BIKES
I am not one of those men who can say that he grew up on a bicycle. Some did, of course, but I came along during the days of the Great Depression and we spent more time wanting bikes than riding on Them.
We did have two bikes, as I recall, but not at the same time so my older brother and I had to share them such as they were. One was painted a bright red, I remember, and the other showed evidence of having been blue at one time. Both were twenty-six inch wheel sizes ...ratherlarge. The red one came to us as well-worn hand-me-down from a distant cousin.; the blish one came from the community trash dump nearby which we frequented seeking just such treasures.
.Actually they were frames rather than bikes and I never remember them both having tires at the same time. Most of the time we rode them as run-on-the-rims racers around the dirt track we built in our back yard aound the edges of the garden.
The fact that the Wright Brothers worked with bicycles in the Ohio told us we were doing the right thing and as a grown man, after putting hundreds of miles on my bike while in England, I remembered working on the wheeled wrecks many years before.
The bicycle has fascinated mankind for a good years and we find conficting reports as to who invented and/or merely improved upon earlier designs to make them function as well as they do today. Generally, the modern bicyles seem to have had its begining with a small horse with a front wheel. Children could sit on it and propel it wih their feet. No pedals and the front wheel was fixed and could not be used for steering.
In 1816 Baron van Drais introduced a :bicycle which he called a "Draisenne" and it became the rage wih allhe speed-loving dandys in Paris. It consisted of two rather large wheel and the front one was steerable.. Still no pedals/. .it depended on foot-to-ground push-push power.
It was left for a blacksmith in Dumphies, Scotland to add the pedal mehanism.in 1839. His name was Kirkpatrick Macmillian and Scottish books list him as being the "inventor"of the bicycle while coninental publications say he improved on the earlier design by Drais.
It has been improved much more today and we are now at the point where the newer features are being minimized and we are going back to basic elements with up-to-date efficncency riding comfort and ease retined intact, of course.
A.L.M. March 13, 204 [c442wds]..
