In Praise Of... The Bicycle

For generations, the bicycle has been a form of transport, a social leveller, a workhorse and a gateway to freedom, adventure and romance. Not bad for a bunch of welded tubes

- Trevor Ward

In 1869, an article in the respected US magazine Scientific American declared, ‘The art of walking is obsolete. It is true that a few still cling to that mode of transportation, and are still admired as fossil specimens of an extinct race of pedestrians, but for most of civilised humanity, walking is on its last legs.’

The cause of this sensational prediction? The humble bicycle. A couple of decades earlier on this side of the Atlantic, a newspaper in Glasgow had reported an unusual event in which ‘a gentleman bestride a velocipede of ingenious design’ knocked over a five year-old girl and was fined five shillings.

The velocipede concerned was the first incarnation of the modern bicycle – its ‘ingenious design’ being pedals attached to the back wheel by a series of piston-like rods. The rider ‘bestride’ it was its inventor, blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan, who had cycled 70 miles from his home before the incident.

His design, which replaced the previous, pedal-less ‘dandy horse’ that was propelled by the rider pushing themselves along the ground with their feet, was the first stage of the bicycle’s evolution into the featherweight, computer-designed carbon fibre machines of today.

Macmillan’s daring ride along rutted cart tracks, in an age of horse-drawn vehicles and an embryonic rail network, was as groundbreaking at the time as the first email being sent 150 years later. Suddenly it was possible for ordinary folk to travel long distances under their own steam. It opened up a whole new world of opportunities for travel, work, pleasure and even romance.