The history
200 years from a wooden running machine to the e-bike.
The bicycle came late. It needed no new science, only a good idea: that you can balance on two wheels in a line if you keep moving. A German forester proved it in 1817 by running on a wooden frame. Pedals, huge front wheels, chains, air-filled tyres and gears followed in a rush, and the bicycle went on to free women, build aeroplanes, fill the streets of China and win back the cities of today.
1817
Two-wheeled running machine
Karl Drais, Germany
1860s
Pedals on the front wheel
Michaux and Lallement, France
1868
Recorded bike race
Saint-Cloud, France
1885
Safety bicycle
John Kemp Starley, England
1888
Pneumatic bicycle tyre
John Boyd Dunlop, Ireland
1903
Tour de France
France
1817 – 1860
No pedals yet. Riders sit on a frame between two wheels and push along the ground with their feet.
1817
12 June 1817
Drais rode his Laufmaschine, a wooden frame with two in-line wheels and a steerable front, from Mannheim to a coaching inn and back, about 13 km in a little over an hour: faster than walking. Some historians link the invention to the “Year Without a Summer” of 1816, when failed harvests made horses costly to feed, but the link is debated.
Why it mattered. It proved that you can balance on two wheels in a line as long as you keep moving and can steer.
1819
1818–1819
London coachmaker Denis Johnson built an improved version, the “pedestrian curricle”. Fashionable young men rode “hobby horses” or “dandy horses” until the fad faded, partly because riders on pavements annoyed pedestrians.
Why it mattered. The first bike boom, and the first complaints about cyclists.
1839
c. 1839
Macmillan, a blacksmith, is said to have built a two-wheeler driven by treadles and rods to the rear wheel. The evidence is thin and historians still argue about it.
Why it mattered. A reminder that ‘who was first’ is often uncertain.
1860 – 1885
Pedals go straight onto the front wheel, and the wheel grows huge to go faster.
1864
1860s
French makers fitted cranks and pedals straight onto the front wheel. The Michaux company began producing these velocipedes in quantity in the late 1860s. On cobbled streets their iron tyres earned them the nickname “boneshakers”.
Why it mattered. For the first time, a rider could keep their feet off the ground.
1866
20 November 1866
Lallement, a French mechanic who had moved to the United States, patented a two-wheeled velocipede with pedals on the front wheel.
Why it mattered. The design spread across the Atlantic.
1869
Meyer built wheels whose thin wire spokes were pulled tight, instead of heavy wooden spokes that push. The rim is held in shape by tension from every side.
Why it mattered. Light, strong wheels made bigger, faster bicycles possible, and every spoked wheel since works this way.
1871
1870–1871
With the pedals fixed to the front wheel, the only way to go further per pedal turn was a bigger wheel. Front wheels grew to 1.5 m across. Later nicknamed “penny-farthings”, they were fast but dangerous: a bump could pitch the rider headfirst over the bars.
Why it mattered. A giant wheel was a gear ratio you could see. Chains would soon do the same job safely.
1880
Swiss-born engineer Hans Renold invented the bush roller chain, whose rollers turn on bushes to cut friction and wear. It became the chain used on almost every bicycle.
Why it mattered. A reliable chain made it possible to drive the rear wheel and choose any gear ratio.
1885 – 1930
A chain to the rear wheel, air-filled tyres and equal-sized wheels: the shape we still ride, and a craze that changed society.
1885
Starley's Rover had two wheels of similar size, a chain driving the rear wheel, and a steerable front with the rider sitting between the wheels. Gearing replaced the giant wheel, so it was fast and much safer.
Why it mattered. It's the basic shape of almost every bicycle since.
1888
Dunlop, a vet, made air-filled tyres for his son's tricycle to smooth out bumpy roads, and patented them. Robert William Thomson had patented a pneumatic tyre in the 1840s, but it hadn't caught on.
Why it mattered. Comfort and speed together. Pneumatic tyres went on to every car.
1895
June 1894 – September 1895
Annie Cohen Kopchovsky, riding as “Annie Londonderry”, set off from Boston and returned about fifteen months later, having travelled around the world by bicycle and steamship.
Why it mattered. Widely called the first woman to cycle around the world, at a time when women riding at all was controversial.
1896
2 February 1896
In an interview with the journalist Nellie Bly, the suffragist Susan B. Anthony said she thought the bicycle had done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. Bicycles gave women independent travel and helped change clothing and ideas about what women could do.
Why it mattered. The bicycle was a social machine as much as a mechanical one.
1898
A freewheel lets the rear wheel keep turning while the pedals stay still, so riders can coast. Coaster brakes, worked by pedalling backwards, followed.
