17th February: Bicycles

On this date in 1818 Baron Karl von Drais de Sauerbrun patented the ‘Draisine’, the forerunner of the bicycle.

1. His invention was a two-wheeled, pedal-less device which was propelled by pushing your feet against the ground. It was called the Draisienne, Laufmaschine or "Dandy Horse". It was the first human means of transport to use only two wheels in tandem, and evolved into the bicycle as we know it today.
2. The word bicycle comes from the French word ‘bicyclette’, and first appeared in print in the Daily News in 1868. Before that, such machines were referred to as ‘velocipedes’.
3. There are over one billion bicycles in the world - more than double the number of cars. Every year, 50-100 million new bikes are made. About 400 million of the world’s bicycles are in China - nine million in Beijing, according to the song.
4. In the Netherlands, there are more bicycles than people. Cities there are planned to accommodate bikes rather than cars. Not that people there always take care of their bikes - 12,000 and 15,000 bikes are pulled out from the canals of Amsterdam every year.
5. The bicycle is the most efficient vehicle ever devised. The energy required to cycle at low to medium speeds is roughly the same as the energy required to walk, but takes you three times as far. There is one thing, according to one website, which is more efficient than a bike and that is a duck. However, riding a duck is somewhat difficult, and it annoys the duck.
6. The first person in Britain to be charged with speeding was a cyclist - Walter Arnold of East Peckham who exceeded the 2mph/3.22kph speed limit by doing 8mph/12.87kph on a bicycle. He was caught by a policeman who gave chase on - you guessed it - a bicycle, and was fined one shilling. UK speed limits no longer apply to bicycles (presumably because the average Joe on a bike couldn't manage 70mph or even 30) but ‘cycling furiously’ is an offence.
7. The speed record on a bicycle is 152.2 miles per hour (245 km/h). The man who achieved this speed, John Howard of the USA, only managed it because he was riding in the slipstream of specially designed car. The fastest anyone has gone entirely under their own steam is Todd Reichart who managed 89.58mph or 144.17km/h in 2016. The fastest woman on a bike is Barbara Buatois of France, who reached 75.69mph or 121.81 in 2009.
8. A bicycle without a rider will stay upright as long as it is moving at at least 8mph.
9. Proponents of cycling will be quick to tell you that maintaining a bike costs twenty times less than maintaining a car, and that you 15 bicycles in the same space that one car takes. They will probably also get all preachy about how good cycling is for your health.
10. To finish, a few bicycle records. The most expensive bike ever, a Trek Madone or the "Butterfly Bike" was designed by artist Damien Hirst, and sold for $500,000 at Sotherby's. The largest ridable bicycle was built by Didi Senft from Germany and has a wheel diameter of 3.3 m (10 ft 9.92 in). The longest “tandem” bike was over 20 meters 67 feet long and it seated 35 people.

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