The Bicycle — Towards A Global History [1 ed.] 1137499494, 9781137499493, 1137499508, 9781137499509, 1137499516, 9781137499516

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THE BICYCLE – TOWARDS A GLOBAL HISTORY

Also by Paul Smethurst THE POSTMODERN CHRONOTOPE: Reading Space and Time in Contemporary Fiction ASIAN CROSSINGS: Travel Writing on China, Japan and Southeast Asia (edited with Steve Clark) TRAVEL WRITING, FORM, AND EMPIRE (edited with Julia Kuehn) TRAVEL WRITING AND THE NATURAL WORLD, 1768–1840 NEW DIRECTIONS IN TRAVEL WRITING STUDIES (edited with Julia Kuehn)

THE BICYCLE – TOWARDS A GLOBAL HISTORY PAUL SMETHURST

© Paul Smethurst 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave is a global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–49949–3 hardback ISBN 978–1–137–49950–9 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

To all for whom the bicycle means rediscovering lost realms of childhood, feeling intimate relations with the landscape and enjoying a lightness of being in all senses.

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CONTENTS

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgements

xii

Introduction

1

1

9

Invention: The Technical Evolution of the Modern Bicycle

2 Mobility: The Practical and Cultural Impact of Bicycling in the West

67

3

Crossings: The Diffusion of Bicycle Culture across Asia and Africa

105

4

Trends and Trajectories: The Global Future of the Bicycle

141

Notes

156

Bibliography

179

Index

187

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LIST OF FIGURES

1.1 Hobby horse (c. 1818) Source: This model came from Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, and belonged to the 5th Duke of Marlborough (1766–1840). © Science and Society Picture Library

16

1.2 Michaux-type velocipede (1869) Source: Science Museum, London. English-built boneshaker bicycle. © Science and Society Picture Library

17

1.3 Ariel bicycle (1870) Source: Science Museum, London. Ariel model without pedals, tyres or saddle. © Science and Society Picture Library

18

1.4 Lawson’s ‘Bicyclette’ (1879) Source: Science Museum, London. © Science and Society Picture Library

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1.5 Kangaroo bicycle (1884) Source: Science Museum London [incorrectly dated – c. 1878 and attributed to E. C. F. Otto and J. Wallis]. © Science and Society Picture Library

20

1.6 Rover ‘safety’ bicycle (1885) Source: Science Museum, London. © Science and Society Picture Library

21

1.7 ‘Dandy Hobbies in full speed’, William Heath (1819) Source: From satirical print by William Heath, ‘Modern Pegasus or Dandy Hobbies in full speed’, British Museum, London. © The British Museum Images

26

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LIST OF FIGURES

1.8 ‘Lady Progress’, Vélocipède Illustré (April, 1869) Source: Le Vélocipède Illustré, Issue 1, Paris, 1 April 1869

36

1.9 ‘The awful effects of velocipeding’ (c. 1870) Source: ‘The New Comic Times’ (London Low Life), c. 1870. By kind permission of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

37

2.1 ‘The Seasons’, Frank Patterson (1938) Source: Taken from the book Memories of Frank Patterson by Jim and Janet Willis (np: Birmingham, 1990). By kind permission of Mrs. Janet Willis, on behalf of Jim Willis

87

2.2 ‘What a Charming Surprise’, Punch (15 June 1895) Source: © Punch Ltd

94

2.3 ‘Beauty on a Bicycle’, BSA Publications (1939) Source: By kind permission of the National Cycle Archive, Modern Records Centre, Warwickshire, UK

96

2.4 ‘Cycles Gladiator’ Poster (1895) Source: © Alamy

98

2.5 The Cyclist, Natalia Goncharova (1913) Source: © Encyclopedia/Corbis

100

2.6 Bicycle Wheel, Marcel Duchamp (1913) Source: © Alamy

101

3.1 ‘Cycle Race in Shanghai’ (1897) Source: Tian-shi-zhai Pictorial, vol. 1, no. 8, 1897. With kind permission of Tao Xu, Shanghai

111

3.2 ‘Agile Ladies Riding’, Shanghai (c. 1930) Source: Picture Daily c. 1930. With kind permission of Tao Xu, Shanghai

113

3.3 ‘Women Riding in the Field’, Shanghai (c. 1930) Source: Picture Daily c. 1930. With kind permission of Tao Xu

113

3.4 ‘Ride a bicycle and fall in water’, Shanghai (1880) Source: Hua Tu Xin Bao, Shanghai, vol. 5, August 1880. With kind permission of Tao Xu

115

3.5 Bicycle calendar poster, Zhiying Studio, Shanghai (c. 1930) Source: Lao yuefen pai (Old calendar picture), Song Jialin, (Shanghai: Shanghai hua bao chu ban she [Shanghai Pictorial Publishing House], 1997)

124

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3.6 Woman riding bicycle taxi, Macassar, Indonesia Source: RM © Bettman/Corbis

128

3.7 Transportation of coal by bicycle, Jharia coalfield, India Source: RM © Franco Pagetti/VII/Corbis

130

3.8 Bicycle culture in an African village Source: RM © Angelo Cavalli/Corbis

134

3.9 Man with a Bicycle, Yorumba, Nigeria, 20th century Source: Exhibition catalogue ‘African Aesthetics: The Carlo Monzino Collection, May 7–September 7, 1986’, Susan Vogel (The Center for African Art: 1986). Photographer Mario Carrieri

136

3.10 Cyclists on a General Strike, Bombay (1937) Source: RM © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis

139

4.1 Collecting discarded bicycles in China (c. 1990) Source: RM © Xie Guang Hui/Redlink/Corbis

144

4.2 Chinese student protests (1989) Source: RM © Peter Turnley/Corbis

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In setting out to write a book about the bicycle I had no idea that everyone to whom I mentioned the project would supply me with a fact, an anecdote or a picture. Despite being at times overwhelmed, I would like to thank all of those around the world who have helped in direct or serendipitous ways. More specifically, I would like to thank Kathy Griffin (research assistant at HKU), Professor Hans-Erhard Lessing (generous reader of an early draft), Sabrina Tao (translator from Chinese), and the anonymous reader at Palgrave, who, together with Hans Lessing, helped me to get the facts straight in Chapter 1. No doubt there are still howlers in there and I take full responsibility for these. Various libraries have assisted with the project, and I would particularly like to thank staff at the British Library, the University of Hong Kong Library, the University of London Library, the London Library and the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick (National Cycling Archives). For their help in obtaining permissions, I would like to thank Helen Ford at Warwick MRC, Jasmine Rodgers at the Science and Society Picture Library, Penny R. Ramone at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, and Andre Gailani at Punch. For further help with images, I would like to thank, Carol Braide at the Museum for African Art (New York), Tao Xu, Frank Dikotter, Carmen Tomfohrde, and Janet, and the late Jim, Willis for giving me access to their Frank Patterson images. For permission to recycle parts of an article on Edward Thomas’s In Pursuit of Spring, which appeared in the journal Studies in Travel Writing (September 2014), I would like to thank the editor, Tim Youngs, and the publisher, Taylor and Francis.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

xiii

I feel as though I should also thank all of those bicycle historians who unwittingly supplied the basic research material for this book, which I have been fortunate to use. These include Nick Clayton, Peter Cox, Amir Moghaddaas Eesfehani, David Herlihy, Andrew Millward, Glen Norcliffe, Nicholas Oddy, Andrew Ritchie, Roger Street, Claude Reynaud, Rob Van Der Plas and all the members of the International Cycle History Conference, which deserves recognition for the excellent work it is doing, especially in exploring the global histories of the bicycle and bicycling. I particularly admire its freewheeling, globe-trotting style. For their invaluable help in making this book happen I would like to thank the staff at Palgrave Macmillan, especially Jenny McCall for overseeing the project and for her encouragement throughout, and Jade Moulds for doing an excellent job preparing the text and images for production. Once again, I thank my partner Rebecca, no doubt relieved that she has no more drafts to check, and no more errant commas to put in their place. Finally, I must thank Peter Hulme, my cycling buddy for over 30 years. On our annual summer outings we have enjoyed ten thousand miles of glorious touring (driven by his excellent map reading skills and my unbounded and often unfounded optimism). Conversations in the saddle have undoubtedly contributed to this book in inestimable ways.

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INTRODUCTION

If you were to stand on London’s Waterloo Bridge in the rush hour today, you would see all manner of bicycles and riders streaming past. Such diversity of humankind on wheels suggests various social purposes and cultural meanings: the retro ladies’ bicycle with wicker basket signals nostalgia for a genteel age; fixed-gear machines are signs of a raffish subculture; old hybrids and urban rental bikes show that commuting is on the rise; and expensive, high-tech road bikes indicate renewed interest in racing and sportive fashion. Necessity, fashion, sport and the politics of urban space all contribute to the present revival of bicycling, and unlike previous booms this is part of a global phenomenon. Since its invention in the 19th century, the bicycle has appealed to children and adults of successive generations and it has reinvented itself to find new markets around the world. As a familiar and continuous form of global everyday technology, it invites historical and cross-cultural comparisons. It may have been usurped by the motor car and aeroplane as a symbol of modernity in the West, but it has been a reliable indicator of social change elsewhere. Following its adoption in Europe and North America, the bicycle has easily adapted to diverse conditions in other parts of the world due to its exceptional technical versatility and universal appeal. It has proven especially adept at testing and crossing class and gender boundaries, placing it at the forefront of social change, and sometimes controversy. When the modern bicycle rose to prominence towards the end of the 19th century, it played a significant role in the flux of social modernity. It emerged when the strict hierarchies of class and gender that had been hallmarks of late Victorian society were being challenged, and the increased mobility of the bicycle, especially as it affected women and the working 1

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THE BICYCLE – TOWARDS A GLOBAL HISTORY

classes, was a significant factor in this. When domestic staff in the houses of the upper classes in England began to demand the use of a bicycle on their day off, personal mobility was suddenly a great deal more egalitarian than ever before (see Chapter 2). Yet although social levelling and improvement were in the air, the emancipatory benefits of the bicycle may have been exaggerated in more triumphal accounts of bicycle history. Set against the freedoms gained by women and the working classes in the late 19th century, we need also to mention the bicycle’s associations with upperclass hobbyism; clubs and societies run along military lines; an exploitative racing culture; state-organised mass mobilisation; terrorism; and cultural resistance with anarchist overtones (see Chapters 2 and 4). Furthermore, while the bicycle might have made a positive contribution to social levelling in the West, elsewhere it has sometimes deepened class and gender differences. For instance, limited access to bicycles for women in some conservative regions of Asia and Africa has reinforced traditional patriarchal order and deliberately kept women back. Yet in Asian cities today, the newly affluent and predominantly male middle classes ride expensive recreational bikes that stand out against those of ordinary workers, for whom the bicycle is still a daily necessity and is now an indicator of low social status. Class and gender divides may not seem so marked within the diverse bicycle culture besporting itself on Waterloo Bridge today, but they are clearly evident in parts of Africa, South America, China and South East Asia. Here, the ubiquitous black roadster is still a workhorse rather than an example of retro fashion, as it might be in the West. After tracing the bicycle’s technical evolution and cultural history in the West, this book goes on to examine such different interventions in the cultural life of developing countries in Asia and Africa (see Chapter 3). Despite its associations with various fads and fashions, if we take a broad global perspective we can see that the bicycle has functioned primarily as a form of transport for the last 100 years or so. Its present popularity, however, is undoubtedly the result of a global increase in recreational use. The small increase in bicycle commuting in western cities (still a mere 3–10% of all journeys) is more than offset by the demise of traditional utilitarian bicycles in Beijing, Shanghai and other major Chinese cities. Globally, the bicycle’s utilitarian role – already challenged in the West by motorised transport since the mid-20th century – has been declining since 1990. Nevertheless, worldwide production has not been adversely affected because the demand for bicycles in the West for recreation and sport is rising. Furthermore, and of potentially greater importance, Asian factories are now producing recreational bicycles (and

INTRODUCTION

3

e-bikes) both for the West and for expanding leisure markets in China and India (see Chapter 4). While we might take the bicycle for granted today, we should remember that, in the late 19th century, the bicycle was at the cutting edge of technology, in the vanguard of the Second Industrial Revolution (see Chapter 1). By the 1920s, however, the motor car had begun to impress itself on the popular psyche as the machine of the future; the road belonged to Henry Ford, and in consumerist, fashion-conscious western societies, bicycling had largely become the preserve of children and the working classes. The predominance of the motor car and motorised mass transport systems would result in major US bicycle manufacturers in the 1950s and 60s being reduced to producing children’s bicycles as surrogate motorcars, motorbikes, aeroplanes or space ships, with ‘balloon tires and a fake gas tank attached to the top of the tube’.1 Outside the US, however, where adults continued to use bicycles for commuting and recreation during and after the Second World War, bicycle production remained steady. The largest increase in demand was across Asia, where cheaper production costs contributed to the relocation there of most of the world’s bicycle industry. This was not the end of the bicycle in the West, however, as even in the US various revivals have been staged, either as a result of new recreational trends or out of necessity, as in the 1970s when the Middle East oil crisis triggered a boom. Yet, none of this had the global impact of the present rise of the bicycle. The plethora of new books, magazines, newspaper columns and websites catering for bicyclists today points to a resurgence of bicycling which has been under way in developed countries since the 1990s.2 This differs from earlier booms by having a broader social base and geographical spread, and not being dependent on any radical new design. Throughout the 20th century, manufacturers brought new products to the market with the aim of resuscitating flagging bicycle sales. New waves followed the introduction of lightweight racing bikes (1930s), touring bikes (1950s), small-wheeled commuting bikes (1960s), BMX (1970s) and mountain bikes (1980s). Stateof-the-art carbon-fibre road bikes and e-bikes have continued the pattern of innovation coupled with fashion-led consumerism into the 21st century. Contemporary bicycle culture is more pluralistic, however, with retro designs appearing alongside the new road bikes, as if signalling a postmodern ‘back to the future’ trend. A global interest in retro fashion is evident in the demand for Pashley bicycles from the UK and new Flying Pigeons from China. Even Schwinn of the US has risen to the challenge with a reincarnation of their Sting-Ray from the 1960s (a ghastly equivalent of the ‘chopper bikes’ seen in the film Easy Rider) – marketed as the ‘Rebirth of Cool’! In

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contrast to such anachronisms and aberrations – and more properly ‘cool’ – are some of the fixed-gear designs whose roots go back to the earliest track racing bikes of the 1890s. These show an appreciation of the pure bicycle form, stripped down to beautifully engineered and finished essentials (see Chapter 4). When the modern bicycle was first introduced in the late 19th century it was a sign of the future, associated with modernist aesthetics of the new. By contrast, today it conveys more of a postmodern ideology of sustainability, renovation and revision; as an icon of retro fashion, it can be read as a sign of the re-cycled. Despite a leaning towards counter-culture, the bicycle has enjoyed more political support than in the past, when governments were largely indifferent or antagonistic towards it. This is consistent with greater global awareness of environmental issues. For much of the 20th century, transport policy in the West was influenced by powerful railway and motor industry lobbies, and outright restrictions on bicycle use were commonplace in the repressive regimes of Nazi Germany, North Korea and Burma. By contrast, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) gave huge state support to the bicycle industry in the 1960s and 1970s; it also encouraged bicycle ownership through loan schemes and an infrastructure designed for urban bicycling. With the modernisation of infrastructure in the late 20th century, the PRC has shifted transport priorities to focus on highways and motor cars, forcing bicycles off the road and causing hundreds of thousands to be scrapped. To their credit, however, the authorities in Beijing and other major Chinese cities are now introducing pollution-beating mass transit systems with integrated bike-share schemes. With similar schemes appearing across the expanding megacities of the developing world, a huge potential market for bicycles is emerging (see Chapter 4). The modern bicycle in the form familiar to us today was first commercially produced in the 1880s in England. As its moniker suggests, the rear-driven ‘safety’ bicycle (as it became known) proved far easier to ride than the visually striking (and rather misnamed) ‘Ordinary’ (aka the Highwheeler or Penny-farthing), developed in the early 1870s. Both of these ‘inventions’ cannot be wholly claimed by a single individual, as they were highly collaborative ventures, dependent on the development elsewhere of essential components such as the wire-spoked suspension wheel, ball bearings and light steel tubing. Nevertheless, John Kemp Starley’s improved Rover safety bicycle of 1886 is usually credited with establishing the template for the instantly recognisable diamond frame, chain-driven bicycle. Dozens of manufacturers in Britain, Continental European and America produced similar machines in the 1890s (see Chapter 1).

