What is Bicycle? When was Bicycle Formed?

Macmillan's Bicycle

This piece is sort of an addendum to my last post on wooden bicycles, where I made the bold claim that Kirkpatrick Macmillan invented the bicycle in the 1830's. My sources, whom I've come across through the laziest of online searches, conflict on the exact date Macmillan made the first velocipede and whether he, in fact, was the first. Furthermore, what constitutes the first bicycle?

In my opinion, whatever that's worth, the bicycle is a vehicle with two wheels, one in front of the other. It's propelled by the wind,  gravity, and the transmission of human strength through some sort of pedal system. The steering wheel must also be independent of the drive wheel. Using this definition the hobby horse, which was invented some long time before Macmillan's velocipede, is not a bicycle, it's more of a sitting scooter. Penny Farthings, mopeds, unicycles, and eBikes (yes, I do mean eBikes) are also not bicycles: they're either toys, evolutionary dead ends, or [in the case of mopeds and eBikes] the amalgamated spawn of useful technologies (the motorcycle, the bicycle, and the laptop) crammed into an inefficient parody of their parents.

This is a hobby horse from 1817.
The Comte de Sivrac is believed to have invented a similar machine as early as 1791

Though Macmillan probably made the first bicycle, we know he wasn't the only one in the mid 1800s making pedal-powered velocipedes because a french blacksmith named Mr. Alexandre Lefebvre brought one over to California in the 1860's, which is now on display.

Somewhat baffling is that in the 1880's the dominant designed in bi-wheel personal locomotion was the ungainly Penny Farthing or high-wheel bike. I've ridden Penny Farthings and my impression is that they are only slightly more practical than the unicycle because you won't fall backwards. However, should you hit a bump and fall forwards it's difficult to make a clean dismount because your legs must negotiate the handlebar. Why people would willingly ride the monstrous high-wheeler instead of the safer, better handling Macmillan-type bicycle is a mystery.

The kick that broke the high-wheeler's spokes came from the advent of the geared, chain driven transmission. Like so many other events in bicycle history, nobody knows when or who first figured out that a chain and gears could communicate leg strength to wheel speed, but by 1885 the Starley "Rover" became the first commercially available modern, chain driven bicycle.

A High-wheeler and a Starley "Rover" or "Safety Bicycle"

The fatal flaw for the penny farthing is that the machine can only go as fast as your legs can spin. If you want to go faster you'll need a bigger wheel, the ultimate size of which is limited by your leg length. The top speed of the Rover, a style of bicycle that would later be marketed with the prefix "safety" for obvious reasons, can be altered through the leverage afforded by different sized gears, doing the equivalent of a big wheel without the size or ungainliness.

The next big step in the evolution of the bicycle came with John Boyd Dunlop's invention of the smooth-rolling pneumatic tire; then some French and Italian inventors figured out how to change gears while in motion; and since then not much has been invented, really. You could ride the most technologically advanced bike of the 1930's next to its modern progeny and a lay person couldn't tell the difference. For the past hundred years the evolution of the bike has been incremental, involving slow changes by many experimenters in garages and laboratories across the world.  As long as humans exist, cycling will facilitate our travel delightfully and efficiently with a minimal burden to our environment.

“If constellations had been named in the 20th century, I suppose we would see bicycles.” ~ Carl Sagan