Why it mattered. You no longer had to pedal every second the wheels turned.
1902
The Sturmey-Archer three-speed hub hid a set of planetary gears inside the rear hub, so riders could switch gears with a lever.
Why it mattered. Gears for everyday riders, sealed away from mud.
1903
1 July 1903
Created to sell newspapers, the first Tour covered about 2,400 km in six stages, some ridden through the night. Maurice Garin won.
Why it mattered. It became the world's most famous bike race.
1903
17 December 1903
The Wright brothers ran a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio. They used its tools, its chain drives and their understanding of balance and control to build the first successful powered aeroplane.
Why it mattered. Balancing a bike taught them that a pilot must actively control an aircraft, not just keep it steady.
1930 – 1990
Derailleurs, quick-release wheels, mass production in China, and new kinds of bike for mountains.
1930
Racer Tullio Campagnolo, the story goes, lost time in a race struggling to undo frozen wing nuts with cold hands. He invented a lever that frees a wheel in seconds.
Why it mattered. Quick changes of wheels and tyres became normal.
1949
1949–1950
Earlier derailleurs existed, but Campagnolo's Gran Sport used a parallelogram that moved the chain cleanly between cogs, setting the pattern for the derailleurs on most bikes today.
Why it mattered. Many gears, shifted while riding.
1950
The heavy, black Flying Pigeon PA-02 became a symbol of modern China. Tens of millions were made, and for decades the streets of Chinese cities were rivers of bicycles.
Why it mattered. Often called the most widely used vehicle in history.
1965
Activists painted bicycles white and left them unlocked for anyone to use. Most were stolen or impounded, but the idea stuck.
Why it mattered. The ancestor of bike-share schemes in cities around the world.
1977
Riders racing old bikes down Mount Tamalpais wanted something tougher. Joe Breeze built the Breezer, one of the first purpose-built mountain bikes, with wide tyres, strong brakes and many gears.
Why it mattered. A new kind of cycling, and bikes that go almost anywhere.
1990 – today
Motors that help you pedal, bikes you can hire on any street corner, and science that finally explains balance.
1993
Yamaha's Power Assist System added a motor that helps only while you pedal, in proportion to your effort. It's the model most e-bikes follow.
Why it mattered. Hills and long commutes became easy for many more people.
2007
July 2007
Paris launched Vélib' with thousands of bikes in docking stations across the city, showing that public bikes could work at scale.
Why it mattered. It started a wave of bike-share schemes around the world.
2011
April 2011
Writing in Science, the team built a strange bicycle with no gyroscopic effect and no trail, and showed it could still balance itself. What matters is how the bike's mass is arranged, so the front steers into a lean.
Why it mattered. After nearly 200 years, it overturned two popular explanations of why bikes stay up.
2022
8 October 2022
On an indoor track, the Italian rider covered 56.792 km in an hour, the UCI hour record.
Why it mattered. Aerodynamics, gearing and training have taken the record up by more than 20 km since the 1890s.
By the numbers
Landmark hour records on the track. Better bikes, better aerodynamics and better training added more than 20 km.
Did you know?
The Wright brothers built their first aeroplane with skills and tools from their bicycle shop.
A penny-farthing's front wheel was huge because the pedals turned it directly: bigger wheel, more distance per pedal turn.
A moving bicycle can balance itself with no rider, as long as it's going fast enough.
In 1896 Susan B. Anthony said the bicycle had done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.
The first Tour de France was created to sell a newspaper.
The people
1785 – 1851 · Forester and inventor · Germany
Invented the two-wheeled running machine.
1843 – 1891 · Mechanic · France and USA
Early pedal velocipede maker; patented it in the US.
1830 – 1881 · Inventor · England
Built the Ariel high wheeler; called the father of the bicycle industry.
1854 – 1901 · Inventor and manufacturer · England
Designed the Rover safety bicycle.
1840 – 1921 · Veterinary surgeon · Scotland and Ireland
Developed the air-filled bicycle tyre.
1820 – 1906 · Suffragist · USA
Said the bicycle had done more to emancipate women than anything else.
1870 – 1947 · Adventurer · Latvia and USA
Travelled around the world with her bicycle in 1894–95.
1867 – 1912 · 1871 – 1948 · Bicycle makers and aviators · USA
Used their bicycle know-how to build the first powered aeroplane.
1901 – 1983 · Racer and inventor · Italy
Invented the quick release and the modern derailleur.
born 1953 · Frame builder · USA
Built one of the first purpose-built mountain bikes.
Where it happened
Sources
Dates marked “c.” are approximate, and historians sometimes disagree about who was first. If you spot a mistake, tell us.
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