The next step in the evolution of the bicycle was the, alias, alias. The first high bicycle was apparently built in 1869 by a Frenchman, Eugene Meyer. The main motive behind the invention of the penny farthing was the desire to make the bike faster, thus increasing its appeal for sporting young men of means.

Gears not having been invented yet, the logical solution was to increase the size of the front wheel. Around this time British engineers and mechanics came up with several crucial inventions that reduced the weight of the frame and increased riding comfort - including solid rubber tires and the use of hollow steel tubes as the material of choice for lighter, yet reasonably safe frames. Wheel design was much improved with the invention of spokes and ball bearings.

The king of ordinaries was a Briton, James Starley (1830-1891). He started out as a manufacturer of sewing machines in Coventry, but is now considered the father of the British bike industry. His ordinaries were luxury items affordable only for the rich, featuring such niceties as nickel-plated handlebars. Design, workmanship and the materials used were exquisite, and a Starley cost more than a worker earned in a year. Starley's most popular model was the Ariel (apparently named after the sprite Ariel in the Shakespeare play The Tempest), which featured wire-spoked wheels - called spider wheels at the time.

Relation | Bookmark | Edit | | Report | Link Rating: (0) Not for the faint of heart. One of Starley's Penny Farthings built in 1878 featuring an oil-based hub lamp

Relation | Bookmark | Edit | | Report | Link Rating: (0) A toy for rich kids. Note the 'moustache handlebar' designed to allow room for the rider's knees

Starley also produced trikes and quads. Queen Victoria is said to have owned a Starley trike, though it is not known whether her royal bottom ever graced its saddle. To improve the steering of trikes and quads, Starley invented the differential in 1877. The name penny farthing was coined by a wit who likened the wheels to two English coins, the penny and the much smaller farthing.

Ordinaries were much faster than boneshakers, and fit riders are estimated to have reached top speeds of about 40 kph. The first century ride ever was recorded in Britain in 1871. Yet there were numerous disadvantages: Penny farthings required a mounting step and a running start - which posed a major challenge to unexperienced riders and effectively excluded women. Stopping was impossible unless the rider jumped off the bike.

Penny farthings were also highly dangerous, and crashes leading to serious injuries - or death - were common. Front wheels grew to gargantuan sizes, with the biggest specimens measuring about two meters in diameter. If a rider hit a bump or any other obstacle on the road, riders were sent flying over the handlebar, a type of accident known as 'taking a header' or 'coming a cropper'. One daring pioneer was Mark Twain, who wrote an amusing account of his misfortunes on a high wheeler:

When you have reached the point in bicycling where you can balance the machine tolerably fairly and propel it and steer it, then comes your next task -- how to mount it. You do it in this way: you hop along behind it on your right foot, resting the other on the mounting-peg, and grasping the tiller with your hands. At the word, you rise on the peg, stiffen your left leg, hang your other one around in the air in a general and indefinite way, lean your stomach against the rear of the saddle, and then fall off, maybe on one side, maybe on the other; but you fall off. You get up and do it again; and once more; and then several times.

By this time you have learned to keep your balance; and also to steer without wrenching the tiller out by the roots (I say tiller because it is a tiller; "handle-bar" is a lamely descriptive phrase). So you steer along, straight ahead, a little while, then you rise forward, with a steady strain, bringing your right leg, and then your body, into the saddle, catch your breath, fetch a violent hitch this way and then that, and down you go again.

Thus cycling became the exclusive domain of young well-to-do sportsmen, and bicycles expensive recreational tools for gentlemen. The cyclists of the day apparently relished their elitism. The secretary of Britain's Amateur Bicycle Club said that the clubs's goal was to promote cycling among the middle, upper and higher classes of society.

In the 1870s, most bike clubs in Britain and the US were rather snobbish affairs - apart from a bike, aspiring novices also needed a uniform and recommendation by a current member. Tradesmen and workers were mostly excluded. Race was also an issue. Initially open to everyone, the League of American Wheelmen officially barred blacks in 1894.

Production of ordinaries also began in the United States, where Bostonian Albert Pope became the dominant manufacturer with his Columbia brand.