INTRODUCTION

5

The particular cross-cultural approach in this book takes as its point of departure the social significance and cultural meaning of the bicycle in the West at the end of the 19th century. It argues that the invention of the bicycle was, in the first instance, a response to pent-up demand for personal mobility in a world driven by the impulses of social and industrial modernity. By the 1870s, a mass market for the bicycle had already been identified among the expanding middle classes of industrialised societies. While early bicycles had severe shortcomings, a rapid series of developments in metallurgy and engineering soon led to the invention of the instantly popular modern bicycle. In the zeitgeist of modernity, racing models were emblematic of the cult of speed, a lightness of being, a desire for existential freedom and a celebration of the future. This gave the bicycle great affinity with cultural modernism and made it popular with avant garde writers, composers and artists, both as a real vehicle and as a metaphorical subject for their art (see Chapter 2). Bicycle races were already popular in the 1870s, when spectacular high-wheeler events, some lasting six days or more, rivalled horse racing and ushered in an age of mass spectator sports. They combined the cult of speed and spectacle to satisfy a modern demand for thrills, spills and records in a ‘longest, fastest, highest’ culture.3 Long distance races and world tours would also contribute to the modern sense of spatial and temporal barriers being shattered, a defining element of modernity. As with the cinema and other modern inventions at the end of the 19th century, the bicycle helped construct modern perceptions of space and time, as well as changing the immediate ambit of the lower and middle classes and their sphere of social relations (see Chapter 2). Through changing fashions, technological developments and economic cycles, the bicycle has proven a remarkably resilient modern object. It has evaded obsolescence because of its universal function in extending the capability of the human body. Its intimate prosthetic and near anthropomorphic qualities have ensured its success, although these have not always made the bicycle a fashionable object. Indeed, as the epithet ‘people’s nag’ implies, the bicycle can be distinctly unfashionable: a poor substitute for a horse, motor bike or motor car. Fashion, especially for the class-conscious consumer, depends on aspiration and exclusion, and it can be fickle. Extensive social acceptance of bicycling among the lower middle classes in the 19th century was partly driven by aspiration, but there was a fine balance, as they could not appear to ride bicycles out of necessity. Bicycle suppliers came up with an ingenious solution, appealing especially to women. They produced expensive bicycles, attire and accessories to create a highly visible

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‘class divider’. ‘Bicycle chic’ as it is now called (see Chapter 4), had its origins in the 1890s, when the Lady Cyclist magazine carried roughly twice as many advertisements for patent underwear, cosmetics, skirts, boots and hats for the lady cyclist as it did for the bicycles themselves. The intimacy formed between bicycle and rider, evident in the prevalence of advertisements for saddles and underwear, is similar to the oftpraised unity between horse and rider. But as a machine, the bicycle might have been tarnished with negative connotations of an industrial age. It largely avoided these because the sense of machine presence generally fades in the rider’s felt experience, in the mental patterns induced by cycling and in its social dynamics. The bicycle has therefore remained largely disassociated from the industrial realities that produced it. Only when it breaks down or gets a puncture does it reclaim its obdurate machine presence. To divert users from such uncomfortable realities, advertisers have since the 1890s focused on the bicycle’s promise of speed, mobility and emancipation. Bold, colourful posters often depict the ethereal nature of bicycling as an abstract idea detached from mechanical reality. Effortless movement and liberty convey an idealistic vision of modernity divorced from the social realities of industrial labour and the stress of urban life. The bicyclist is transported to a fantasy world where lightly clad nymphs glide effortlessly through idyllic countryside or other-worldly landscapes. In the 1880s, owning a bicycle was to be modern, to be in the mainstream of fashion and change. In 1881, the American chronicler Edward Howland described the figure of the bicyclist embodying the qualities that a modernising society should value. The public could look to ‘bicyclers’ with ‘confidence’ for the future, as men ready to examine the claims for consideration of the new, while not contemptuously disregarding the old; that is, a class, who infused with the best spirit of the times, can naturally be counted upon to make themselves felt as a power of the future.4 If the bicyclists of the 1880s pointed towards the future, those of the present day might point, if anywhere, to the past, in nostalgic yearning for childhood and a simpler way of life. Rather than the cult of speed, the bicycle today might be associated with a cult of the slow, with slow food and slow travel, all reactions against 21st century hyper-mobility and global culture. But this is only one reading of the bicycle’s social and cultural meaning today. As in previous times, the bicycle also continues to be associated with the restorative powers of fresh air and exercise, as well as other

INTRODUCTION

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diverse meanings. It can now be linked with contradictory cultural expressions found, for example, in anti-globalisation and environmentalist movements, breast cancer awareness programmes, alternative urban sub-cultures and chic fashion (see Chapter 4). In the following chapters, the technical evolution of the bicycle is mapped against its social impact and cultural meanings in different parts of the world. Chapter 1 considers the INVENTION of the bicycle, from early ideas of human-powered transport in ancient times, to 18th and 19th century prototypes and concept models, to the fabrication and mass production of the safety bicycle in the 1880s. Closely associated with the Second Industrial Revolution and the advent of a technological modernity, the modern bicycle, I argue, was the product of a particular age. It was refined and accessorised in the early 20th century, and quickly became a stable and easily replicated design. Later improvements, such as lightweight frames and derailleur gears, were driven by the demands of racing, and offered marginal improvements to everyday bicycling. Other designs were mainly aimed at tempting new users to the market, rather than improving the performance of the original design. This chapter shows how the modern bicycle’s history is closely linked with the first steps in factory mass production, precision engineering, marketing and advertising. Having described in Chapter 1 the technical evolution of the bicycle and its closure in a stable design, Chapter 2 moves to the ‘invention’ of the system of bicycling as a socially determined transport system, and at what it meant in terms of social as well as practical MOBILITY for women and the working classes in the industrialised world. I argue that the success of the bicycle in the West had much to do with its evolution from male-dominated, athletic and upper-class beginnings to domestication as a family-oriented modern object. Crossing age, class and gender, bicycle mobility had a significant impact on the western psyche, as evidenced in its expression in modernist art and literature, some examples of which are analysed here. Chapter 3 takes the theme of CROSSINGS to explore the history of the bicycle’s adaptation to non-western cultures, especially in colonial, neocolonial and post-colonial societies of Asia and Africa. It examines the diffusion of modern technologies and the effects of acculturation on bicycle design. The continuing production of utilitarian bicycles in the 20th century owed much to its adoption by non-western societies. The markets for sports, leisure and childrens’ bicycles, which dominated sales in the West, were overshadowed by the more immediate need for workhorses in the developing world. This chapter assesses the social impact of the bicycle

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outside western society, and explores the different cultural barriers that affected its adoption in China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India and Africa. Chapter 4 considers the future TRENDS AND TRAJECTORIES of the bicycle as a global phenomenon in the 21st century. It summarises the state of bicycle production today, and the twin demands of transport and fashion. Looking at the wide variety of designs presently on the market, this explores how converging global cultural forces have led to the bicycle’s contradictory expressions as a green icon, a protest vehicle, a sportive fashion item, a component in sustainable transport systems and a marketing device for industries often only loosely connected with riding bicycles. The chapter concludes that with the production of e-bikes, the present boom will offset the massive fall in use of utility bicycles across China and other developing nations. But as the main impetus for the boom derives, as before, from the fickle forces of fashion, this boom could easily turn to bust. Sustainable transport systems could, through the provision of rental bikes, actually reduce individual bicycle sales, and now that peak oil has been postponed, a post-car world in which the bicycle might once more reign supreme may yet seem a distant prospect. This book gives a summary of the technical evolution of the bicycle, drawn from primary research by bicycle historians to whom I am very grateful (see Acknowledgements). However, its larger aim is to explore the shifting cultural meanings of the bicycle, particularly in transitions to social modernity in different parts of the world. To evaluate it as a cultural object, the bicycle’s ‘socially meaningful expression’ is examined and contrasted within several historical and geographical contexts.5 The subtitle of the book is ‘Towards a Global History’ because this must be seen as a work in progress rather than a full account. I hope that other cultural historians will follow this up with other local and cross-cultural histories that build towards a more complete narrative.

ONE

INVENTION: THE TECHNICAL EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN BICYCLE

OVERVIEW

The history of the invention of the bicycle was a microcosm of the history of all inventions. It showed how true it was that there was really nothing new. Everything that was invented had been invented before by somebody who was either in advance of his time, and therefore found no immediate demand for his invention, or, possibly, had not the mechanical means for putting his invention into practice.1 Henry Wood made the above comments at the Royal Society of Arts in London in 1897 in response to an address by George Lacy Hillier on ‘Cycling: Historical and Practical’, one of a series of technical papers on the history of the bicycle presented at the Society in the 1890s.2 The speakers were major figures in the industry, and they had a particular vantage in looking back at the history of the bicycle’s invention from the point where its modern form had become stable, its popularity unquestioned and the future of the industry seemingly assured. As they addressed members of this august body, founded in the mid-18th century to encourage the arts, manufacturing and commerce, there might well have been an air of triumphalism. The bicycle industry and its many contingent enterprises were prospering, and here was an object lesson in how to bring innovative modern technology to the market with resounding success (at least until the slump of the 1900s, the result of overproduction). It is clear both in this paper and John Kemp Starley’s ‘The Evolution of the Cycle’, presented the following year (discussed below), that the most instructive aspect of this lesson was the collaborative nature of the enterprise. The 9

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bicycle industry could not have succeeded to the extent that it did without the contribution of venture capitalists or the modern factories that assembled mass-produced components from multiple sources, and the specialised skills of engineers and workers on production lines. This system of production also relied on the development of particular materials, including highgrade steel for wheels, frames, chains and ball bearings, and rubber for tyres. Beyond the factory gate, commercial success would then depend on promotion and marketing by distributors and advertisers, as well as sponsorship and endorsement by patrons and celebrities. It is not often realised that all of the above factors in the development of the modern bicycle arrived within a brief span (1870–1890), and coincided with the rise of modernity in the West. Primitive forms of the bicycle built by blacksmiths, coachmakers and amateur mechanics before this time were soon outmoded. The bicycle had now arrived as a definitive modern object, heralding and sometimes instigating the emergence of modern infrastructures that would radically alter social life. This chapter charts the technical development of the modern bicycle, but more importantly it sets its emergence within the social, economic and cultural contexts that shaped western modernity, and which in turn established the bicycle as a talisman of that modernity. As a general concept, invention presupposes an original idea – it implies a ‘first’. As with other modern inventions – and for some of the same reasons – there have been many competing claims for the inventor of the first bicycle. While some of these claims stretch the definition of what actually constitutes a bicycle, others refer to concepts or machines that never progressed beyond designs and prototypes, and a few should be dismissed as hoaxes. Serious contenders for the first bicycle date back to the early 19th century, when the wooden hobby-horse, or ‘Draisine’ was introduced by Karl von Drais of Germany. As this was propelled by pushing the machine along with the feet in contact with the ground – in effect, a running-machine – it lacked several key features of the modern bicycle, and offered a very different riding experience. The first successful patent for a machine calling itself a bicycle was lodged in the US in 1866 by Pierre Lallement, who had, two or three years earlier, brought a pedal-driven ‘velocipede’ with him from France, where he claimed to have invented it. Paradoxically, rather than helping to establish a lead in the US, Lallement’s patent hampered the bicycle industry there for several decades.3 Much of the technical development of the modern bicycle as we know it today would take place in France and England between 1865 and 1885. There are to this day many question marks over the history of bicycle development, and establishing provenance through the thousands of

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patents registered, press cuttings, letters and so on prior to 1900 continues to exercise historians.4 Catalogues and exhibitions during the 1870s and 1880s boasted hundreds of manufacturers selling dozens of different types of bicycle and tricycle, making it very difficult to trace a clear line of development. Although most of the major hoaxes have now been thoroughly debunked, some have become so ingrained in bicycle folklore that they continue to gain legitimacy in new bicycle histories and museum exhibitions. Such is the case with the Kirkpatrick Macmillan bicycle, supposedly built around 1840 in Scotland and later claimed to be the world’s first reardriven bicycle.5 On the other hand, many unsung and amateur mechanics must have experimented with primitive bicycles prior to the arrival of the French pedal-driven velocipede in the 1860s. There were certainly self-taught engineers in the period working on tricycles and four-wheeled velocipedes in Britain and elsewhere.6 These kept alive the promise of human-powered transport, even if most of their inventions did not travel very far.7 Priority claims for the bicycle are relevant to its cultural history because they can reveal socio-cultural factors governing its use, or lack of it. While establishing genuine claims is important – not least to ensure credit goes where it is due – genuine mistakes, hoaxes and infelicities form a significant part of the bicycle’s wider history. While some hoaxes have been motivated by nationalist fervour and jingoism, the bicycle industry was not immune from making exaggerated claims of its own. Some might suggest that the phenomenal safety bicycle boom of the 1890s was itself based on something of a misrepresentation, fuelled by myths associated with bicycling, and later exploited in advertising posters. This is nicely illustrated in a passage in Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men on the Bummel (1900), where the painfully uncomfortable realities of bicycling are contrasted with the effortless flight of ethereal nymphs adorning bicycle poster art (see Chapter 2). False promises and the failure of bicycling to meet consumers’ expectations have led to a number of boom and bust cycles over the years. In exploring a wider range of invention and micro-invention, bicycle historians have recently been challenging linear approaches to its technical development. In particular, greater emphasis is now being given to technical developments and bicycle use around the world in an attempt to widen bicycle history.8 Nevertheless, in dealing with the bicycle’s technical development in the 19th century, historians have tended to focus mainly on the development paths forged by western inventors. In this chapter, I have for the most part deferred to leading international bicycle historians past and present, rather than introduce further primary research to challenge their

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findings. My aim is to provide a balanced and critical perspective based on the consensus of bicycle historians today. This chapter should not therefore be read as a definitive history of the technical development of the bicycle, but rather as a summary and explanation of received histories within the technological, social and cultural contexts of the late 19th century. The contextual approach followed here puts greater emphasis on microinventions, including the essential components on which the modern bicycle depended, and the industrial processes necessary to their production. Crucially, most of these were not available until after 1870, and it is important to realise that the technical development of the modern bicycle could hardly have begun earlier than this date. Among the non-technical factors that spurred the development of the bicycle were the disruptive social changes of the late 19th century that created the need for new forms of mobility. From a materialist perspective, innovative technologies such as the bicycle might then be considered products of socio-historical conditions, rather than sudden inventions driving social change. Whatever the emphasis, the milieu produced by industrial modernity in the West in the late 19th century was crucial both to the technical development of the modern bicycle and the emergence of bicycling as an everyday cultural practice. History tends to be on the side of the winners, and in the case of bicycle history, certain individuals will stand out because their inventions happily coincided, in Henry Wood’s words, with ‘immediate demand’ and ‘the mechanical means for putting [their] invention into practice’. Notwithstanding the efforts of leading inventors, it was the progressive and collaborative practices of specialised frame, wheel and component manufacturers that ultimately provided the mechanical means for the production of an affordable modern bicycle.9 Equally important to the bicycle’s commercial success were the social and cultural life of the burgeoning urban centres of Europe and North America and the whole complex of industrial capitalism. Taking a longer view, the technical evolution of the bicycle – from its rudimentary beginnings in the wooden hobby-horse at the beginning of the 19th century to the instantly recognisable embodiment of late 19th century precision engineering known as the safety bicycle – was faltering and sometimes wayward. It was anything but a smooth linear development. For much of the 19th century the bicycle’s primitive ancestors (hobby-horses and pedal-driven velocipedes) lacked mass appeal, either as practical forms of transport or recreational vehicles. Social and cultural factors, as well as technical shortcomings, meant that demand – although very enthusiastic for a year or two in both instances – would quickly dissipate.

