the United Kingdom in 1818 and the United States in 1819. In Paris, where von Drais obtained a five-year patent it was called le vélocipède or the Draisienne, misspelled “Tracena” in the United States initially. In Britain it became known as the Pedestrian Accelerater and was nicknamed Hobby Horse. (Live horses needed constant care. These mechanical “horses” could be used or left at will and were thus treated as a hobby.)

Despite some initial skepticism and ridicule, von Drais was soon demonstrating that he could exceed the speed of runners and that of the horse-pulled “posts,” even over journeys of two or three hours. His ability to balance when going down inclines and to steer at speed must have been important in this, but it awed the unathletic majority of the population. He indeed must have the principal claim to being the originator of balance on two wheels by steering.

 

Comments

[Jeff Moreau]

This is a very detailed and interesting post on the early history of the bicycle.
I wonder what they would of looked like in photographs at that time.
How did people view the bicycle at that time?

[Equestrian Horses]

Interesting story about "Hobby Horses."