Velocipedes, Bicycles and Tricycles: How to Make and Use Them
Contents
- Argues that the velocipede's history reflects humanity's long drive to harness wheels for personal locomotion, tracing the idea from Pharaoh's chariots and the nursery go-cart to the modern bicycle, which applies the same principle by different means.
- Answers the machine's detractors by arguing it will popularise bodily exercise among a sedentary clerking class, and marshals contemporary traction figures — a 150 lb man on an 80 lb machine covering 50 to 60 miles more easily than he could walk 30.
- Part title opening the historical survey of pre-1869 machines, which questions the received wisdom that the velocipede was invented about 1819 and notes that the crank itself is barely a century old.
- Describes the carriage-velocipede of the aeronaut M. Blanchard and M. Masurier, a cross between hobby-horse and trolly in which one man steered from the front while a second propelled it by pressing his feet alternately on the ground.
- Illustrated as Fig. 1, an eighteenth-century machine with a canopy for the steerer and a servant standing behind to supply the power, closely related to M. Blanchard's contrivance.
- Explains the treadle-and-pulley gear (Fig. 2) by which M. Richard's servants turned the hind axle without a crank, judging real speed impossible on pre-McAdam roads, then turns to the célérifère that appeared in the gardens of the Luxembourg a generation later.
- Illustrated as Fig. 3, the foot-propelled hobby-horse that had no means of guiding or controlling its movement, and whose use was blamed for a tendency to rupture; examples survived at Yardley Hastings and at Harpole near Weedon.
- Covers Baron von Drais's pedestrian hobby-horse (Fig. 4), patented in England in December 1818 by Denis Johnson, coachmaker of 75 Long Acre, with contemporary press claims of eight to ten miles in the hour and a price of £8 to £10.
- Describes the patent of John Baynes, a working cutler of Leeds (No. 4,398, September 1819), which lifted the rider's feet off the ground and substituted a series of crutches worked by treadles and levers.
- Describes Lewis Gompertz's hand-and-foot machine (Fig. 5), in which a toothed rack worked back and forth by the arms drove a pinion fixed to the front axle, aiding the legs by applying power direct to the driving-wheel.
- Covers John Dumbell's patent (No. 4,737, December 1822) for wheels built of curved spring spokes without felloes or tires, an endless-rail idea like a traction engine's that worked in model but failed in practice through friction.
- Describes the improvement by M. Dreuze, a French post-office official, which communicated power directly to the wheel axles; country letter-carriers were mounted on it, but slipping in bad weather and official apathy let it fall into disuse.
- Notes the mid-century English preference for four-wheel treadle-and-lever machines, and singles out a modification of the go-cart in which an iron ring and armpit crutches hung the rider between a pair of six-foot wheels.
- Opens the survey of current machines, arguing it would have been a slur on a manufacturing age to produce no vehicle giving quicker, easier and safer transit without animal or capital assistance, and identifying the crank as what the old dandy-horse lacked.
- Describes the 'Cantering Propeller' (Fig. 6) patented in America in 1862 by Mr. P. W. Mackenzie, and reprints the reissued claims for a saddle seat combined with cranked axle, arms and foot-rests — claims that cover most of the modern bicycle.
- Sets out the Lambelle principle at issue in the American manufacturing dispute between Messrs. Witty and Smith, quoting the numbered patent claims for the cranked axle, foot-rests and steering apparatus.
- Describes Monsieur Rivière's patent improvement, with the saddle carried on a spring and a cross handle connected by a strap to a first-order lever fulcrumed in the main beam to actuate the steering-fork.
- Presents the simplest form of bicycle (Fig. 7) — the pattern easiest for an amateur to build — while observing that the real inventor of the modern bicycle remains open to grave doubt.
- Describes the most popular French pattern (Fig. 8), as made by Mr. Lisle of Moorfields, Wolverhampton, combining the simplicity of the old dandy-horse with modern power and improvements, its brake worked by turning the guide-arms.
- Describes the strong and showy Parisian pattern (Fig. 9), whose brake can be made self-acting by the action of the iron frame on the hind wheel, and which substitutes triangular reel-treadles for the weighted slipper.
- Describes Pickering's pattern (Fig. 10), known in England as the American Bicycle, in which the saddle-bar serves as both seat and brake — pressure forward on the tiller and back on the saddle compresses the spring and brings the brake onto the wheel.
- Describes the machine introduced by Hanlon Brothers (Fig. 11), claimed by its patentees to be simpler, more durable, lighter, stronger and cheaper than the French patterns, and distinguished by its extending or sliding crank for the pedal.
- Reports the American 'Keystone' of Professor Lowback of Philadelphia, named for his state, whose very small front wheel is used only for guiding — against the general experience that a large front driving-wheel works best.
- Opens the tricycle section, predicting that the three-wheeled velocipede will prove more enduring and widespread in popularity than the two-wheeler.
- Describes the simplest form of tricycle (Fig. 12), manufactured by Mr. Lisle of Wolverhampton and known as the German tricycle.
