On your bike!

From female emancipation to enlarging the gene pool for rural workers, the humble bicycle has come a long way since it first appeared early in the 19th Century as a simple wooden frame supported by two in line wheels using human foot propulsion. Today over one billion people use a bicycle as an ecologically sound method of transportation for work, recreation, racing and even as a musical instrument!

In the early days, bicycle manufacturing became a training ground for other industries and led to the development of advanced metalworking techniques, both for the frames themselves and for special components such as ball bearings, washers, and sprockets. These techniques later enabled skilled metalworkers and mechanics to develop the components used in early automobiles and aircraft.

In the 1890's the diamond-frame safety bicycle gave women unprecedented mobility, contributing to their emancipation in Western nations and the craze led to a movement for so-called rational dress, which helped liberate women from corsets and ankle-length skirts and other restrictive garments, substituting the then-shocking bloomers!

Sociologists suggest that bicycles enlarged the gene pool for rural workers, by enabling them to easily reach the next town and increase their courting radius. In cities, bicycles helped reduce crowding in inner-city tenements by allowing workers to commute from more spacious dwellings in the suburbs. Bicycles allowed people to travel for leisure into the country, since bicycles were three times as energy efficient as walking, and three to four times as fast.

THE BICYCLE, it just makes sense!

Submitted by: Colin Dillon