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With this in mind, the recent elevation of Drais to ‘inventor of the bicycle’ may have been overstated.10 The role of his Draisine (hobby-horse) did not open the way to the modern bicycle. Indeed, the hobby-horse had such a bad press by 1820 that it remained difficult to persuade the public back to the bicycle 50 years later (see below, ‘Flogging a Dead Draisine’). The hobby-horse was not a bicycle in the modern sense because this presupposes a machine that involves some form of pedalling or cycling. Although it boasted two in-line wheels of equal size, and a rudimentary steering mechanism, it lacked a mechanical means of propulsion. It was a running machine (as its inventor called it) or a ‘bipedal scooter’, propelled by ‘footing’ rather than ‘bicycling’. Continual contact with the ground negated that suggestion of flight which the modern bicycle is often said to evoke. Where the modern bicyclist might have had the sensation of severing ties with the ground, consistent with a modernist ideal of embracing the future, the rider of the hobby-horse metaphorically and literally dragged his heels in the mud. There were both aesthetic and experiential factors distinguishing the modern bicycle from the hobby-horse, in addition to all the technological advances that made the bicycle a functional and affordable reality, and the social conditions that created a need for personal mobility. We could also say that the rise of bicycling in the modern era was subject to culturally fashioned desires. Indeed the invention, reinvention and practice of bicycling have usually been driven by prevailing fashion as much as practical utility. This becomes especially apparent in parts of the developing world, where bicycling as a popular activity often lagged several decades behind the transfer of the bicycle as a technology (see Chapter 3). The invention of bicycling as anything other than a fringe activity could be said to have begun with the pedal-driven velocipedes, which resembled the bicycle patented by Lallement. Although these were popular in France in the late 1860s, they were superseded in the 1870s and 1880s by highwheelers or ‘Penny-farthings’. Elegant constructions, with their large ‘spider’ drive wheels and diminutive rear wheels, these demonstrated that fast human-powered transport was feasible. With mass production they were also becoming increasingly affordable. Hundreds of bicycle manufacturers were soon taking advantage of late 19th century advances in metallurgy and engineering to produce machines which converted muscle power to speed across level ground more efficiently than any other means. Perhaps more importantly, the ‘Ordinary’, as the high-wheeler became known (in France, Le Grand Bi), opened up the first worldwide bicycle culture, vastly extending the earlier inchoate and short-lived fashions for the French velocipede (1865–1870) and hobby-horse (1817–1820). Although the

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Ordinary only commanded the streets and racetracks for a couple of decades (1870–1890), its iconic form impressed itself indelibly on the western cultural imaginary as a symbol of speed in the modern era. With the Ordinary came the formation of bicycle clubs and cyclists’ lobby groups across Europe, North America and many European colonies overseas (especially Australia and India, which would become key export markets). Long-distance touring was now possible, with Thomas Stevens completing a much-publicised round-the-world tour in 1884–1886 (see Chapter 2). Bicycle races first became popular as public spectacles and entertainment when the French velocipede appeared in the 1860s. With the Ordinary came yet more serious competition, involving professional racers and sponsors, and this at a time when sport and recreation were beginning to establish themselves as key elements of modern culture. Racing drove the demand for speed that led bicycle manufacturers in France and England to experiment in 1869 with larger front wheels, gearing and lighter machines.11 Sitting precariously, if thrillingly, on top of a 44–56" front wheel was not for everyone, however. It was dangerous, which of course might have added to the appeal of the sport, lending a further frisson to track events. Before the public at large could participate in bicycling as a social activity, greater attention would need to be paid to safety, comfort and practicality. Tricycles filled the gap in the market for genteel cycling from the late 1870s, but due to their high cost, the customer base was restricted. Nevertheless, tricycles retained a significant niche market until the arrival of the safety bicycle, during which time they also provided a test bed for experimenting with propulsion and steering systems. Eventually, the demand for an affordable and safe bicycle, which could also compete with the Ordinary for speed, was fulfilled decisively and eponymously by the ‘safety’ bicycle, which was produced commercially from 1885. The Rover Safety bicycle developed at the Coventry (UK) factory of its inventors, John Kemp Starley and William Sutton, was one of the first of this new breed to secure the public’s confidence in the bicycle for recreation and utility. Within a decade, bicycle manufacturers across the UK, Europe and the US would produce a million or so safety bicycles to meet the demand of bicycling as the fashion of the day. While there were various attempts to redesign the bicycle every decade or so through the 20th century, the safety design has prevailed as the basic template, with variations made to meet changing patterns of use and the demands of fashion. This chapter will attempt to locate the invention of the bicycle as both a technology and a social practice within the contexts of late 19th

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century social and economic transformation and industrial development. It will argue that as an embodiment of these materialist causes, the modern bicycle conveyed the ‘spirit of the times’ in fin de siècle Europe, and was therefore a product of modernity and one of its most powerful symbols.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE BICYCLE: DEFINING TYPE-FORMS The section below summarises the four major type-forms in the technical evolution of the bicycle: the Draisine (hobby-horse), the French pedaldriven velocipede (boneshaker), the Ordinary (Penny-farthing) and the safety bicycle. The early demise of the first of these three and the complete dominance of the safety bicycle by 1900 underline the strength of the safety’s technical design and its widespread social acceptance. Everything before the safety bicycle can claim family resemblance in following a basic form, comprising a frame (serpentine, diagonal or diamond shaped) connecting two in-line wheels; a rider sits upon the machine propelling it forwards by muscular power. Despite this resemblance, a gulf separated each type in terms of technical innovation, production method, practical functionality and market penetration.

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DRAISINE Draisienne, Hobby horse, Laufmaschine (running machine), Dandy Horse (pejorative), ‘velocipede’, ‘pedestrian accelerator’

Figure 1.1 Hobby horse (c. 1818) Source: This model came from Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, and belonged to the 5th Duke of Marlborough (1766–1840). © Science and Society Picture Library.

Date of first manufacture: 1817 Original design: Karl von Drais (Germany) Defining features: wooden frame; equal-sized wheels – 27" wooden with iron rims. Later models with iron forks and steering bar; some fitted with brass wheel bearings, driven by pushing back with feet in contact with the ground (no mechanical propulsion system). Manufacturing process: individually hand-built, seasoned ash wood with iron additions. Technology transfer: Manufacturers in France, England, Austria, Switzerland and US, as well as in Germany. Dennis Johnson (London) introduced the machine to England and produced an iron version in 1819 – popularly known then as the ‘hobby-horse’. Production volume: Difficult to estimate but probably no more than 2,000–3,000.

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FRENCH VELOCIPEDE Michaux/Lallement velocipede/bicycle, front-cranked, pedal-driven velocipede, Boneshaker

Figure 1.2 Michaux-type velocipede (1869) Source: Science Museum, London. English-built boneshaker bicycle. © Science and Society Picture Library.

Date of first manufacture: 1867 Original design: Various prototypes produced in Paris in 1863–1864. Michaux et Compagnie machines produced in 1867.12 Defining features: Cast-iron (later wrought-iron) frame with iron-rimmed (later rubber-rimmed) wooden wheels, the rear wheel about 34", the front slightly larger at about 36". Wheels very close together, almost touching. Pedals and rotary crank fitted to the hub of front wheel. Manufacturing process: early form of mass production (up to 200 machines a day by 1869), outsourcing of wrought-iron frames to specialist foundries, machines to turn and fit the work, specialist wheelwrights. Technology transfer: rapid spread of manufacturing throughout France, UK and US – addition of rubber tyres, sprung seats and front wheels up to 40" within one year. First cycle show in 1869 at Pré-Catalan displayed machines with ‘wire-spoked, spring-mounted front wheels, tubular frames and contracting-band brakes’.13 Metal suspension wheel with solid rubber tyre credited to Eugène Meyer, who patented a wire-spoked wheel in 1869;14 Meyer bicycles with front wheels up to 42"– 43" were raced in England in 1870.15 Production volume: Records exist from some French factories, but production was dispersed in US (where 20,000 claimed), UK and Continental Europe. Rough estimate: 30,000–40,000.

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ORDINARY High-wheel bicycle, Le Grand Bi, Penny-farthing

Figure 1.3 Ariel bicycle (1870) Source: Science Museum, London. Ariel model without pedals, tyres or saddle. © Science and Society Picture Library.

Date of first manufacture: 1869–1870 Design attributed to: Wheel design attributed to Eugène Meyer 1869 (see above). James Starley launched Coventry Spider in 1870, and Starley and Hillman launched all-steel Ariel in England in 1871. Defining features: Large front wire-spoked ‘spider’ wheel (43"–56"), tension spoking (later Starley introduced tangent spoked wheel), rider seated over the pedal-driven front wheel, small rear wheel (24"). Rubber-clad wheels seated in v-shaped rims on later models improved the ride considerably. Manufacturing process: Continuous steel tubing for frames, steel wire spokes, ball bearings for front wheel axle and pedal cranks (late 1870s) – machine tools for continuous production of components. Production-line assembly. Technology transfer: In France and England new lightweight steel allowed larger front wheel. The Ordinary (Le Grand Bi) was produced by Meyer in France and James Starley at Coventry in England in the early 1870s.16 Starley developed ‘tangent’ wheel in 1876, which allowed lighter spokes.17 Geared Ordinaries introduced in 1871.18 Hundreds of manufacturers were soon producing Ordinaries in the UK and France, and later across Europe. US production began in the late 1870s. Production volume: Estimate 200,000–300,000.

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TRANSITIONAL MODELS AND SAFE ORDINARIES (1) ‘Meyer-Guilmet bicycle’, 1868/69. Claimed by some historians as a possible ‘safety’ prototype, but the date is questionable and although images suggest a rear chain-driven safety, chain technology was primitive at the time, and the provenance is contested.19 (2) Singer ‘Xtraordinary’, 1878 and Ellis and Co. ‘Facile’, 1878. Two modified Ordinaries with pedal levers driving the front wheel to provide gearing and smaller front wheel to allow the rider to sit further back. Both commercially produced with mixed reviews. (3) H. J. Lawson ‘Bicyclette’, 1879.

Figure 1.4 Lawson’s ‘Bicyclette’ (1879) Source: Science Museum, London. © Science and Society Picture Library.

Lawson’s Bicyclette was the first ‘safety’ type using chain wheel for gearing and continuous chain rear-drive mechanism, but it retained the large front wheel making it look like an Ordinary/Safety hybrid. Not a commercial success. (4) H. B. Smith/G. W. Pressey ‘American Star’, 1880. A variation on the pedal-driven Ordinary with the small wheel at the front, and rider sitting over the large rear wheel. Produced commercially in US early 1880s.

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(5) Hillman, Herbert and Cooper ‘Kangaroo’, 1884.

Figure 1.5 Kangaroo bicycle (1884) Source: Science Museum London [incorrectly dated – c. 1878 and attributed to E. C. F. Otto and J. Wallis]. © Science and Society Picture Library.

The Kangaroo had a pedal and chain driven-front wheel (geared up from 36" to 60"). A commercial success, it competed in races against highwheel machines and early safeties.

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SAFETY BICYCLE Bicycle, bike (in France bicyclette or vélo)

Figure 1.6 Rover ‘safety’ bicycle (1885) Source: Science Museum, London. © Science and Society Picture Library.

Date of first manufacture: 1884–1886 Original design: John Kemp Starley and William Sutton (Coventry, England) built Rover prototype in 1884. Other ‘safeties’ introduced at the same time included the Humber. Starley’s Rover stood out at the 1885 Stanley Show, and after revisions (1885/86) it became the archetype for the modern safety bicycle. Defining features: Two wheels of roughly equal size about 30",20 continuous bush roller chain drive to rear wheel. Diamond frame (1886); rider seated above rear wheel and pedals. Gearing produced by different size chain wheels. Steel ball bearing races used in steering column, axles and pedals. Pneumatic tyres (1888) hugely improved the performance and ride, giving the safety an unassailable lead over its rivals. Manufacturing process: Mass production, interchangeable parts technology, continuous flow process (American System). Bicycles produced after 1870 onwards used precision engineering and advanced metallurgy, leading to continuous steel tubing, hard ball bearings and wire-spoked suspension wheels. Production volume: approx. 500,000 per year (UK), the largest market in the 1890s; from 1898 to 1901, c. 1,000,000 million per year produced in the US. Technology transfer: As the safety design stabilised around the Rover-type, this was soon adopted by most producers in the UK and Europe, and later in the US, where the transition from the Ordinary was delayed by patent issues.

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BETWEEN HOBBY-HORSE AND BICYCLE: A CASE OF ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT While hobby-horses, velocipedes and high-wheelers are often regarded as primitive ancestors of the modern bicycle, the evolutionary analogy is not quite appropriate. While ‘natural selection’ and the ‘survival of the fittest’ determine evolutionary advances in nature, technology tends to advance step-wise, taking account of previous failures and working towards demand-led design goals. This was certainly the case from the 1860s to the 1880s when bicycle (and tricycle) development was subject to sustained experimentation and refinement by a fast-growing, transnational industrial complex. Even so, the developmental steps from French velocipede, to Ordinary, to safety bicycle were anything but smooth and linear. To begin, there was a hiatus of nearly 50 years between the demise of the Draisine (hobby-horse) and the appearance of the Michaux velocipede in Paris. With a gap of two whole generations, there was no passing on of technical knowledge or everyday practice from parent to child. So despite a family resemblance with the hobby-horse, the velocipede of the 1860s was quite different in form and function. It took advantage of new methods for producing wrought-iron and cheap steel unavailable before 1850, but perhaps more importantly – given that technically it was not a huge advance on the hobby-horse – its appearance coincided with a socio-cultural shift that was beginning to shape modern western society. By the late 1860s, velocipede manufacturers could count on demand from an urban middle class and skilled working class. This was a demographic set to grow exponentially in western society, ultimately capping the success of the bicycle. At the same time, mass production would make the bicycle cheaper in relative terms than ever before, while the scale of production would increase profits for manufacturers. All of this spurred bicycle development in the 1880s, when huge technical advances would occur within a single generation, with knowledge and skills often passing between families.21 However, generational and gender division continued within bicycling as a social practice until the arrival of the safety bicycle. Sons and a few youthful fathers might have ridden Ordinaries, but mothers, daughters and the majority of less able men would have to wait for the safety bicycle or, if they could afford it, a tricycle. And although prices began to fall with mass production, it was still a limiting factor until the 1890s, when expansion of bicycling among the working classes was only possible through hire-purchase schemes and the second-hand market.22

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As with evolution in nature, technological development is also determined and constrained by the environment, and to extend this analogy, we might therefore see the modern bicycle emerging as a new species on the cusp of the modern age. Looking back to an earlier age of wood and iron, blacksmiths and coachbuilders produced primitive machines which had little technological or social continuity with the modern bicycle. Technically, the Draisine of 1817 has little connection with the modern bicycle, and to claim this as the world’s ‘first bicycle’ is to bestow on it retrospectively qualities it never had. The Draisine might have pioneered the concept of a two-wheeled machine, but it had none of the essential components that define the modern bicycle: the continuous steel tube diamond frame, wire-spoked suspension wheels, pedal-driven sprockets and block chain drive, steel ball-bearing races, gears and inflatable rubber tyres. To be fair, early Michaux velocipedes, the Ordinary and even early safeties did not have all of these components either. But long after the demise of the Draisine, these later machines were able to take advantage, and in many cases spur the development, of components which were at the cutting edge of late 19th century technology. As a bicycle, we could say that the Draisine was in advance of its time, and could not therefore find sufficient demand to sustain further development, but this only makes sense in retrospect. It does not entirely account for its sudden failure so long before the modern bicycle finally appeared, and causes particular to the early 18th century context must therefore be investigated.

