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The Bicycle
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Can
you imagine, this bicycle had no handlebar? The main frame consisted of
a wooden beam with two wheels attached. The cyclist sat on a cushion on
the beam and steered and propelled the cycle using his feet. This was
the earliest form of the bicycle, invented by a Frenchman in the year
1690. It was called a célérifère.
This
version of the cycle was followed by a creation in 1816 by a German
nobleman. He designed the first two-wheeled vehicle with a steering
device. The bicycle was called draisine, after its inventor. In this
version, the bicycle parts consisted of a handlebar that pivoted on the frame, enabling
the front wheel to be turned. This version was worked upon and
improvised by the French, German and the British.
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Then
came the curricle, yet another version of bicycles, in 1818. The
curricle was lighter in weight than the draisine and had an adjustable
saddle and elbow rest. In 1839, Kirkpatrick Macmillan of Scotland added
driving levers and pedals to a cycle, similar to the draisine. This
addition enabled propelling the machine with the feet off the ground.
Here, the driving mechanism consisted of short cranks fixed to the rear
wheel hub and connected by rods to long levers, which were hinged to the
frame close to the head of the machine. The connecting rods were joined
to the levers at about one-third of their length from the pedals. The
machine was propelled by a downward and forward thrust of the foot. In
the year 1846, an improved model of this machine, named dalzell, was
designed by a Scotsman and was used widely in England.
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However,
the direct precursor of the modern bicycle was a crank-driven, loose-pedaled
velocipede, which became popular in France about 1855. Its frame and
wheels were made of wood and it had tires made of iron. The front wheel
was slightly higher than the rear wheel and the pedals were attached to
the hub of the front wheel. This machine came to be referred to as the
“boneshaker”, because of the effect it had on the cyclist when
driven on cobble stoned streets. It was only fourteen years later, in
1869 that tires in solid rubber and mounted on steel rims were
introduced. And it was this version that came to be patented under the
name “bicycle”. Later, James Starley, an English inventor, produced
the first machine incorporating most of the features of the high-wheel,
bicycle. The front wheel of Starley's machine, when it was first
produced in 1873, three times larger in diameter than the rear wheel.
Over
the next fifteen years, improvisations such as ball bearing and the
pneumatic tires were gradually made. However, excessive vibration and
instability caused by the high-wheel bicycle, was proving to be a
difficulty to riders. Further improvisations were called for. It was
around the year 1880 that the safety cycle or the low wheeled was
developed. Both the wheels were almost equal in size. Pedals, attached
to a sprocket through gears and a chain, were used to ride the cycle.
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