Today, there’s a justifiable concern that HGV drivers on piece-work are causing havoc on London’s roads. In 1898, there were similar complaints. About bicycle-riding “scorchers”. Note: the scorchers may have hit pedestrians but they didn’t tend to kill them. “One […]
Continue ReadingIn June 1905, a car carrying US president Theodore Roosevelt was stopped for speeding, by two policemen on bicycles. The car was a Columbia, made by the same company that, in 1877, had brought the first high wheel bicycle to […]
Continue ReadingThe slow spread of motorcars after the 1896 London to Brighton Emanicipation Run (an event organised by a bicycle builder) wasn’t universally welcomed. Automobilists were “motor fiends”, opined the satirical magazine Punch in 1907, and the motorcar was “an ingenious […]
Continue ReadingAssassins who fret over telescopic rifle sights or the latest undetectable poisons would be better to run down their prey with a car. Kill with a gun, expect jail-time; kill with a car and more times than not you’ll walk […]
Continue ReadingThe War of the Worlds, the pretty Dibble sisters, Occam’s Razor, women’s liberation, and the London Olympics: all are linked by the “most famous cycling highway in the world.” On Saturday, July 29th, 2012, a fast-moving peloton of professional cyclists […]
Continue ReadingAs well as being pioneers in roads, ball bearings, cars, and aeroplanes – see ‘What have the cyclists ever done for us?’ – cyclists were also responsible for the first published study in the field of social psychology. This was […]
Continue ReadingThis is a line-drawing of the world’s “first header”, a forward fall from a bicycle. It’s also a line-drawing of the probable creator of the world’s first pedal-operated bicycle. The rider is Frenchman Pierre Lallement. The location is Birmingham, close […]
Continue ReadingNetherlands schmetherlands, the country with the best riding conditions for cyclists used to be America. Difficult to imagine, but in the 1890s a number of American cities could boast the world’s best bicycle-infrastructure. Part paid for by pushy, influential cyclists, […]
Continue ReadingCycling has many health benefits, “of the rosy, romping, rollicking kind,” said Dr. Victor Neesen in an 1899 ‘how to cycle’ book. However, the good doctor – a gynaecologist – was a stickler for the proper position to be struck […]
Continue ReadingIn its Victorian heyday the satirical magazine Punch (1841-2002) poked fun at bicyclists and automobilists: both were guilty of “scorching” (speeding) and both ignored the prior road rights of pedestrians. However, by the 1920s, ‘Motor Mania’ had seen to it […]
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