FLOGGING A DEAD DRAISINE: THE DEMISE OF THE PEDESTRIAN HOBBY-HORSE If, as some historians now claim, the original Draisine had been designed to fill the gap left by the widespread slaughter of starving horses following the infamous ‘year without a summer’ of 1816, then its own demise might have owed something to the return of the horse, once crop yields and fodder prices returned to normal.23 In other words, it was destined to fail if its success had been predicated on the price of horse feed. Of course, the Draisine was cheaper to run than a horse and might have been used as a light delivery vehicle, but it could never have been a substitute for pulling a plough or cart. Furthermore, the upper classes (the only ones who could afford horses for recreation even in the good times) were unlikely to abandon their horses for a wooden substitute. No, the price of horse feed might have encouraged Drais to bring an invention he had already been

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working on to the market, but this ultimately had very little to do with the fate of the pedestrian ‘hobby-horse’ (as it was popularly known in England because of associations with the children’s toy horse). It was heading for obsolescence in 1820 (more than forty years before the Michaux velocipede arrived) for reasons mainly concerning fashion, cost and restricted use value. Attempts to improve on the design of the original wooden Draisine did little to persuade the general public of its benefits over walking or other forms of transport, including the railways, whose popularity by 1850 contributed to a lack of interest in developing a human-powered alternative to the horse. Drais continued to develop and sell his machines across Europe. He patented the Draisine in France (where it was known as the Draisienne), and it was soon introduced to England and the US. In 1819, the London carriage builder Denis Johnson produced an iron version of the hobby-horse with a tube bearing to improve the axis for steering. This gave his machine the balance in turning necessary for the feet-off-the-ground, pedal-driven bicycles to come, so it was a significant step forward.24 He turned out some ‘hundreds of machines’ and set up a school for prospective customers on the lines of a riding school.25 The continuing connection with an aristocratic horse-riding community – probably the same customers who might purchase a carriage from him – was perhaps not the best approach to product placement; the modern bicycle’s later success would depend on a much broader, less elitist and more forward-looking market. With cheaper copies being made by local manufacturers in Scotland and England, the Draisine enjoyed brief popularity. In the US, it was popular among the students of Yale University, but it never really caught on country-wide and had all but disappeared by 1820.26 In 1819, Johnson launched nationwide exhibitions in England at which he presented his ‘Pedestrian Accelerator’ as a suitable means of transport for both men and women.27 But his strategy of presenting trick riding at exhibitions was, in retrospect, ill-conceived. Perhaps, if he had demonstrated to the public the feasibility of his machine as a form of transport by staging a ride across England, as James Starley and William Hillman chose to do with their Ariel Ordinary in 1871, he might have had more success. Furthermore, Johnson’s branding was poor by comparison. While the ‘Ariel’ brand would have classic allusions, cross-gender appeal and capture the modern futurist spirit, Johnson’s ‘Pedestrian Accelerator’ (or ‘Pedestrian Curricle’) had no ambition, no vision and sounded like a form of invalid carriage.28 Despite significant improvements, this machine still relied on the old technology of carriages. Even in its own time, the hobby-horse was

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not redolent with the shape of things to come; in contrast with the modern bicycle, which would become a veritable icon of futurism and a talisman of modernity, it was already old-fashioned. The terminal demise of the pedestrian hobby-horse was confirmed when Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine referred to it as the ‘nothing of its day’ in 1819, comparing it with the dying vogue for ‘spontaneous sonnetwriting’ competitions. This contemporary observation satirises not only the machine itself, but also the ‘fickleness of fashion’ (which would be a continuing theme for the bicycle). The notice in the Edinburgh Magazine was immediately passed on to his sister by John Keats, a man clearly more interested in sonnets than bicycles.29 Presenting his machine as an expensive niche product largely restricted to indoor riding schools was one limiting factor for Johnson’s hobby-horse, but it faced other headwinds. In the early 19th century, patterns of mobility were not yet sufficiently altered to create popular demand for the bicycle. These new patterns would partly arise in the late 19th century as a consequence of suburbanisation in major industrial cities and the need for daily commuting to offices, factories and railway stations. Furthermore, the market for expensive consumer goods for the middle classes (which did not expand significantly until after 1870) was not yet mature; manufacturing facilities and local road infrastructure were undeveloped, and a sports culture had not yet emerged. In sum, there was no critical mass for a bicycle culture in 1820, so Johnson and other hobbyhorse manufacturers were limited to producing bespoke machines for recreational use among the urban upper classes, and this only for a year or two before the fashion abruptly faded. The following notice in The Saturday Review of 1895 presents an unflattering history of the bicycle prior to the modern era, and points to another reason for the rapid demise of the hobby-horse, namely its association with Dandyism: Some seventy-five years ago [1819–20] a middle-aged gentleman might occasionally have been seen in a London byway, astraddle upon a low wooden frame fitted with two clumsy wheels; his tall hat upon a crown of curls; his coat-tails flying from his waist; and his meagre legs pegging along the ground as he oared his ungainly machine into the pace of a modern perambulator. This was the era of the hobby-horse, or, as it was sometimes called, the dandy-horse; and not until a year or so before the Exhibition of 1862 did he give way to the velocipede, a cumbrous structure, worthy of its parentage, compact of heavy iron and wood, and about as graceful as a steam-roller. (The Saturday Review, 1895)30

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Perhaps it was unfortunate, but certainly it was a public relations disaster that Johnson’s most visible customers were Regency dandies besporting themselves in London’s parks and streets. As foppish figures lampooned by contemporary satirists such as Robert Cruikshank and William Heath, dandies presented a cultural barrier to bicycling for both upper and lower classes who wanted to avoid being tainted by association with them.31 Numerous satirical prints of the folly of riding hobby-horses appeared in 1819. A common refrain alluded to the fact that you were obliged to ride at your ease while your feet dragged in the mud. The prints were aimed largely at the upper classes and had the effect of deterring respectable gentlemen from riding any form of bicycle for some time.32

Figure 1.7 ‘Dandy Hobbies in full speed’, William Heath (1819) Source: From satirical print by William Heath, ‘Modern Pegasus or Dandy Hobbies in full speed’, British Museum, London. © The British Museum Images.

As figures of masculine folly prone to being fickle and dissolute (somewhat at odds with the energy necessary to ride the hobby-horse), the rash of satirical images of dandies which appeared in 1819 makes a nice foil to the ethereal feminine forms that would adorn bicycle posters in the 1890s.33 Clearly the bicycle had to go through a major image makeover as well as improving its mechanical efficacy before it would finally enjoy wide public approval.

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Yet the pedestrian hobby-horse did not entirely disappear in 1820. Odd specimens remained in use as recreational machines around the US and Europe, and even as far as Japan, China and the British and European colonies. Although they were generally regarded as curiosities, and their riders eccentric, amateur mechanics continued to copy and apply improvements to the basic model during its extended near-obsolescence. One of the factors precluding its spread among a limited group of aficionados was the cost of a hand-built machine of between £8–£10. This already put it beyond the means of all but a tiny minority in 1820, even in relatively wealthy Victorian England.34 It might have continued as an occasional leisure vehicle for the metaphorically and literally ‘well-heeled’ (stout shoes were needed, and quickly worn out), but it offered little in this regard once its novelty had worn off. As a means of transport, it could not compete with the omnibus, tram and steam train, and although it might have provided the thrill of speed, this would have been hard-earned and short-lived for all but the most hardy devotees.35 As if all of this was not reason enough for the hobby-horse to fail, fines were imposed on riders in response to accidents, and bans were introduced in London to keep the machines from pavements and sidewalks. The ban was later extended to cover the pedal-driven velocipedes of the 1860s, and similar bans were introduced in other cities in the US, Germany and Italy. Hans-Erhard Lessing cites this as a major reason for the demise of the hobby-horse.36 Yet there were no general restrictions on the public highways, which in England at least were in fairly good condition at the time,37 and legislation against use of the hobby-horse on public paths would not have prevented its use on the many private estate roads in Britain and the rest of Europe, or the macadamised turnpike roads of Victorian England. After all, bicycles are still banned from pavements in Britain, and yet this has done little to discourage urban cycling. Given the near-impossibility of policing such a ban in large cities, this could never in itself have led to the demise of the hobby-horse. The hobby-horse was eventually superseded by the pedal-driven velocipedes introduced by Pierre Michaux. These relied on using the leg muscles to drive the machine directly and maintain balance, rather than relying on the momentum derived from the awkward and painful business of running while seated – at some risk of medical injury.38 The main contribution of the Draisine and its hobby-horse derivatives to the technical development of the modern bicycle was to establish a principle, rather than create a platform for future refinements or initiate a popular bicycle culture. It proved the dynamics of a steerable, single track, two-wheeled vehicle on

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which the rider could maintain balance through forward momentum.39 Once the counter-intuitive skill of steering into an incipient fall had been mastered, the rider could even take his feet off the ground for short distances. Drais demonstrated the technical feasibility of a two-wheeled machine, and the relatively simple technology was easily transferred, allowing one-off machines to be produced by artisans using basic tools and materials. This could not, however, be described as the first flush of the bicycle industry.

A NEW DAWN FOR THE BICYCLE: VELOCIPEDOMANIA BREAKS OUT IN FRANCE After the practical failings and cultural drawbacks of the hobby-horse, it fell some several decades later to the Michaux-type pedal driven velocipede to re-enthuse western society with the idea of bicycling. Initially, the iron frame and wooden wheels of the velocipedes made at the Michaux factory in Paris in 1867 were heavy and difficult to manoeuvre, especially uphill. In many respects, they did not initially appear to offer any substantial advantages over the hobby-horses of 1819. Yet the velocipede’s instant success – first in Paris, and within a year or two across most of the developed world – was proof that there was now a growing demand for recreational bicycling. Furthermore, the idea of speed embodied in the velocipede captured the spirit of modernity in Europe and would encourage bicycle racing as a competitive sport. Bicycling was once again about to become the fashion of the day, although this time the underlying demand for humanpowered mobility would sustain the fashion and ultimately extend it into the era of the modern bicycle. The first velocipedes to be wheeled out of the Michaux et Compagnie factory in Paris in 1867 resembled Johnson’s iron hobby-horses, except for the rotary crank and pedal drive fitted directly to the hub of the front wheels. Although Lallement claimed the invention, the technology – in itself hardly a major engineering breakthrough – may have been lifted from children’s toys or utility vehicles in common use in the early 1860s.40 Adapting the device to old hobby-horses would have been intuitive and may have occurred to several mechanics simultaneously. Even so, it was Michaux’s factory in Paris which was first to exploit the invention successfully, to the extent that it was initially unable to keep up with demand. In 1868, the factory was taken over by two brothers, René and Aimé Olivier, together with Georges de la Bouglise. These three had previously built and tested prototypes and were probably the driving force behind the enterprise. It was now the Compagnie Parisienne, although the Michaux brand

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was retained for marketing reasons. Spurred on by competitors, the new factory went into production with a wrought-iron diagonal frame. Various prototypes for the velocipede had been produced with serpentine or diagonal frames constructed of wood and iron. Problems relating to the construction of cast-iron frames were identified, and in keeping with the modern, scientific approach to technology that would soon shape the bicycle industry, a trial had already been completed over 430 miles from Paris to Avignon in 1865 by the Olivier brothers. As well as benchmarking prototypes, this also demonstrated that the human body was capable of pedalling for long distances, which could not have been presumed.41 Between 1865 and 1870, advances in metallurgy in Paris and London resulted in increasingly reliable frames, although with a rather hard ride (hence the moniker ‘Boneshaker’), and an inherently unstable front-wheel drive/steering mechanism. Experimenting with innovative production methods, the Michaux factory went from producing 20 machines in 1868 to 200 a year later.42 Despite the awkwardness of trying to steer with the hands while applying opposite pressure to the wheel with the feet (and with the added risk of catching the leg on the wheel in the turn), the Michaux-type velocipede was not only a common sight on the streets of Paris at the end of 1867, but had also been taken up in the provinces. Before the end of its inaugural year, a hundred velocipede riders assembled for a mass ride from Paris to Versailles.43 As the craze extended to other major cities of the West, bicycle production was soon disseminated beyond the Michaux factory in Paris. Demand for the first commercially produced velocipedes led to over 100 producers becoming established in France by 1869, with bicycle makers also setting up production lines in Germany and Italy as well as the US and Great Britain, where technical improvements were soon in progress.44 With far greater market penetration than the hobby-horse, the velocipede’s technological development responded quickly to the needs of relatively affluent urban social groups in Europe and North America, while also being attentive to a secondary market among performance artists, and the growing demands of amateur racers. When velocipedomania hit the US in 1868, virtually every major city boasted at least one velocipede rink, and an acrobatic troupe – the Hanlon Brothers – patented a version of the velocipede designed for high-wire acts.45 The extent of the velocipede craze in the US in 1868–1869 was surprising given that Lallement had a few years earlier failed to enthuse the public with his invention and soon returned to Paris. By 1869, American producers had produced improved velocipedes, but the craze was virtually over by the end of the year.

