Jody Rosen: how the bicycle has changed the world

From Saturday Morning, 10:10 am on 2 July 2022

The bicycle has been at the centre of the culture wars for more than 200 years, says author and bike enthusiast Jody Rosen. 

Since its unveiling in 1817 by German inventor Karl von Drais, the bicycle has become one of the most popular forms of transport around the world - second only to walking.

It has been an emblem of freedom to countless people, from feminist rebels in the 1890s to Tiananmen Square protestors in 1989.

These days it is a symbol of sustainability in a world afflicted by climate change.

Jody Rosen, author of Two Wheels Good

Photo: Supplied

[audio-play] Listen to the full interview

"Baron Karl von Drais was a minor nobleman in the Duchy of Baden in the German Federation. And this was in the year 1817.

"What he was doing was looking, we think, for an alternative to travel by horse, because of course, and in this period, that was how you got around, at least how travelled across land, in a speedy fashion was in a horse drawn carriage or maybe on horseback.

“And he was trying to find a solution to an age-old problem, which is the problem of quick, personal transport across land.

"And what he invented was for that time a super curious machine, it was a machine which, instead of lining up two wheels on either side of an axle, he put one in front of the other, this was kind of the crucial insight. And he attached them with some wood and iron and a sort of saddle, as he called it. And a reference there, of course, to the horse.”

The difference between the bicycle that was invented in 1817, and our modern bicycle crucially is that it lacked pedals, Rosen says.

“So, this thing was propelled with a kind of ice skating motion by scooting one's feet across the ground and kind of running across the ground. Karl von Drais called it the Louth Machina, which means the running machine.

“You sort of straddled the thing and you push it along there. Of course, these days there are these things that are called balanced bikes, or strider bikes, which are these little wooden devices, which look very similar, which children use to learn to balance their bodies and the bike, this sort of starter bicycle.

“But this was, in fact, the design of the starter bicycle for all of us that kind of proto bicycle invented then in the second decade of the 19th century.”

Subsequently the invention of pneumatic tyres, and the safety bicycle in the late 1880s made the bicycle an even more practical mode of transport, he says.

“This was definitely one of a couple of crucial engineering breakthroughs which gave us the modern safety bicycle, crucially a machine was comfortable enough to ride and could ride fast.

“It was a very, very important breakthrough along with the invention of things like the famous diamond shaped frame that we now see and the safety bike gave us the bicycle with two equal sized wheels, instead of that giant wheel on the front. And you had a chain drive which pulled the rear wheel along and that you could use the front wheel then simply to steer, this was the safety bicycle and it was nicknamed the safety bicycle because indeed it was safe.

“Compared to for instance, the Penny Farthing.”

The bicycle has always been a lightning rod for culture wars, he says.

“Especially in places like here in the United States, we're kind of car culture to the max, the automobile was slower to catch in Europe and in the UK, for instance, those were places where the bicycle continued to function as a kind of utilitarian commuter vehicle for decades after the invention of the automobile.

“But here in the United States, we litigated by force of political will, by statute, the bicycle was severely marginalised, it was, you know, sort of driven off the road, it was de facto illegal to ride a bike in many places in the United States.

“Certainly, by the mid-century, and it was in this period that bicycle manufacturers, were looking for different markets for the bicycle, because after all, it was by this point, it was stigmatised people thought a proper adult drove a car around.

“So, they developed this market for a children's bicycle simply as a way to sell these things to keep the bicycle industry going in this country.”

Despite the march of the car over the last century, we still live on a bicycle plant, he says.

“There are many more bicycles than there are cars in the world. So, the bicycle is kind of hidden in plain sight. There are approximately 1 billion cars in the world, there are approximately 2 billion bicycles. So, in many ways we live on a bicycle planet, whether we know it or not.”