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Early bike riders consideres pests by other road users

Just as today, when the bicycle first rose to popularity there were frequent battles with other road users.

THEY were born on a badly rutted road in the German city of Manheim two centuries ago and they multiplied like rabbits, so that today there are two billion of them around the globe.

The bicycle changed the world and Queensland adopted them as readily as anywhere.

A German forestry official named Karl Drais designed the forerunner of the bike as a novelty in his workshop on this week in 1817.

His creation was better known the “Dandy horse’’. It had two wheels but no pedals and riders would propel themselves along as though running while seated on a wooden frame. On his first long trial Drais took an hour to cover 7km.

When he showed it off in Paris, Drais called his machine the “vélocipède’’ and while they were slow to take off, bicycles became a worldwide craze 50 years later after Frenchmen made them easier to ride by adding mechanical crank drives, chains and pedals.

On Boxing Day, 1869, The Brisbane Courier reported on the first public bike race ever seen in the city, on a big sports day at Eagle Farm.

Velocipide race at the Melbourne Cricket ground 1869 believed to be the first in Australia. Picture: National Museum of Australia.
Velocipide race at the Melbourne Cricket ground 1869 believed to be the first in Australia. Picture: National Museum of Australia.

“The winner, Mr McCarthy, managed his treacherous-looking vehicle capitally,’’ the newspaper reported, “and seemed quite at his ease on it. The distance was 500 yards, and the ground was heavy, and it was evidently very hard work going at the pace he did. His two competitors were apparently not so well used to the work, and dropped out before reaching the winning post.’’

Just as today there were frequent battles between cyclists and motorists.

In the same year as that first bike race at Eagle Farm, Queensland newspapers reported that Paris was “startled at the apparition of hundreds of velocipedes’’ intersecting the avenues and cutting in and out of the carriages on the Champs-Élysées “at a maddening rate of speed.’’

“The velocipedes have stolen a march on the coming flying man,’’ one report noted, “for while he is busy adjusting the wings with which he intends to navigate the clouds, they have attached wheels to their legs, enabling them to skim the earth with the speed of a fast-trotting horse.

2017 marked two centuries since a German inventor Karl Drais designed the precursor to the bike. Cyclists celebrated at the Brunswick Velodrome. Stewart Clissold during the penny farthing race. Picture: Eugene Hyland
2017 marked two centuries since a German inventor Karl Drais designed the precursor to the bike. Cyclists celebrated at the Brunswick Velodrome. Stewart Clissold during the penny farthing race. Picture: Eugene Hyland

“Mounted, too, upon these flying horses, amateurs dash along the crowded thoroughfares … along the narrow stone parapet at the side of the Seine, and down the 101 steps of the Trocadero; rising up in their seats, lying down on their backs, letting go the handle of the vehicle, and throwing both legs over it while performing these daring feats.

“Government employees living in the suburbs ride to their offices every morning on the new iron horse, a hint to dwellers on certain lines of railway on the other side of the Channel.’’

The first Brisbane Bicycle Club meeting was held in 1881 at the Belle Vue Hotel and novelty Penny Farthing races, on bikes with enormous front wheels, were held in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens.

More riders fell off than stayed on.

By 1886 Brisbane had 200 bicycles, 50 of them used for racing and five years later the first Queensland championship was held at the Breakfast Creek Sports Ground.

Karl Drais failed to make much from his invention, though.

Roads in his time were so damaged by carriages that velocipede riders, needing a smooth surface to place their feet, took to the footpaths, weaving in and out of pedestrians.

Dandy horses were subsequently banned in Germany, Great Britain, the United States, and Calcutta.

The American Velocipide 1868, a sketch by Theodore R Davis
The American Velocipide 1868, a sketch by Theodore R Davis

Drais died penniless in 1851. His house in Karlsruhe was two blocks away from the childhood home of Karl Benz, who is credited with creating the first automobile.

Grantlee Kieza’s biography of Banjo Paterson is published by HarperCollins/ABC Books

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Original URL: https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/insight/early-bike-riders-consideres-pests-by-other-road-users/news-story/2d673c14b225299b6fd1238a7123ad6f