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The popularity of the velocipede among urban cliques in Europe led to a bicycle culture which, if not exactly part of mainstream society, was far less marginalised than that attached to the hobby-horse. Bicyclists were now no longer ostracised to the same extent, and the fashion did not immediately sour. A group of young Parisian nobles were among Michaux’s first customers, and their aim was to spread the word beyond the aristocratic confines of the Bois de Boulogne to the streets of Paris and the provinces.46 During its first year, the pedal-driven velocipede was readily apparent on the streets of every Parisian quarter. The velocipede was slower to take off as a craze in Britain, where some resistance might have remained after satirical attacks had accelerated the decline of the hobby-horse.47 But by 1869, organised velocipede races became popular, especially in the Midlands, where the metal-working and engineering industries were concentrated. Well-publicised and extensive trials, which included rides from Edinburgh to London and London to Brighton, helped to reinforce the idea in Britain that the bicycle was here to stay.48 By late 1869, it was clear that the improved velocipedes manufactured in France, Britain and the US could be ridden several hundred miles. It is perhaps significant that this allowed journeys to be completed across the length and breadth of France and Britain. Home tours could for the first time be completed in a few days at speeds in excess of 12 miles an hour, giving unrivalled access to the country at a time of increasing awareness of relations between a nation’s landscape and the concept of nationhood. Getting out to see the country had helped to assert a sense of national belonging in pedestrian tours of the 18th century, and now, in the 19th century, the bicycle allowed that process to be extended nationwide. The relative success of the pedal-driven velocipede in Europe, compared with that of the earlier hobby-horse, was not primarily due to technical advances, but rather to social factors, including an increasing demand for mobility, especially from an expanding middle class and skilled working class, whose numbers were greatly increasing by the late 1860s. The Michaux velocipede was selling for 200–250 francs, which, although prohibitive to many, was just about within reach of a Parisian clerk or a skilled mechanic in Britain. Price would remain an obstacle, however, with letters arriving at the Michaux factory complaining about the cost of a machine and requesting easy terms.49 But the expanding middle class in particular had aspirations and an appetite for fashion, to the extent that by the spring of 1868, the Michaux bicycle had become ‘the amusement of golden youth and the dream of employees’.50 As a new generation welcomed the modern age, they sought modern objects that appeared to embody the shape

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of things to come. A fashion for bicycling among ‘modern’ urban men and ‘new women’ was soon evident in Paris and across France, and modern fashion would have a great deal to do with the future success of the bicycle. Also important to the success of the velocipede in France was the public spectacle of bicycling, with hundreds turning out to watch indoor and outdoor races. By the 1860s working hours in France had decreased, allowing more leisure time for public entertainment and sports. Of all the sports they had to choose from, none interested French society more than cycling, which would grow into the nation’s premier spectator sport.51 Women’s races were particularly popular as these resonated with the emergence of the more daring and assertive ‘new women’ of Paris in the 1860s, as well as providing a sexually charged spectacle of dashing women in short skirts for the voyeur. It was as if the music hall had spilled out onto the streets. A reported crowd of 3,000 spectators turned up to such a sight in Bordeaux in 1868, and the spectacle was widely reported (with illustrations) in the international press.52 Large crowds attended outdoor races across Europe, and as these became more international and more competitive between 1869 and 1870, they began to drive innovations in bicycle technology. Through the staging of spectacular races, the velocipede was put before the public eye so forcibly and dramatically that its success in France might have had more to do with the perception of bicycling as part of French culture than with any practical advantages it offered as a form of transport. Price was still a barrier, as was the difficulty of learning to ride, which many did not manage. So a back swell of disappointed users and non-users built up. Nevertheless, public perception of the velocipede’s speed and utility continued to be boosted by prestigious national events, such as the Paris to Rouen road race, a precursor to the Tour de France, held for the first time in 1869.53 With thousands of spectators drawn to the race, including international celebrities and the growing ranks of professional racers, the bicycle and bicycling were now prominent features of French national culture. But the Franco-Prussian war in the following year inflicted a humiliating defeat on France and crippled its bicycle industry. Some time afterwards, sport would be identified as the ‘key to reversing dégénéresence’ and ameliorating loss of national pride. Bicycle road races would be seen as symbolic reclamations of the homeland, commemorating the loss of French soldiers on the way. As common elements of local festivities, bicycle races celebrated local culture, while national races such as the Tour de France would revive national prestige and ‘reaffirm […] the existence of an eternal France defined by her physical borders’.54

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As a fashion, however, velocipedomania would quickly recede – first in the US, where its sudden demise in 1869 was almost as spectacular as its sudden rise a year earlier. Then in France, as already mentioned, war and political upheaval interrupted production and further development. Yet despite its failure to find a broad and steady customer base at this time, the velocipede had laid the foundations for a bicycle culture in France and beyond. An appetite for self-propelled transport had been whetted, and at this point in its history, the bicycle was established in the cultural imaginary (more positively in France and the UK than in the US perhaps), even if it had not yet become a reality for the public at large. The challenge for the nascent bicycle industry was to produce a better, faster and cheaper machine, and the social and industrial conditions that would facilitate this were just beginning to emerge.

CONDITIONS LEADING TO THE PRODUCTION OF MODERN BICYCLES (1868–1885) There was a particular set of socio-cultural and technological conditions behind the invention and phenomenal success of the modern safety bicycle at the end of the 19th century. The technical development of the safety bicycle was achieved during an intense period of continuous experimentation and development by producers at a time when consumer-driven economics was beginning to shape western society.55 Social factors leading to demand for the bicycle included increasing prosperity and the ‘invention’ of leisure time, a direct result of legislation reducing working hours. Initially, fashion, sport and recreation were the main drivers, rather than any necessity for personal transport. But this already represented a large market, encouraging bicycle manufacturers to innovate, especially in finding ways to bring down the cost of production. By 1870, an emerging industrial complex provided the technological means to mass produce bicycles for the first time, and this marked the rise towards affordable bicycling for a critical mass of consumers.56 The technical feasibility and user acceptance of pedal-driven velocipedes was already proven in France between 1867–1869, notwithstanding quibbles about cost and comfort. A bicycle culture had been established through sport and public displays of recreational use which, if not mainstream, was certainly more inclusive than any culture attached to the hobby-horse. The velocipede also launched the continuous technical development of the bicycle, with manufacturing now greatly stimulated by the capabilities of the modern industrial complex. Other conditions aiding

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development included those arising out of material changes to the environment brought by industrialisation, such as the need for workers to commute to factories and the rapid expansion of towns and cities. Cultural factors supporting demand for the bicycle included the promotion of sport and recreation through advertising and marketing, by-products themselves of mass consumption in an industrialised society. Technologically, the modern bicycle might be considered a product of the Second Industrial Revolution, and this sets it apart from primitive, hand-built machines. While the First Industrial Revolution was centred on iron, steam technologies and textile production, the second revolution revolved around steel, railroads, electricity and chemicals. ‘The Age of Synergy’, as Vaclav Smil dubbed the period from 1867–1914, saw many new technologies and modes of production brought into use. The pace of modern bicycle development was especially dependent on collaborative operations within the new factory system. As Joel Mokyr observes, ‘the notion that technology consisted of separate components that could be optimized individually – never literally true – became less and less appropriate after 1870’.57 Unlike the earlier industrial revolution, inventions and innovations were now ‘science-based’, in the sense that they resulted from systematic experimentation and collaborative research and development.58 This moved technological development of products like the bicycle out of the artisan’s workshop and into the factory. The so-called ‘American System’ was gradually introduced in the US and Europe after the 1850s, when new methods for producing cheap steel became available. Complex products could now be assembled from standardised, mass-produced components. The modern manufacturing of affordable bicycles coincided with and was utterly dependent on interchangeable parts technology and continuous flow technologies.59 If there remained a demand for skilled artisans to produce hand-built bicycles after 1870, it came from wealthy consumers who wanted distinctive and exclusive machines to distance themselves from the new bicycling hordes on their mass-produced machines. This would become a niche market, as the majority of bicyclists would soon be riding machines made from identical components stamped out by machine tools and assembled on a production line with a limited range of brand finishes – the chisel and file of the artisan was becoming obsolete.60 In England’s manufacturing cities, existing factories shifted their production from carriages, firearms and sewing machines to set up lines for bicycle-related manufacture (although this process was reversed in France for the duration of the Franco-Prussian war).

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At the same time, and associated with this industrial revolution, urbanisation, infrastructure, industrial capitalism and cultural modernity all contributed to demand for the bicycle as a fashion, a necessity (eventually), and a consummate modern object. (1) Urbanisation and infrastructure The increasing density of the urban population in the West in the late 19th century led to improved public roads61 and the need to commute relatively short distances (to railway stations and factories especially), for which the bicycle was ideally suited. As the urban landscape was shaped by industrial modernity, urbanisation and especially suburbanisation would gradually make the bicycle a necessity for many.62 While meeting utilitarian needs, the bicycle also satisfied the important social demand for a captive and restless urban population to access the countryside for recreation and to escape the swelling urban crowds. In these respects, the bicycle was intrinsic to and characteristic of several aspects of modern experience (see Chapter 2). By 1850, Britain had developed a network of railways across the country, connecting most towns and cities, and the US and most of Europe soon followed. These huge engineering feats and changes in infrastructure undoubtedly diverted scientific attention, finance and public interest away from the development of the bicycle. But increasing use of the railways, combined with the expansion of towns and cities actually increased the demand for personal transport to connect with the railways for commuting and greatly increased opportunities for bicycle touring. Roads for cycling were beginning to improve in many cities and towns, with English roads being among the best in the world during the bicycle boom of the 1890s. One section of the London to Portsmouth road (the Ripley Road between Thames Ditton and the Angel Inn at Ripley) was already known across Europe as the ‘blue riband’ for cycling in the 1880s, while England’s myriad country lanes and byways provided ideal conditions for recreational cycling and day touring.63 The presence of a national infrastructure that encouraged cycling was a key factor in helping to establish a successful bicycle industry in England at the end of the 19th century. (2) Industrial capitalism As a political and economic system dominating the means of production and creating new patterns of mobility (of goods, money and labour) in the West after 1870, industrial capitalism provided both the incentive and the means to engineer technical solutions to the ‘problem’ of human-powered transport. The factory system itself was set to gain directly and indirectly by

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bicycle production: the bicycle industry was ideally suited to new methods of mass production, and by mobilising workers the bicycle improved the labour supply to larger more efficient factories. In turn, the swelling ranks of bicycling factory workers increased demand for the vehicle, further boosting the industry. Industrial capitalism determined new patterns of consumption and commercial enterprise which swept the bicycle up in a frenzy of profit-motivated invention; the social division of labour and the expansion of the lower middle class in western society added to the success of the bicycle by hugely increasing the number of men and women who could afford one (compare this with the situation in China from 1900–1950, for example (see Chapter 3). With the mass production of consumer products, which had just begun, came the trappings of a more advanced capitalism. As the middle classes expanded they became investors in new enterprises, such as bicycle manufacturing, and this enabled companies to expand rapidly. The increased money supply in industrialised countries also made hire purchase loans possible, so that by the time of the safety boom in the 1890s, it became possible for workers to take out a weekly repayment scheme to buy a new or second-hand bicycle. While there was already huge demand for the bicycle, techniques that furthered the invention of bicycling as a socio-cultural practice included advertising, marketing, distribution systems and sponsorship. The bicycle was one of the first industrial products to benefit from these techniques (some of which it pioneered), placing it in the vanguard of modern consumerism. The downside of this was that these promotional costs might nearly double the price of a new bicycle in the 1890s.64 The close analysis of costs became necessary after the bicycle fell victim to the ‘boom and bust’ cycle, a scourge affecting many consumer products in the modern age. The safety bicycle craze of the 1890s was swiftly followed in the early 1900s by a momentous crash blamed on overproduction and the dumping of cheap American bicycles in Europe. (3) Cultural modernity While it is difficult to tell to what extent cultural modernity provided the impetus for bicycling, and to what extent bicycling helped shape cultural modernity, the two are connected in several ways. In western society, cultural modernity increased the awareness of and demand for mobility, in both real and imaginative senses (see Chapter 2). It also encouraged fashionable forms of healthy recreation and a burgeoning interest in sport (participatory and spectator). The first magazine dedicated to cycling, Le Vélocipède Illustré (1 April 1869) features an image of ‘Lady Progress’ in a

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loose blouse and shorts above the knee. Her muscular legs are firmly astride a pedal-driven velocipede, her hair is unrestrained and she holds a banner aloft. This is constructed from a forward pointing arrow signifying progress, and a flag of old skirts, suggesting the symbolic casting off of restrictive traditional garb. Her face glows with the pleasure of new-found freedom.

Figure 1.8 ‘Lady Progress’, Vélocipède Illustré (April, 1869) Source: Le Vélocipède Illustré, Issue 1, Paris, 1 April 1869.

The image represents the breezy spirit of modernism as it entered the collective consciousness of metropolitan Paris. As the manifestation of speed, the velocipede embodied a defining feature of modern urban culture. A harbinger of a new technological age, the velocipede also heralded radical changes in the social fabric, introducing new patterns of mobility to the modern urban crowd. Through its associations with racing, the bicycle more literally betokened speed, and further impressed itself on a cultural imaginary increasingly shaped by modernity. The velocipede complemented the wide, open and fast boulevards built by Haussmann as part of his modern reshaping of the city in the 1860s. In the magazine image, the velocipede is not merely a machine, but a vehicle for projecting the body forwards in space and time – onwards into the future.

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The velocipede had a natural affinity with cultural modernism, and it was a sign of social progress; as women began to demand greater equality, it was seized upon as a rallying point for feminists. Yet while a few celebrated women in France and the US rode the early velocipedes in road races and appeared in public performances, the velocipede as yet represented more of a symbolic advance in women’s rights than an actual one. Nevertheless, relations between women, the bicycle and cultural modernity were closely intertwined as the 19th century moved to a close (see Chapter 2).

Figure 1.9 ‘The awful effects of velocipeding’ (c. 1870) Source: ‘The New Comic Times’ (London Low Life), c. 1870. By kind permission of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

In late Victorian society there was an increasing awareness of the benefits of healthy exercise for office and factory workers. Sport and recreation were encouraged to address a perceived loss of exercise among urban dwellers. Even in the 1870s, riders could reach impressive speeds on the Ordinary and cover long distances. W.G. George of England rode his 54" Coventry Ordinary from Worcester to Calne in one day, a distance of over 100 miles,

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despite being unable to mount or dismount unaided. But then George was a leading athlete of the day, and holder of the world record for the mile from 1885–1931.65 By 1900, the bicycle was being praised in the West for restoring the health of nations grown unfit in the crowded towns and cities of the industrial age. The association between the bicycle and healthy exercise in the context of more sedentary modern lifestyles has been a major factor in promoting its use. Taking all three of the above contexts together (urbanisation, industrial capitalism and cultural modernity), an ideal environment for the development of the modern pedal-driven bicycle around 1870 could be found in England, especially in the iron- and steel-manufacturing region of the Midlands; and indeed this is where much of the development for the first Ordinary and safety bicycles took place. Adverse economic and political conditions in the US and France boosted England’s lead in bicycle production at this time. While patents for improvements to the velocipede proliferated in the US in 1868, by the end of 1871, ‘velocipedomania in America was dead and forgotten … Makers could not sell any more machines, and businesses went broke.’66 The environment was hampered by the headwinds of patent disputes, poor roads and public disillusionment with the velocipede;67 America’s enthusiasm for the bicycle was soured until the new high-wheelers were imported from England after 1877, and Albert Pope began manufacturing his own brands the following year. Meanwhile, France was forced to give up its lead in the bicycle industry in 1870 when the Siege of Paris (Franco Prussian War (July 1870–May 1871) intervened. This brought bicycle production in France to a standstill, while British manufacturers focused on their home market. Michaux never resumed bicycle production after the war, having disappeared under a cloud of legal problems. The Olivier brothers, who were in partnership with him in the heyday of 1867–1868, soldiered on at the Compagnie Parisienne until debts forced them to close in 1874.68 Despite the intervention of the brief conflict, when arms manufacture had priority over that of bicycles, there is evidence of continual bicycle production in France. Several manufacturers, including Eugène Meyer, produced allmetal, wire-spoked wheels and transitional machines in the 1870s. It would be an exaggeration, however, to claim that Meyer was ‘the only person at the time making bicycles who saw the passage from pedal velocipede to the full [high] bicycle’.69 This sounds like revisionism with a little Gallic bluster, given the well-documented developments across the Channel. Although England’s dominance in world bicycle production in the 1870s and 1880s was partly the result of accidental circumstances, its factories in

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London and the Midlands were already advanced in the latest metalworking and machine-tool production methods. There was also a continuing interest in cycle development, as several inventors had persevered with primitive bicycles and pedal-driven velocipedes.70 The inventive energy in England between the demise of the hobby-horse and the arrival of the pedal-driven velocipede is recorded in the Mechanics’ Magazine, published in England from 1823–1858.71 But it took the rise of industrial capitalism and its social and economic consequences to create the demand as well as the means to produce the modern bicycle. There is some poignancy, however, to the next phase of invention occurring in Coventry, where James Starley and William Hillman would develop the Ariel Ordinary in 1871, and J. K. Starley and William Sutton would develop the Rover safety in 1884–1885. The region had suffered an earlier decline in the weaving and clock-making businesses which left many in the city unemployed – the social consequences of a dynamic capitalist economy, which would eventually come to plague the bicycle industry. The Coventry Machinists Company was fortunate to be able to exploit a pool of surplus labour with the right skills for the new industry as it began manufacturing and improving velocipedes in 1869.72

