The Slow Arrival of the Bicycle

[A] Every component of a workable bicycle existed long before the bicycle did. Wheels, metal tubing, ball bearings and chain drives were all in use by the early nineteenth century, and none of them was beyond the reach of a competent workshop. [B] Yet the machine that a modern rider would recognise did not appear until the 1880s.

[C] Part of the delay was a matter of imagination. The first pedal-driven machines put the pedals directly on the front wheel, which meant that one turn of the pedals produced one turn of the wheel. To go faster you needed a larger wheel, and the result was the penny-farthing, a machine so tall that falling off it was genuinely dangerous. [D] Nobody had yet thought to separate the pedals from the driven wheel and connect them with a chain, which allows the gear ratio to be chosen independently of the wheel's size. Part of it was roads. A bicycle is punished by a rough surface in a way that a horse is not, and smooth surfaces outside city centres were rare. It is no accident that cycling clubs became the loudest campaigners for paved roads decades before motor cars needed them.