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James Starley’s Rover of 1885 was the first successful bike in which pedals and a crank drove the rear wheel with a chain, but he was not the first with that design. In 1879 Englishman Harry Lawson designed and patented a version of a large front wheeled bike with a smaller rear wheel driven by cranks and a chain. Lawson’s bike was not very well received, and he went on to design bikes using levers for power transmission. The Bicyclette was a commercial failure, but he had hit upon a superior design feature.
This artwork of the Bicyclette is a version featured on cigarette cards. This and other bicycle art is found at bicyclegifts.com. Framed versions of these beautiful cigarette cards, posters , cards, and other bicycle art recognize that brilliant design is art.
Here is another candidate for the first rear suspension bicycle design, from 1891. Its modern counterpart is shown below.
Here is a very early version of front suspension on a bike. In this patent from 1891 there is a spring in the headset, and the fork assembly can move back and forth to absorb road shock.
This front suspension seems to be the precursor to early springer motorcycle forks. The beefy springs allowed the front wheel and forks to move upward and absorb some road shocks.
Those old bike designers tried a lot of ways to cushion the ride of the safety bike on the rough roads found at the end of the 19th century. Here is a different way to employ springs on the front forks to cushion the ride.
Even after bikes were built using chains, other power transmission modes were tried in early years and continue to be tried today. The chain is just so efficient its hard to beat. An early alternative to the chain and gears utilized a drive shaft. Some added gears to the drive shaft to form a transmission like the early cars were using. This one from 1897 even had a shift lever and a real transmission and a drive shaft that operated with bevel gears to the rear wheel. Having machinery and machinists capable of making bevel gears and transmissions such as this made the transmission to automobiles much smoother and faster.
This figure from a U.S. patent from 1869 shows a tadpole recumbent trike. It is powered by the user’s hands and feet. The feet work a treadle, and the hands work the rods. Rod and lever propulsion was common in those days, because reliable chains had not been developed yet, and the crank and chain was not proven as the best way to transfer power. This wheel and frame configuration is about 140 years ahead of ahead of the Catrike and other trikes, which have similar frame and wheel configuration.
This was not the first recumbent bike, but it is certainly an early one. I have no information that this was ever built, but it sure was ahead of its time. It is very similar to long wheel base recumbents on the road today.
The crank is such a simple device that one could assume it is as ancient as the wheel. The function of the crank was performed in the ancient world by handspikes which would be inserted in holes to move a capstan, and moved periodically to new holes around the cylinder of the capstan.
In about the first century AD cranks were used on Roman medical devices, but it was not until 850 AD that proof of a crank in Europe is found, in a picture of a man sharpening a sword on a grindstone turned by a crank. Other references show the crank in use in certain regions by about 1100 AD, and use in a variety of tools in Europe was widespread by 1600 AD. Of course, the Chinese had used the crank since 100 BC.
The Frenchmen Pierre and Ernest Michaux added cranks and pedals to the existing form of the bicycle, by adding them to the front wheel in 1861. Some people believe that this modification of the Dandy Horse makes the Michaux brothers the inventor of the bicycle. However, the version made by John Starling was much closer to the modern version of the bicycle, and most people credit him with the invention of the modern form of the bicycle. Other contenders for earliest bicycle invention include Kirkpatrick MacMillan in 1839.
The Michaux brothers partner was Pierre Lallement, who may also have been the original inventor or collaborator in the crank powered bicycle. Lallement immigrated to the U.S. and got a patent on his crank powered bicycle, which was the first U.S. patent on a bicycle, in 1866.
Machinist George Singer of Coventry England left his job at the Coventry Machine Shop of James Starley to form the Singer Cycle Company in 1875. He manufactured sewing machines, safety bicycles and patented a bicycle fork in which the ends of the fork were curved. This improved steering, and made for a smoother ride, because the forks would absorb some of the shock from rough roads, rather than transmit the shock to the handlebars. The model below was a dual propulsion bike, being propelled by arms and legs.
Singer also made a motorized wheel that replaced the wheel of a bicycle, and later made motorcycles and sporty little automobiles.
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