ORDINARY IN NAME ONLY: THE HIGH-WHEELER In 1881, Charles Spencer identified the future of bicycle use as ‘ordinary’ everyday utility: The fittest use of the bicycle is not to treat it as a toy, to be ridden on smooth boarded surface … but to use it as a vehicle, as an ordinary means of transit from one place to another, over roads rougher or smoother as the case may be. Thus, starting through the crowded streets at the evening, as is my wont, and working at moderate speeds through omnibuses, cabs, drays, etc. etc. till gradually the road gets clearer, and extra steam may be put on: until at length the long country roads five full score for the greatest speed … taking care, of course, not to be so exhausted at the end as to spoil all the pleasure.73 Ordinariness is defined here as a quality meeting the everyday need for personal mobility across and beyond the expanding urban environs. This ‘ordinariness’ was a key point in the bicycle’s success from 1871 to 1895, although when the first all-metal high-wheelers to be mass-produced were retrospectively dubbed ‘Ordinaries’ (to differentiate them from safeties), this

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was something of a misnomer. While great feats had been achieved on the Michaux-type velocipedes, such as the 500 mile ride from Paris to Avignon, and the day tours of 50 miles from London to Brighton already mentioned, it took exceptional riders to endure such adventures, and the machines were expensive and prone to structural and mechanical failure. Even with the improvements of sprung seats and rubber tyres, the boneshaker fell well short of the ‘ordinary means of transit’ envisioned by Spencer. At first sight, the Ordinary displayed a mechanical elegance lacking in the primitive bicycles that preceded it. It exuded mathematical beauty in its seemingly over-sized, wire-spoked suspension wheel, where the combination of strength, lightness and symmetry was the embodiment of scientific precision engineering. The machine would later become iconic because its design was regarded as essentially modern, both technically and aesthetically. On the cusp of a new age, the Ordinary marked the historical moment when mechanically reproduced objects began to displace the artisan’s original products. The ‘aura’ of the artisan’s original handiwork was replaced by a new aesthetic of mathematical perfection – the beauty of simulation and replication, which testified to the precision engineering that made such mechanical reproduction possible.74 Epitomising the aesthetic of the machine age, the Ordinary was, as Archibald Sharp observed, ‘simplicity itself’ – ‘the embodiment of grace and elegance in cycle construction’.75 On the aesthetic as well as the technical level, the mass-produced Ordinary can be seen as a radically different species from the hobby-horses and velocipedes that preceded it. The Ordinary was lighter and more manoeuvrable than the French velocipede, and the large, hard-tyred wire drive wheel reduced road vibration and rolling friction, both unwanted features of the old ‘boneshakers’. With the invention of the all-metal suspension wheel, the size of the striking front wheel was constrained only by the length of the human leg and the valour of the rider perched on top of it. Wheels over 50" were common until the arrival of the geared Ordinaries such as the Kangaroo, which could achieve the same speed with a 40" wheel. Ordinaries were faster than the velocipede because the large front wheel effectively geared up each turn of the pedals. But the high wheel was not for the faint-hearted. A degree of athleticism was needed to push and mount the machine in a continuous movement, a process made slightly easier by the step James Starley fitted to his Ariel Ordinary. Furthermore, a fall or ‘header’ (where the rider is thrown over the front of the wheel when forced to slow or stop suddenly) was a common hazard on poor roads. The Ordinary’s evident dangers limited its patronage by excluding women,76 children and elderly men; this would seal its fate when the

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easier to mount safety bicycle appeared. Despite the striking design of the Ordinary, when ridden it suggested to the observer something more of the extraordinary, as if it belonged at the circus, music hall or racetrack. With its rider perched on high, head and shoulders above all pedestrian traffic, it would always be a curiosity in the everyday space of the high street or boulevard, and not always a welcome one, as club riders would discover when they paraded through the streets in neo-military fashion (see Chapter 2). Although it generally fulfilled the design criteria for a fast, efficient machine, the Ordinary scored less well on measures of comfort, utility and safety. Nevertheless, its commercial success and popular interest produced a critical mass of potential users, helped to establish an international bicycle industry and spurred the next stage in the bicycle’s inexorable development.

THE TRANSITION FROM ORDINARY TO SAFETY IN THEORY AND PRACTICE (1) The social construction of technology (SCOT) After 1870, a new generation of professional engineer-inventors, equipped with new production methods and cheaper, high-quality steel began to acquire the mechanical means to produce an affordable modern bicycle. But the bicycle was still a novel invention in the fundamental sense that it introduced a wholly new human and social activity, previously conducted by walking or taking public transport – ‘it did not replace an existing technique with a similar, more efficient one’.77 It would be social factors, therefore, that created the demand and drove the design.78 Theories of the social construction of technology (SCOT) are based on the premise that technologies do not develop in a vacuum, but are ‘shaped and acquire their meanings in the heterogeneity of social interactions’.79 Wiebe Bijker, in his application of SCOT to the technical evolution of the bicycle after 1870, describes at some length the industrial and commercial background to the production of bicycles in England. Yet, in his explanation of the steps leading to the eventual design of the safety, he focuses mainly on the dynamics between ‘relevant social groups’.80 In a dialectics stripped of other economic, political and non-technical arguments, Bijker gives precedence to consumer-focused experimentation over production-led experimentation. His premise is that the principal users of early bicycles (pedal-driven velocipedes) drove its development in the direction of the ‘speed criterion’, forcing an increase in the size of the front wheel as soon as this was technically possible.81 This design trajectory was certainly followed in the summer of 1870, when transitional high bicycles with ‘spider wheels’

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from 48"–50" in diameter first appeared at bicycle races in England,82 and brought the record for a mile down to just over 3 minutes.83 Yet this line of racing-led development alienated other social groups: the non-users. It was the exclusion from the system of bicycling by the vast majority of potential users that introduced another dynamic – the ‘safety’ criterion. Women and most middle-aged men shied away from the obvious dangers of riding the Ordinary, preferring in some cases the more genteel tricycle, which underwent its own period of evolution in parallel with the Ordinary. The customer base for the tricycle would later be targeted by producers of the safety bicycle, who also latched onto its technical innovations in chaindriven propulsion systems (see below, ‘Lost in history – a short digression on tricycles’). In Bijker’s analysis, the pressure of the non-users and the huge untapped market they represented ensured that the safety criterion would eventually trump that of speed. This could be interpreted purely as social dynamics, but the forces of market economics and the persuasive power of marketing probably had more of a bearing than Bijker allows. In the 1880s, individual households were beginning to make choices about which domestic consumer items to purchase and, significantly for the future of bicycling, women were having more of a say in this (see Chapter 2). At the same time, rising incomes among the middle classes (men and women) and skilled workers unleashed more spending power, and bicycling would begin to satisfy a desire to purchase consumer goods and meet the need for recreation among increasingly health-conscious households.84 These demands had not been satisfied by the Ordinary. From the perspective of SCOT, the Ordinary’s distinguishing feature – the large front wheel – was a barrier to its use by the family-oriented middleclass consumer, and so the safety criterion became more significant commercially than that of speed. Once the later safety bicycles were fitted with pneumatic tyres, however, they would eclipse the Ordinary for speed as well, forcing it out of the racing scene by 1900. Bijker’s general thesis fits the history of this transition, but the social dynamics between users and non-users in his application of SCOT is reductive. Typical of structuralist methodology, this analyses a cross-section of history abstracted from socially evolving contexts in which several other factors were in play. Not least of these was the technological development in metallurgy, which enabled ball bearings, continuous chains and gearing to be mass produced. Furthermore, Bijker does not allow for socio-economic and cultural drivers, such as the growth in demand for recreation among health-conscious households with rising incomes, and the advent of consumerism, all of

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which swelled the ranks of potential users by the 1880s. The market was actually skewed after the introduction of the Ordinary, restricting its window of opportunity. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that by the 1880s consumer demand had made the safety design inevitable, and the invention of the Ordinary would be sidelined. The shifting social and geographical landscape of modernity and the presence of market forces in an emerging consumer society are not included in Bijker’s analysis. Ultimately, he does not resolve the conundrum of whether the socio-cultural landscape of the 1880s determined the design of the safety bicycle through consumer choice, or whether it was shaped by technological advances driven by economic and political interests. But it is safe to say that the ultimate design was the result of a combination of technological and market forces, perceived social necessity and cultural fashioning. While an interesting technical proposition, the dynamic between Ordinary and safety becomes irrelevant if the invention of the modern bicycle and the whole system of bicycling can be directly related to the rise of the complex of industrial capitalism and consumerism which defined modernisation after 1870. Yet if the bicycle is a product of capitalist society, it has had an ambivalent relationship with it – sometimes championing it, and at other times opposing it (see Chapter 4). The bicycle emerged at a time of massive social change, and it had incalculable effects on patterns of mobility in towns and cities. Disposable incomes were rising in the West, greatly increasing the market for new products at a time when the desire for speed and mobility were defining the modern age. From the perspective of cultural fashioning, the physical environment and the social landscape in the West became highly conducive to bicycling in the 1880s. For a decade or so, it encapsulated the idea of the ‘new’ for a progressive modern society, as Edward Howland would claim in 1881: the bicycle is really a marvel of strength and lightness, of ingenuity and invention, and affords in itself an admirable epitome of the method by which it appears inevitable that mankind must slowly eliminate the new, coming by slow gradations to comprehend their own powers, and practically realizing the means for their exercise.85 This might sound like a paean to the bicycle, but Howland is actually using the bicycle to define the impulse of modernisation – a constant search for the new, and the discarding of the old – consistent with marketdriven capitalism. By ‘exercise’, he is not referring to physical exercise but

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to mankind’s progressive impulse, exercising the power to make the new old – a highly prescient notion given the post-1900 collapse in the bicycle industry when the first fashion-led boom collapsed. Aside from futurist idealism, the bicycle would become a necessity for ordinary factory workers, and by extension a necessity for a capitalist mode of production which exploited their newly mobile labour. Yet workers were probably too intent on their labours to appreciate the bicycle’s symbolic associations with progressive self-determination. For them, Vittorio De Sica’s movie The Bicycle Thieves would present a more salient version of the working-class experience of bicycles.86 In SCOT, social acceptance brings new objects to a point of stabilisation, where their design and cultural meaning are fixed. As the safety bicycles of the 1880s underwent little radical change for several decades, it could be said that the invention/evolution of the bicycle in terms of its technological setup and general appearance reached closure at this point, having exhausted all possible improvements.87 Bijker identified 1892 as the pivotal year, after which the safety bicycle was then distinguished by its maker, or more accurately its brand, as by 1900 most manufacturers were fitting exchangeable components from various sources to a standard branded frame.88 (2) Theory of transition: an integrational approach For some historians, the evolution of the modern bicycle appears to take an unnecessary and unproductive line with the Ordinary, proceeding as Nick Clayton puts it, ‘for 15 years in the wrong direction’.89 Indeed it is possible (although some historians think it unlikely) that a rear chaindriven safety bicycle was conceived and built as early as 1869.90 This would make the Ordinary appear as a momentary aberration in the evolution of the modern bicycle. Another way of seeing the technical transition from Ordinary to safety is as a logical integration of superfluous elements into a harmonious whole. In the safety, the rear wheel of the Ordinary turns from being a wiggling appendage to become the ‘business end’, while the front wheel now directs this power and the diamond frame connects and balances the driving and steering functions into a single, fully integrated unit on which the rider is most efficiently and comfortably accommodated. From a technical design perspective, this functional integration is similar to that which led to improvements in the petrol engine. In his analysis of modern objects, Jean Baudrillard refers to Gilbert Simondon’s account of a comparable technical evolution. Simondon describes the engine in its primitive or abstract form as consisting of discrete functional units, each working as a closed system and

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needing to be integrated to produce the unified, concrete object. For example, the cooling fins were initially fitted to the engine head as an almost ‘extraneous element … added to the cylinder head for the sole purpose of cooling’. But in later engines, the function of the fins would come to play a mechanical role by preventing distortion of the cylinder head under pressure. The two previously separate functions are now combined into a new structure which synthesises and transcends them. The example shows how technical objects advance not by resolving conflict between different requirements (speed and safety in the case of the bicycle), but by ‘a convergence of functions within a single structural feature … Ultimately, this progression … means that the technical object will tend towards the state of a system that is completely internally consistent and completely unified.’91 Technology in this case provides an account of objects whose ‘functional antagonisms are dialectically resolved into larger structures’.92 Functional synthesis is the basis for the transition towards a more integrated system, and this offers a theoretical explanation for the transition from Ordinary to safety. In both the front-driven velocipede and the Ordinary, the rear wheel had an almost extraneous function to provide balance for the front-drive wheel, which was asked to perform antagonistic functions simultaneously. In the Ordinary, an attempt is made to create functional synthesis around the front wheel, reducing the rear wheel to an almost negligible add-on to reduce weight. The synthesis took a logical progression in hindsight, although many of the resulting transitional machines, such as Lawson’s Bicyclette and Hillman’s Kangaroo, were awkward and inelegant from a design perspective, factors which contributed to their relative lack of commercial success. In 1884, Starley’s Rover Safety Bicycle, and the Humber Safety (appearing at more or less the same time), decisively shifted the focus of bicycle technology from the front wheel to the back, and lowered the mount. The machine was now a synthesis of mechanical functions, rather than a disjointed assemblage. When the Rover was introduced, it attracted, according to its chief designer, ‘a certain amount of ridicule’.93 But after relatively minor improvements, the 1886 model was clearly the definitive template for the modern bicycle. (3) The practice of transition: cycle evolution according to J. K. Starley One of the most detailed contemporary accounts of the developments leading to the invention of the safety bicycle can be found in a paper delivered at the Royal Society of Arts in 1898 by John Kemp Starley, inventor of the Rover safety bicycle. His award-winning paper, ‘The Evolution of the

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Cycle’, gives some interesting insights into bicycle historiography. It is a detailed if largely Anglocentric account,94 which glosses over the priority claims that exercise cycle historians today. As the account of a man at the centre of the development of the modern bicycle, however, it demands to be taken seriously, if critically. Although it is selective, it is unlikely that Starley would have knowingly tried to mislead an audience that included Sir Charles Vernon Boys (the renowned physicist and expert on the mathematics of bicycle design), Archibald Sharp (author of the first technical design history on bicycles and tricycles in 1896) and Henry Sturmey (the engineer who developed a successful three-speed hub gear). He does make reference to some who he felt were retrospectively making claims for inventions which never progressed beyond the experimental stage, while also acknowledging that there were competing claims for others. Significantly, Starley makes no mention of any early Scottish machines built by Macmillan, Gavin Dalzell or Thomas McCall, a silence consistent with recent enquiries suggesting that claims for these have been exaggerated. But Starley does attribute the design of the pedal-driven velocipede to ‘Lallemont [Lallement]’ in 1865 (602), in accordance with some cycle historians today.95 Whatever its provenance, Starley concedes that the resulting French machine produced at the Michaux factory in Paris in 1867 was the first cycle to be put on the market ‘which had anything like a sale’ (602) – something of an understatement given the size of the velocipede craze that subsequently spread the world over during 1869–1870.96 Starley records that French pedal-driven velocipedes were first brought to England in 1867, and that by the end of 1868 several English factories had begun to produce machines, initially to fill orders for customers in France. One of these was the Coventry Sewing Machine Company, later renamed the Coventry Machinists’ Company when bicycle production took precedence. The works manager was the speaker’s uncle, James Starley. The enterprise started well, with an order for 300 machines for export to France.97 J. K. Starley reports that in the late 1860s many were at work in London and elsewhere ‘improving, patenting and endeavouring to perfect the cycle’ and that ‘patents were taken out for front driving and rear driving, for ratchet driving and gearing up, [but] very little if anything came of these inventions … the wheels [of the boneshaker] were altered in size, and the various details of the machine improved from time to time’ (603). Significant improvements to the velocipede were, however, soon apparent in the Coventry Model (Spider) of 1870, which had a larger front wheel, a step to assist mounting, a rear wheel reduced to reasonable

