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+--- Thread: Early bicycles (/thread-2831.html)
Early bicycles - elte - Sep 13, 2016
Something, I forgot what, got me thinking of the Penny-farthing and the great danger of doing a header on one. I was reading about them and musing about their being used in that earlier time, and then their supplantation by the safety bicycle, which is still popular today.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny-farthing
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_bicycle
RE: Early bicycles - scheherazade - Sep 14, 2016
I had never known what the bicycles with the large front wheel were called so it is interesting to now know what a 'penny-farthing' happens to be.
One who utilizes such 'velocipede' is then known as a velocipedist.
Quote:Velocipede (/vəˈlɒsəpiːd/; Latin for "fast foot") is a human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels. The most common type of velocipede today is the bicycle.
The term was probably coined by Karl von Drais for the French translation of his advertising leaflet to describe his version of the Laufmaschine, which he had in 1817. The term "velocipede" is today, however, mainly used as a collective term for the different forerunners of the monowheel, the unicycle, the bicycle, the dicycle, the tricycle and the quadracycle developed between 1817 and 1880.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocipede
RE: Early bicycles - elte - Sep 14, 2016
I have associated the Laufmaschine (I was unaware of that origin as a French word) with the velocipede, on which the rider would propel the bike by striding, rather than the later types that were pedalled, though it makes sense to me how people use more than one term to refer to things, especially tending to retain an early term.