Bicycle: The History [Paperback]

David V. Herlihy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 16, 2006

During the nineteenth century, the bicycle evoked an exciting new world in which even a poor person could travel afar and at will. But was the “mechanical horse” truly destined to usher in a new era of road travel or would it remain merely a plaything for dandies and schoolboys? In Bicycle: The History (named by Outside magazine as the #1 book on bicycles), David Herlihy recounts the saga of this far-reaching invention and the passions it aroused. The pioneer racer James Moore insisted the bicycle would become “as common as umbrellas.” Mark Twain was more skeptical, enjoining his readers to “get a bicycle. You will not regret it—if you live.”

Because we live in an age of cross-country bicycle racing and high-tech mountain bikes, we may overlook the decades of development and ingenuity that transformed the basic concept of human-powered transportation into a marvel of engineering. This lively and engrossing history retraces the extraordinary story of the bicycle—a history of disputed patents, brilliant inventions, and missed opportunities. Herlihy shows us why the bicycle captured the public’s imagination and the myriad ways in which it reshaped our world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Each day, in cities from Bangkok to Baltimore, millions of people mount their bicycles, strap on a helmet and ride off to school, to work or just to get away, giving little thought to the hundreds of years of invention, evolution and development that afford them this simple pleasure. Herlihy has dedicated many years of research and study to uncovering this history, and the result is a comprehensive genealogy of the two-wheeled savior of mass transit. In the late 1700s, when transportation was ruled by the horse and buggy, inventors challenged one another to develop a human-powered vehicle to replace the inconvenience and expense of the horse-drawn carriage and make man, once and for all, self-sufficient. It took nearly 200 years for the four-wheeled, multi-person machines first thought to be the answer to this dilemma to evolve into the two-wheeled speedsters we know today. The author’s vivid account of this story could not be more detailed if Herlihy himself had personally lived through every experience he recounts. Each chapter is filled with eye-catching illustrations and photographs spanning nearly two centuries, and colorful sidebars like "The Velocipede in the Service of Love" and "Women and the Velocipede" add character to the often technical, textbook-style prose. In uncovering interesting characters like 1860’s racer James Moore, who predicted bicycles would soon be "as common in homes as umbrellas," and documenting hundreds of little known facts, Herlihy takes what could have been just another history book and makes it a story worth telling your friends about.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From The New Yorker

The bicycle began life, in the nineteenth century, as a diversion for rich Europeans. Physicians, theologians, anti-feminists, and journalists condemned it as a hazardous fad—"Man is a locomotive machine of Nature's own making, not to be improved by the addition of any cranks or wheels of mortal invention," wrote one opponent—and cyclists were sometimes set upon by mobs. By the century's end, however, with a safe, efficient model available to the commuter and the Sunday pleasure seeker, the bicycle created thousands of jobs, spurred road construction, and transformed fashion, while daredevil, brandy-swilling racing cyclists acquired heroic status. Herlihy portrays the men who pioneered this gravity-defying wonder; they worked in near-obscurity, lit by the Industrial Age's spirit of invention, the capitalist impulse, and the utopian hope that the bicycle would "take men away from the gambling rooms and rum shops, out into God's light and sunshine."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (August 16, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300120478
• ISBN-13: 978-0300120479
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.9 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #82,771 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #90 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Miscellaneous > History of Sports

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hours and hours of entertainment value October 25, 2005

By BuzS VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This is virtually an encyclopedia of bicycle history with an extraordinary collection of photographs, drawings, catalog covers, and lots more illustrative material from the early history of the bicycle forward to today. The visuals alone in this beautiful book are more than enough reason to buy it. The writing is also to savor time and time again with great sidebars on a variety of fascincating and amusing subjects and a very informative recounting of the 200-year history of self-propelled transporation. No bicyclist could possibly be disappointed in acquiring this marvelous volume.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best in Bicycle History March 4, 2005

By WP Fleming

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This richly illustrated and carefully researched book belongs in the library of all serious cyclists.

David Herlihy deserves high praise for his definitive work which so well illuminates our magnificient bicycling heritage.

It reads easily. I had great difficulty putting it down even for a break.

WP Fleming

Santa Fe Bikes & Gallery

www.sfbikes.com

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Beautiful Invention January 26, 2008

By Bill McGann

Format:Paperback

In the second half of the 19th Century several machines engaged and excited the world's finest inventive minds. Among them were the sewing machine, the locomotive and the gun. But the machine that drew the most attention was the bicycle. In January and February of 1869, as the first craze for the early primitive bicycles hit the United States, the American patent office received about one hundred applications for improvements to the crank-driven two-wheeler. By March, over 100 more were either sent or announced.

Why? The bicycle was that deeply yearned-for device that would satisfy the centuries-old desire for cheap personal transportation.

David Herlihy's wonderful book tells the story of the invention and development of the bicycle from the first dreams set down on paper centuries ago to the present high-tech carbon fiber lightweight. While he covers the entire history of the bicycle, his main emphasis is on the nineteenth century, from 1817 when Karl von Drais made a two-wheeled hobby horse that would facilitate walking, to the bust of the great 1890's bicycle boom.

Along the way Herlihy ponders a couple of interesting questions. What, exactly is a bicycle and who invented it? That inquiry led him to conclude that Pierre Lallement, a Frenchman, is our hero. For the forty years after Drais built his "Draisine", the greatest mechanical minds searched for an efficient way propel the machine, but to no avail. It was Lallement who had the brilliant insight to attach pedaled cranks to the front wheel and turn them with his legs. And thus, the bicycle was born.

This early bicycle, or "Velocipede", was a far cry from the chain-driven modern bicycle that appeared in the late 1880's. Numerous technical improvements were needed, such as ball bearings, a cheap, reliable roller chain, high-quality steel tubing, and the tensioned wire wheel (called "spider wheels" at the time of their invention) before the "horse that eats no oats" could be realized.

Without getting bogged down in the minutia of the technology, yet filled with detail, Herlihy follows the avid inventors, excited cyclists and greedy businessmen as they sought to make and own ever better bikes.

There is a surprising nugget of information on every page. The differential gear, which allows a drive shaft to distribute the automobile's force to the rear wheels so that in a turn the inside wheel can rotate more slowly than the faster moving outside wheel, was invented for the tricycle.

The bicycle wrought profound social consequences. At times, fully one-third of the bicycle buyers in the nineteenth century were women as they used the bicycle as a tool of freedom and emancipation. Roads were improved at the urging of cyclists and thus the way for automobiles was made easier.

Lavishly illustrated, Bicycle took Herlihy fifteen years to complete. He is contemplating a sequel, taking up the story where he left off at the turn of the century. He had better not make us wait another fifteen years.
-Bill McGann, Author of The Story of the Tour de France