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proportions, and a C-shaped spring replaced the old straight spring (603). This model was initially fitted with wooden wheels, not the all-metal, wire-spoked suspension wheel developed by Meyer in France in 1869, which would become such an important feature of the modern bicycle, as J. K. Starley acknowledges. Looking back on the evolution of the bicycle from the boneshaker to the safety, Starley confines his account ‘to those ideas which were marketed, and persevered with, until they became wellknown and actual articles of commerce’ (603). Throughout his paper, he uses commercial success rather than technical finesse as his measure; this is symptomatic of the times and most relevant to his audience. He does not mention by name any transitional bicycles produced by Meyer and Guilmet and other manufacturers in France, which appeared at races in England in the summer of 1870.98 This may have been because he had no immediate interest in the racing scene (unlike his uncle James Starley who was a skilled engineer and a racer), directing his intention instead towards the commercial mass production of bicycles. He also ignores the admittedly short-lived velocipede developments in the US, which undoubtedly produced ‘articles of commerce’, such as Virgil Price’s bicycle of 1869. This was based on a Pickering frame, with wire wheels and rubber tyres, and a few were exported to England.99 Starley identifies the Coventry-built Ariel of 1871 as the first practical, and at £8100 the first affordable, all-steel bicycle to be marketed in England. This machine incorporated all the latest ideas in bicycle design pioneered in France, including a tubular backbone and a suspension wheel with radial spokes. Starley added a system for tensioning the spokes through a pair of levers attached to the hubs and rims, and in 1876, he patented the instantly recognisable ‘Tangent’ system, which would become the standard for bicycle wheel design. In tracing the history of key components that would make his safety bicycle a practical proposition, Starley is circumspect. He cites patent numbers and the component suppliers with whom he had direct dealings, and he acknowledges that there were others on the periphery of his technical world. Perhaps with reference to dubious retrospective claims, he draws attention to the many ‘mechanical minds devoted to perfecting the cycle’, some of whom ‘seek this late in the day to make capital’ out of ideas which ‘may never have gone beyond the experimental stage, or been placed before the public at all’ (602). He does, however, graciously record all the major developments and patents used in his Rover safety. These included ball bearings, chains, steel tubing, rubber-clad wheels and eventually pneumatic tyres. Of Joseph Henry Hughes, who patented the ball bearing race

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for bicycle wheels in 1877, Starley acknowledges: ‘it is not too much to say that to the inventor of this is due a large share of the credit for the perfect cycle which we have in use today’ (604). Starley also acknowledges collaborating with Hans Renold over improved chains for use on the Coventry Salvo tricycle, introduced by his uncle in 1877, and which he claims was the first commercially produced chain-driven cycle (605).101 He gives credit as well to the developers of other machines – bicycles and tricycles – which appeared between the Ariel and his own Rover Safety. Yet he regarded such innovations as the Xtraordinary, the Facile and the Kangaroo less as competitors than as testing grounds for new components or innovations in frame technology. In Starley’s account, these short-lived transitional machines and ‘safe’ Ordinaries appear as stepping stones or aberrations, and yet according to dynamic systems theory their presence fulfils an important function in creating a wide diversity to maximise the adaptive potential of the invention.102 In a neo-Darwinian theory of random mutation and adaptability, the technical problems which limited the progress of the Ordinary and the modern tricycle are met with a range of apparently chaotic mutations. The analogy with natural evolution is useful in displacing the linear concept of development which traditional histories tend to assume. Mutations help to disprove technical solutions, as well as probe adaptive potential, and in the case of the bicycle, the unsuccessful transitional machines ultimately provided the technical foundation for the successful safety. One such machine was the Singer Xtraordinary (1878), which used two pedal levers to allow the rider to sit further back on the machine, giving some protection from ‘headers’. According to Starley, this was the first ‘successful bicycle’ to be driven ‘other than by the pedal crank attached directly to the front wheel’ (607). In the following year, H. J. Lawson patented the Bicyclette, which was the ‘ugly ducking’ to the graceful swans that followed. Although some have claimed it as the breakthrough to the rear chain-driven safety bicycle (and the name was adopted by the French to distinguish the bicycle from the velocipedes it superseded), according to Starley, ‘it never had a sale, and speedily went out of existence’ (607). After the unsuccessful introduction of the Bicyclette, the next innovation seems in retrospect to be a technical regression, in that it re-confirmed the Ordinary type-form. When Hillman, Herbert and Cooper introduced the Kangaroo in 1883, they opted for an Ordinary with a gear chain on the front wheel drive, which allowed for a smaller front wheel and a lower mount. As well as gearing up, the Kangaroo was the ‘first cycle upon which was introduced longer cranks, about 7 in.’ (Starley, 608). Even though the

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Kangaroo and similar models were achieving some commercial success, Starley went back to the drawing board. Passing up the opportunity to produce his own version of the Kangaroo type, he assessed all the recent developments to come up with a machine that combined the advantages of each.

LOST IN HISTORY – A SHORT DIGRESSION ON TRICYCLES History favours winners and has therefore largely ignored other cycles in giving pride of place in the modern bicycle’s development to Starley’s and Sutton’s first Rover of 1884/85. Yet in his account of cycle evolution, Starley himself emphasises the importance of the tricycle, explaining how early machines were re-engineered to take advantage of suspension wheels and other components developed for the Ordinary. For a decade or so, tricycles were at the cutting edge of mechanical engineering. Starley’s Coventry Lever of 1877 was followed by the Coventry Machinist’s Salvo, which enjoyed the patronage of Queen Victoria. Together with the Humber Tricycle introduced the following year, these tested critical microinventions, such as chains, ball bearings, rack and pinion steering, balance gearing, free-wheel clutches and brakes (605–608). While tricycle sales increased in the 1880s and the three-wheelers were vying with bicycles on the road and in clubs and societies, the market – significantly open to women and older men – was limited mainly to the upper middle classes of Britain and her colonies.103 Even so, by the early 1880s, tricyclists were almost as numerous as bicyclists in the parks and lanes of England, and there were dozens of UK manufacturers.104 This is a reflection of the increasing wealth of late Victorian society, and the expense of some of these machines may have been part of their attraction to a class keen to display their status. Tricyclists in England even tried to set up their own society in the 1880s, separate from the Bicycle Touring Club, which they felt was beneath their class.105 Indeed, when cheaper mass-produced bicycles became available in the 1890s, this particular social group might have kept to their tricycles or returned to their horses. But the producers of safety bicycles in London recognised the market for expensive custommade safety bicycles, and this allowed many tricycle riders to transition easily enough to two-wheelers. A further motive for the aristocracy to purchase cycles was the desire to endorse the ingenuity of a machine age and demonstrate a modern commercial outlook, counter to their otherwise conservative image. The British Royal Family, for example, were more enthusiastic about promoting modern industry in the national interest than in

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the actual convenience or pleasure a tricycle could offer them. Such celebrity patronage undoubtedly increased sales: by 1885, tricycles were proving especially popular among society women and other affluent groups in Britain and the US.106 If the tricycle satisfied a demand for conspicuous consumption among the upper and upper middle classes, it was certainly not the answer to the demand for a universal, practical and affordable machine. In addition to their cost, other disadvantages included their size; where, for example, would a skilled tradesman store such a machine in his small terraced house, even if he could afford one?107 And there were also questions regarding the tricycle’s lack of manoeuvrability and unsuitability for narrow and rutted roads, on which the single-track bicycle had considerable advantage.108 Geared ordinaries and modern tricycles like the Humber Cripper were still on display at trade shows in the 1890s,109 but the development of a universal low-mount safety bicycle was the main goal of the bicycle industry, and all earlier models would become obsolescent over the next decade.

THE ALPHA STRAIN: ROVER SAFETY BICYCLES 1884–1886 In his teleological summary of cycle evolution, Starley lists the principal types of cycle as: The Ordinary, The Xtraordinary, The Facile, The Humber, The Kangaroo, The Cripper, And finally, of course, his own machine – the Rover (611). He classifies the ‘whole of the points of value’ in the safety bicycle as comprising: ‘the step, the tangent wheel, the ball bearing, the detachable crank, the combination saddle and spring, the chain gearing, the sloping steeringpost, the position of the pedals, seat, and handle-bar, the present form of handle-bar, the pneumatic tyre’ (611). The improved Rover Safety model of 1886 was the definitive model with equal size wheels (30" geared to 45"), and the saddle post was now an integral part of the diamond frame. With tangential wire spokes and continuous block chain rear drive, this was the progenitor of the ubiquitous

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modern bicycle. It could be mounted and dismounted with relative ease, and the risk of a serious fall was greatly reduced. The moniker (safety) reflected the crucial design objective to appeal to a wider market, targeting riders of tricycles as well as Ordinaries, and crucially making the bicycle available to those with no previous cycling experience. The Ordinary type was now considered unsafe by comparison, and new safety bicycles following the lines of the Rover would dominate the market after 1885.110 Meanwhile, the tricycle, which had challenged the Ordinary and early safeties in the early 1880s, reached its zenith in the Humber Cripper of 1884, and gradually declined in the 1890s. If the Ordinary signified athletic or militaristic prowess, the tricycle was a token of upper-class gentility. Compared to the safety, both machines would soon begin to look old-fashioned, even if the Victorian traits they embodied were not entirely eliminated from the national character in the wake of modernity. The safety is often regarded as the high point in the ‘evolution’ of the modern bicycle, yet in terms of human efficiency it was a regressive step. Rolling resistance and friction in the geared-chain mechanism meant that in most situations more effort was required to pedal the safety than the Ordinary.111 In evolutionary terms, however, the safety was more adaptable to the modern environment, and a much broader market opened up to exploit its utilitarian, recreational and sports capabilities. In racing, the Ordinary held its position for a while, but in September 1885 the Rover broke the world record for 100 miles on the road.112 By the late 1880s, the Ordinary was giving way to the safety bicycle in the UK and Europe, and by 1892 it was the market leader. Crucial to this final step in the ascendancy of the safety was the arrival of the pneumatic tyre in 1888. This would hugely increase the efficiency and comfort of the safety, whose smaller standard size wheels were much easier to equip with the new tyres.

EXTENDING THE BODY: A PROSTHETIC APPROACH TO BICYCLE DESIGN In designing his safety bicycle, J. K. Starley set as his chief design goal a bicycle that best fitted the proportions of the human body and, within reasonable limits, was adjustable to all shapes and sizes.113 According to the inventor himself, his ‘cardinal principles’ were: to place the rider at the proper distance from the ground; to connect the cranks with the driving wheel in such a way that the gearing could be varied as desired; to place the seat in the right position in relation to

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the pedals, and constructed so that the saddle could be either laterally or vertically adjusted at will; to place the handles in such a position in relation to the seat that the rider could exert the greatest force upon the pedals with the least amount of fatigue; and to make them adjustable also. (Starley, 608) The average length of legs, arms and trunk determined the relative proportions of the bicycle’s frame and wheel size, and these could be adjusted to fit the individual without compromising speed or safety. The human scale of the safety was a major factor in broadening its appeal. By being accessible to women, children and less athletic men, bicycling shifted from an exceptional activity to a familiar and domestic one. Family and social relations formed around the pastime as it steadily became more inclusive (see Chapter 2). While I have been arguing that the modern bicycle was largely a product of particular social and material conditions occurring in western society between 1865 and 1890, it is important to recognise the human dimensions of the machine, as these were critical in it finding universal appeal. The bicycle did not evolve only as a machine – it was also an object with intimate associations with the human body. As Starley makes clear, it was designed as a prosthetic appendage to enhance the capabilities of the human form. Guided and constrained by human physiology, the most successful design was that which formed a unity with the human frame and extended its energy most efficiently, without risk to life and limb. Through sport, relations between machine and body would become critical, so that developments in bicycle technology during the 1870s and 1880s were driven largely by how efficiently the rider’s muscular effort could be converted into speed. Significantly, James Starley, William Hillman, Dan Rudge, W. H. Grout and other pioneer manufacturers were riders themselves.114 Through empirical experimentation they would have understood the effects of design changes to the feel and responsiveness of their machines. But for any modern object to gain broad appeal, factors other than technical efficiency apply. Racing may have spurred the development of the modern bicycle, but popular everyday use would sustain it and this would depend on how ordinary human beings across the world were able to relate to it. Baudrillard argues that we must also account for ‘how [objects] are experienced, what needs other than functional ones they answer, what mental structures are interwoven with – and contradict – their functional structures, or what cultural, infracultural (sic) or transcultural system

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underpins their directly experienced everydayness’.115 Non-functional human factors are important to the design of all modern objects, but to use one of Baudrillard’s examples, the tactile experience of a coffee mill is rather less critical than that of the bicycle, which has more intimate connection with the body, and the capacity to transport the body through space – these are not qualities expected of most modern objects. Therefore the design of the bicycle is especially dependent on the processes through which humans regard the bicycle and experience its use, including those of haptic perception and kinaesthetics. A sense of flight or transcendence engendered by bicycling can affect the rider’s mental structures, while systems of behaviour form around bicycling as a social practice. As these anthropological factors feed back into new designs, bicycles might then be regarded as expressions of human desire and behaviour above and beyond what they might signify on a merely functional level (see Chapter 2).

ORIGINS AND PRE-TEXTS – ULTERIOR MOTIVES IN BICYCLE HISTORIOGRAPHY From a postmodern perspective, origins and originals are routinely regarded with much scepticism, and for good reason. As soon as individuals – and by extension nations – are credited with great inventions, ideas or works of art, edifices of mythological proportions can emerge. In the chauvinistic and sometimes jingoistic atmosphere of late 19th century Europe such edifices bolstered national prestige, and in the modern era technological advances have been especially valued. As events built towards the First World War, the devastating uses of technology were being marshalled for slaughter on an industrial scale. It is difficult now to relate the benign, mainly positive, image of the bicycle in society to the appalling consequences of this first ‘machine age’ war, but the bicycle was forged on the same anvil, and its use in wartime was a serious proposition in Europe.116 Histories of the bicycle have often become embroiled in patriotic disputes, thankfully all peacefully so far. In 1884, a monument to James Starley, often referred to as the ‘father of the cycle trade’ in England, was erected without controversy in Coventry, where there is little doubt that he placed the region at the forefront of bicycle development in the 1870s. This was followed by the erection of a monument to Karl Drais in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1893, and in the following year a monument to Michaux was erected by the French in Bar-le-Duc. These are all major figures in the development of the bicycle, and while historians might not all agree on some priority claims attributed to them, few would grudge their status as national heroes.

