Invention
The earliest forebears of the bicycle were velocipedes, and included many human-powered vehicles. One, the scooter-like dandy horse or celerifere of the French Comte de Sivrac, dating to 1790, was long cited as the earliest bicycle. Most historians now believe these unsteerable hobby-horses probably never existed, but were made up by Louis Baudry de Saunier, a 19th-century French bicycle historian.
The most likely originator of the bicycle was the German Baron Karl von Drais, who rode his 1816 machine while collecting taxes from his tenants. He patented his draisine, a pushbike powered by the action of the rider's feet pushing against the ground.
Read more about this topic: French Bicycle Industry
Famous quotes containing the word invention:
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—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)
“Methinks the human method of expression by sound of tongue is very elementary, & ought to be substituted for some ingenious invention which should be able to give vent to at least six coherent sentences at once.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)