- Describes the Elyria velocipede (Fig. 13), whose rear wheels may be run at any point along the axle — closing them up turns the machine practically into a bicycle — with a fixed collar at B preventing them from coming together.
- Describes the Wilmington machine (Fig. 14), with the driving-wheel in front on direct-action reel pedals set much closer to the rear wheels than in any other tricycle, giving it a two-wheeler's ability to turn corners.
- Describes Lisle's Ladies' English Velocipede (Fig. 15), in which the front wheel only steers and the power comes from treadles and levers acting on cranks in the rear axle, with a cushion chair seat and a reach curved downward for a graceful attitude.
- Compares the Ladies' Parisian tricycle (Fig. 16), whose straight or sideways-curved reach the author finds ungraceful, and describes its slipper-shaped foot-rests and a walking-like motion that extends the leg without cramping.
- Reviews the four-wheeler favoured by the previous generation of mechanics, weighing its security, room for a companion and imposing appearance against want of control, loss of power and expense, with notes on Mr. Andrews's elm, hickory and ash wheel-building.
- Describes the Dublin velocipede (Fig. 17), with space for a valise, box or portmanteau behind the seat or over the front axle; Mr. Sawyer of Dover is noted as another well-known maker of four-wheelers.
- Describes the Dublin four-wheeler (Fig. 18) and the recent suggestion of dispensing with treadles so the feet work directly on knee-joints in the front axle — a plan the author judges no answer to the general objections to four-wheelers.
- Opens the riding lesson, insisting that practice alone makes a skilful rider, and starting the beginner with gaining confidence in the machine and learning to keep his balance astride the saddle with his toes touching the ground.
- Takes the learner through mounting and riding (Figs. 19 to 22): the pedal position at the start, alternate downward pressure to gain progress, running free down an incline with the legs raised to the rest, and the claim that a month's practice allows circles and figures of eight.
- Argues that the price of shop-bought machines — from 35s. for a rural postman's tricycle to 200 dollars in America and vélocipèdes de luxe in Paris — puts them beyond many, then details amateur construction: iron, steel or brass rather than failure-prone cast iron, and the wheels, axle, crank-shaft, guide-fork, reach, saddle and fitting in turn.
- Opens the survey of curiosities, observing that if half the suggestions made for velocipedes were realised we should have air, earth, fire and water vehicles, and weighing the fanciful six- or seven-wheeler meant to carry a family party by treadle movement.
- Covers wind-driven velocipedes, including the 'Sailing-boat' of Mr. H. C. Folkard, whose trials were chronicled down to the frightening of a farmer's wife and her upset into a ditch.
- Describes the marine velocipede or vélocipède marin, the latest Parisian notion, those on the lake of the Bois de Boulogne being formed of a couple of canvas-covered canoes joined together.
- Considers applying steam to velocipedes — a two-seat design with oscillating cylinders driving a cranked stage, a gear-worked guide-wheel and a coal bunker in front of the boiler — while objecting that such machines would cease to be velocipedes; Fig. 33 reproduces a vignette of the same idea from forty years earlier.
- Describes the American ice velocipede (Fig. 34), first published in Harper's Weekly, whose driving-wheel is armed with sharp points against slipping and whose hind wheel is replaced by a pair of gigantic skates or runners.
- Reviews attempts at progression on a single wheel, likening them to Mr. Dumbell's compartmented spherical ball, a squirrel-cage, or the clown's trick of riding on a barrel.
- Reports Mr. John St. Leger Partridge's one-wheeled 'Victorine', fourteen years in the making, and his challenge in Bell's Life to race all comers to a town fifty to a hundred miles from London, giving a mile's start in every twenty.
- Notes the Prince Imperial's gift of ten miniature aluminium-bronze velocipedes to his friends at the Fête de Pâques, and singles out a cantering propeller fitted to a tricycle that combines the pleasure of a rocking-horse with actual progression.
- Opens the closing survey of the machine's rise, calling France the cradle of the velocipede and crediting its resuscitation to the petits crevés and cocottes of Paris.
- Charts French performances and enthusiasm — 123 miles inside twenty-four hours, fifty miles in five hours repeatedly done, a mile in five minutes as excellent racing — and the growing list of users including rural postmen, telegraph messengers, country doctors and parsons.
- Describes the American craze — velocipedes in the theatres, Harper's Weekly picturing the new year 1869 astride one, a proposed thirty-foot elevated pine roadway the length of Manhattan Island — and the patent war between Calvin Witty, Stephen W. Smith and P. W. Mackenzie over Lallement's patent.
- Records the English outbreak: Mr. C. A. Booth, the champion skater, riding London to Brighton, 52 miles, in seven and a half hours; gymnasiums crowded nightly in Liverpool; and Manchester, Birmingham and the watering-places catching the fever.
- Weighs the velocipede as healthful exercise, judging that not more than forty miles in an eight-hour day can be done with ease (Mr. Lander thinks thirty), so that much depends on the rider's skill and the state of the roads.