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Yet during the bicycle boom of the 1890s other historical ‘firsts’ came to light, mostly with the thinnest of evidence, typically reproducing mischievously antedated letters. The most audacious hoax of this kind was perpetuated by an Italian, Augusto Marinoni, who seems to have been responsible for the reproduction of a crude sketch of a bicycle from Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus in his book, The Unknown Leonardo (1974).117 As Lessing has demonstrated, this was clearly a hoax. It is not entirely clear who drew the sketch; it was certainly not Leonardo da Vinci or one of his apprentices, but rather it appears to have been drawn in the 1960s or early 1970s. The perpetrator of the hoax was probably Italian, and it has been suggested it was Marinoni himself, given that he had most access to the Codex at the time the drawing was made. In a country steeped in bicycle culture for over a century, the temptation to claim the invention of the bicycle for Italy is quite understandable, although indefensible. A similar thought must have occurred to a Frenchman, Louis Baudry, who in 1891 produced an image of a rigid, two-wheeled machine supposedly inspired by the medieval hobby-horse (complete with an animal’s head). He referred to this as a ‘célérifére’,118 and claimed it had been demonstrated by Comte Dédé de Sivrac in the gardens of the Palais Royal, Paris in 1791, and that a club of riders was formed to race along the Champs Élysées.119 This has since been exposed as a hoax, whose function was to antedate the Draisine and relocate it to France – a clear example of chauvinistic revisionism. National interests have also been furthered by more subtle associations. The idea of elevating the bicycle through classical origins seems to have occurred to both the poster ‘ad men’ of the 1890s and the government of wartime Britain. In his pamphlet, Travel in Wartime (c1940), H. V. Morton observes that ‘Bas reliefs and wall paintings, in Egypt, Babylon, and at Pompeii, prove that the idea of a wheeled arrangement propelled by muscular effort was no stranger to the ancients’.120 In the sense of imaginatively framing a device – one definition of invention – these ancients and their medieval successors could claim to have invented the bicycle centuries before it became a practical reality. But Morton is not interested in bicycle history, the classical allusion to wheeled transport is merely the precursor to an attempt to promote bicycling among the middle classes in wartime. This re-gentrification of the bicycle through reference to antiquity was designed to counter its image in the 1940s as a working-class form of transport. The context was that wartime petrol rationing had deprived the upper classes of the use of their motor cars, and promoting bicycle use was very much in the interests of the British war effort. As well as an effective

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piece of government propaganda, Morton’s BSA pamphlet also promoted the English manufacturer, and so entitled him to double his fee. In another example of classical allusion with nationalistic overtones, a noble ancestry for the primitive boneshaker is whimsically evoked through ancient romances featuring mechanical horses. In ‘The Origin of Velocipedes’, a French writer of the 1860s finds the natural prototypes for the bicycle in the horse-stick and the mechanical horse of Troy, and in the fabrications of Cardonne and Petit de la Croix and Antoine Galland.121 In Thousand and One Nights, Galland describes a device whereby ‘the Indian had only to turn a pin which elevated a little the neck of the horse …’, and off it went (3–4). In early modern literature he cites Chevillard’s wooden horse in ‘L’Histoire de Magalone, fille du roi de Naples’ (1533), which: directs itself by means of a peg in the front which serves him as a bit. He flew through the air at such speed that it was said the devil carried him away … this horse did not eat, did not sleep, needed no irons, and went easily, without muscles and without nerves. (4–5) Once more, classical and romantic antedating of the bicycle idea is given a political edge, as well as – paradoxically, but not unusually – legitimising a modern invention through ancient association. Significantly, the French author is at pains to cite French sources to emphasise French ownership of the invention of the velocipede, forging a link between France’s tradition of romance and its modern outlook. The strategy is subtle, yet consistent with other chauvinistic priority claims. Through association with the horse the velocipede gained an aristocratic pedigree, and some may have regarded it as a mechanical substitute for the noble steed. Although the velocipede’s association with the upper classes was short-lived, early models did sometimes sport a decorative horse’s head at the end of the column supporting the front wheel, as if to maintain a symbolic connection. The association between bicycles and horses is further fuelled by the contemporary myth that Karl Drais built his two-wheeled machine in 1817 because widespread crop failure across the western hemisphere had increased the cost of horse fodder. There is evidence that when the machine first appeared in Germany, hopes were raised that this might lower the cost of feed, but we should not confuse effect with cause.122 The widespread slaughter of starving horses in 1816 following a catastrophic environmental event might well have been a spur to bringing a mechanical substitute for the horse to the market, but

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only in the last 20 years has this idea gained much credence as a primary cause. This might well be the result of environmentalist revisionism. The ‘year without a summer’ of 1816 has been seized upon by environmentalists since the 1990s as a pointer to the potential fallout from climate change – it has been given an eco-critical spin.123 With the bicycle now associated in the contemporary imagination as a symbol of sustainability in the face of climate change crises brought on by carbon emissions, there is an apparent, though rather spurious, connection with the ‘year without a summer’. Although the events of 1816 were caused by a natural disaster, they still have powerful resonances in a time of environmental degradation caused by a century of industrial pollution. The bicycle has gained a symbolic role as a ‘green machine’ in the 21st century, so it might seem ‘natural’ to associate its invention with an environmental crisis of 200 years ago. Among the several anomalies and controversies that have exercised cycle historians, the most infamous is that of the Kirkpatrick Macmillan machine of 1839. Macmillan made no claim himself, but others tried to gain credit on his behalf. If it had been genuine, it would have formed a missing link between the hobby-horse of 1817–1819 and the Michaux/Lallement velocipede of the 1860s. The Macmillan machine fits the classic ‘missing link myth’, in which the idea of historical connection is so compelling that evidence is exaggerated or adulterated to produce a convincing narrative. Macmillan is said to have built his machine in a remote village in Dumfries, Scotland, around 1838/39. The fact that no such machine was ever copied or produced commercially might be explained by the remote location of its inventor,124 but it is more likely that Macmillan, who died in 1878, was the subject of a hoax which began in the 1880s. The hoax would have begun with a machine reputed to have been built in 1845 by another Scotsman, Gavin Dalzell. This lever-drive velocipede was ‘found’ in 1888 and exhibited at the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888, by which time both Dalzell and Macmillan were dead. James Johnston then set out to prove that Macmillan had produced a similar machine earlier, implying that Dalzell must have copied it. The Dalzell machine resembles a number of rear-driven 1860s bicycles and tricycles using the same type of lever drive, noticeably that of Thomas McCall of Kilmarnock, who did however build and sell rear-driven velocipedes as an alternative to the French velocipede. He was later asked to rebuild his own velocipede to resemble the ‘Macmillan’ for exhibition at the 1896 Stanley Show.125 The story may have begun as an honest error, the Dalzell machine being found and family memory being confused, probably with some

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earlier machine that Dalzell had made or ridden. But the Macmillan story in its wake shows signs of deliberate fabrication. Johnston wrote an article entitled ‘The First Bicycle’ which was published in The Gallovidian in 1899.126 His ‘evidence’ comes from a newspaper article in the Glasgow Argus that describes an anonymous ‘gentleman’ who rode his machine to Glasgow in 1842 and was fined for riding it on the pavement and colliding with a pedestrian. The article does not name Macmillan, and it refers to a machine powered by hand cranks. Significantly, it does not say how many wheels the machine had, and the incident in question probably involved one of the three- or four-wheeled velocipedes which were not uncommon in Scotland at the time. Any twowheeled pedal or lever-driven machine at this time would have caused quite a stir, and would not have gone unrecorded. The article concludes that the machine, whatever it was, would be no threat to the railway, confirming that readers of the Glasgow Argus had more interest in the future of the railways in 1842 than in velocipedes.127 Johnston’s campaign to install Macmillan as Scotland’s inventor of the first bicycle in the 1890s (at the height of the safety boom) was probably prompted by Scottish national pride. Unfortunately for Scotland, the Macmillan debacle has now overshadowed the real contribution of McCall and other Scottish inventors, who did build bicycles in the late 1860s.128

FETISHISM, NOSTALGIA AND THE TECHNICAL AESTHETIC In considering human and social relations with everyday objects, the technical dimension is essential because it defines the functionality and utility of the object, and it is related to its initial monetary value. But design – the technical aesthetic – has always been important in turning material objects like the bicycle into successful consumer products. As if to celebrate the success of a brand, the nuts and bolts, gears, spokes, brackets and cranks of bicycles have often been important. This was the case even in the most functional of the Chinese-made machines of the 1960s, for example, where the letters of the brand – P H O E N I X – were arranged to form the chain wheel itself. From a cultural perspective, the bicycle has always had a particular capacity to become a fetish object, both through its intimate connection to the human body, and through its capacity as a material object of desire, enhanced through the technical aesthetic. Commodity fetishism turns objects into something beyond the thing itself, a process helped by creative

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advertising as it transforms products such as bicycles into the focus of the consumer’s unconscious desire. Early bicycle posters presented vibrant, often sexually-charged, fantasy images involving bicycles, and these images were then reflected in the technical aesthetic. This aesthetic might be intrinsic to the design, in for example the shape of the front forks or the curve of the handlebars; or it might be present in extraneous adornments, such as ornate finishing and embossing.129 Some bicycle designs might be considered as art, moving beyond fetish to objects of beauty in themselves which extend practical or prosthetic functions. Bicycle design is perhaps unique in denoting a prosthetic aesthetic. Its skeletal steel frame betokens lean, muscular strength, while its spinning wheels convey the essential notion of speed, the kinaesthetic element.130 Nowadays, the frame of a high-tech carbon fibre road bike draws attention to this aesthetic by combining criteria of structural strength and lightness. The aim is to produce a structure which is in complete harmony with the human body and is the machine equivalent of a perfectly formed athlete. Not surprisingly, the producers of these bicycles draw attention to the marriage of art and technology, not only through additional adornments, but also by aesthetic subtraction, or minimalism, taking away as much material as possible. In the structural design, the fashioning of lugs and cable guides, and the paint finish of such specimens, the signature of an artisan may even be detected, further turning the functional machine into an aesthetic object.131 Fascination with the material dimension of an object like the bicycle would seem to contradict Baudrillard’s claim that ‘The technological plane is an abstraction: in ordinary life we are practically unconscious of the technological reality of objects.’132 Yet this remains true of the bicycle when it is ridden rather than studied, making it a divided or duplicitous object. The fetishism that attaches to the bicycle as a moving object (kinaesthetically) has non-technical dimensions when the bicyclist thinks beyond the thing itself to its promise of speed and freedom. In the moment of converting the static object into an expression of motion, technological presence and history are mere abstractions. Robert Smith captures that existential shift as a return to innocence: The child to whom the bicycle beckoned could not be aware that he was looking at the most recent model of an evolutionary technological process that had its rude beginnings during the century before. Nor could he know that many problems of design and construction had

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had to be met and solved before he would be able to roll away down the street.133 Taken from an introduction to a history of the bicycle, this observation invokes a form of nostalgia which has been attached to the bicycle ever since a second generation of bicyclists learned to ride as children (the first generation having learned to ride as adults). It is surely true that as adults we are liable to be taken back to a world of childhood whenever we mount a bicycle, and are largely oblivious to the technical realities or technological history of the machine. And yet a visit to a bicycle store today will reveal that commodity fetishism operates hyper-technically, especially for male ‘bike-heads’, as they obsess over the relative merits of the latest components on state-of-the-art road bikes. This might derive from the fact that in the electronically induced simulacra of the present digital age we are experiencing nostalgia for machines which display openly their working parts. Today’s hyper-technical fetishism for the nuts and bolts of things would then represent a reification of machines like the bicycle in a ‘postmachine age’ dominated by digital culture. Bicycle advertising has often been disingenuous, pandering to desires it could never satisfy. Removed from a social history where the bicycle primarily fulfilled demands for mobility, the desire to reconnect with the past now reasserts itself through the bicycle, and a renewed fascination with the experience of human-powered transport is formed. Unlike the period in which the modern bicycle was invented, the present fascination has less to do with speed and freedom than with nostalgia for a simple machine that enlivens the user’s senses in urban and natural landscapes of the real. Bicycling is then reinvented as an antidote to the online world.

RE-FASHIONING THE BICYCLE IN THE 20TH CENTURY Measured by the number of patents registered, not for the bicycle as such, but for its various components, accessories and specialised clothing, the bicycle in the boom years of the 1890s was an extraordinary focus of invention.134 In the US, new models of complete bicycles were produced annually, although most offered minimal technical improvements, despite the inflated claims of their producers. According to Joseph Pennell, the bicycle had reached a peak of perceived usable perfection by 1900, and there was little incentive to purchase a brand-new bicycle.135 The market was

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becoming saturated and it was increasingly difficult to come up with something new. Through the mass production of standard components, most manufacturers were able to assemble and brand safety bicycles which varied little from the standard template. The German industry was exceptional in continuing to manufacture machines of a particular brand (Marke) which were, initially at least, built from exclusive components manufactured in-house. The resulting bicycles were too expensive for most people and the industry had to adjust to producing cheaper ‘unbranded’ models to compete with American imports.136 A similar situation existed in the UK, where an industry which had relied on producing relatively expensive bicycles to middle-class customers had to adjust after the first bicycle boom. Mass production would make the bicycle affordable for most people in the developed world by the 1930s, and the cheapness and ready availability of standard, factory-made components also made it possible for cyclists to carry out their own repairs and customise their bicycles. New accessories, brakes, wheels and saddles could easily be fitted to existing standard frames. With no radical changes to its basic design, further technical development of the bicycle was limited to the performance of individual components. This was more in response to the specific demands of racing, however, than the everyday needs of most bicyclists. Some customers might occasionally be persuaded to buy new saddles, wheels, or new accessories, but many would never need to. Bicycles based on the standard English ‘roadster’ models and their European equivalents were built to last a lifetime, and although some distributors were successful in persuading customers to trade in the previous year’s model, by the early 1900s the industry was facing over-production, leaving suppliers with mounting inventories of obsolete models.137 When cheap American imports threatened the decline of the bicycle industry in the UK and Continental Europe in the early 1900s,138 this was because of over-supply, not lack of demand. It was not, as is sometimes suggested, because bicyclists in large numbers were switching to motorcars or motorbikes. The total number of bicycles in the West did not fall substantially until the 1930s–1950s, by which time demand in the developing world was increasing (see Chapter 3). The safety bicycle of the 1880s was a successful compromise between demands for speed, comfort and everyday utility. But the history of its reinvention in the 20th century is punctuated by the efforts of bicycle manufacturers to re-enthuse successive generations with a new purpose and fashion for bicycling. This has had less to do with altering the basic form of the bicycle itself than with keying into social trends and trying to update public perceptions of bicycling. In a cynical move, the problem

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of over-production was partly met by producing bicycles with low-quality materials that soon wore out. More positively, the demands of competitive road and track racing led to advances in lightweight frames, wheel and tyre technology, gearing systems and aerodynamic clothing. It is debatable whether the racing bike was reinvented in the last century or merely improved upon, as, broadly speaking, a rider of the early 20th century competed on essentially the same kind of fixed-gear track bike as one at the end of the century. Yet the racing scene has continued to re-enthuse the wider market from time to time with new road bikes for general recreational use. As for utility bicycles, specialised work vehicles such as the cycle rickshaw (now in rapid decline in Asia) were developed primarily for the developing world; together with modified roadsters for postal delivery and policing these are examples of technology transfer rather than reinvention. Reinvention of the bicycle in the last century has been more a case of re-fashioning. There is a broad correspondence between each new fashion-induced model and generational shifts in cultural values and class mobility. For example, the BMX and mountain bikes of the 1980s and 1990s, and fixed-gear urban bikes (or ‘fixies’) of recent years can be regarded as counter trends which reset the meaning of the bicycle for new generations. As Baudrillard puts it, if we want to account for a ‘system of everyday objects [such as the bicycle], a structural technological analysis is clearly inadequate’; once an invention is embedded in social and cultural practice, we need to explore the object’s ‘systems of meanings’ through the socio-cultural and economic dimensions in which it acts.139 While non-technical factors shaped the evolution of the bicycle in the 19th century, once it reached a stable design (ignoring for the moment developments such as the e-bike),140 social and cultural realities became paramount to its continued use. The bicycle’s ‘system of meanings’ has evolved through different and sometimes conflicting uses within socio-cultural environments. During the 20th century, consequent shifts in meaning gave rise to a series of ‘adjustments’ to the form of the bicycle, often starting with a localised fad – as with the mountain bike in California in the 1970s – and later broadening into mainstream refashioning. We are now at a time in the 21st century where the pace of adjustment has accelerated to the point where a rash of overlapping fads and fashions has led to a bewildering array of new-old, brand new, fashion and novelty bicycles. This situation might be attributed to the peculiar conditions resulting from 21st century globalisation (see Chapter 4). