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Motorcycling – A
Short History
It was well after the advent of the Industrial Revolution that the wheel
came into widespread use as part of a personal vehicle. The first
bicycles began to appear in the mid-to late-19th Century, although
bicycling had begun much earlier, on a limited scale. There is some
evidence, disputed, that Leonardo da Vinci had envisioned the concept of
a bicycle, for a sketch of one appears in a manuscript attributed to
him. But it was Karl von Drais, an inventor in Germany, who, in 1816-17,
created the very first two-wheeled personal transportation device, which
came to be known as a Velocipede, or Dandy Horse. His called his
machine, which had no pedals, the Laufmaschine, or “running machine,”
for obvious reasons. The Laufsmachine lost popularity as riders’ boots
wore out, since all forward motion came from pushing with the feet.
The essential detail of this early machine, and all such two-wheeled
personal vehicles, including motorcycles, was the vital human component
of balance. Indeed, this early design drew heavily on the human-animal
synthesis that riders had always experienced when riding horses. It was
necessary for the rider to ‘become one’ with the horse, or the bike, and
that feature has never left the art and practice of personal vehicle
riding.
Another first attempt was the handsome but uncomfortable “Boneshaker,”
which was popular for a brief decade until 1869 in France. Made of a
stiff wrought-iron frame with wheels of wood and tires of iron, the
Boneshaker lived up to its name.
The Penny Farthing which followed was very popular, and, despite the
difficulty in riding one, where the rider is perched very high above a
huge front wheel, with potential to topple helplessly over the
handlebars, (“take a header”) even women found them a charming mode of
transportation.
These vehicles were all of the ‘velocipede’ style, in which, if pedals
were present, they were simply attached to the front wheel. This aspect
limited speed of travel and distance covered by the wheels in each
rotation. Such a limitation led to the development of gears and sprocket
chains, as the art of metallurgy matured. Now, instead of needing a huge
front wheel to cover distance, the wheels returned to the original,
same-size design, with the pedals and chains providing a boost to human
effort. Equality in wheel size (the Safety Bicycle style) enabled the
rider to ‘flatfoot’ when necessary, bringing a new element of safety and
freedom which only increased the popularity of this new mode of
transportation.
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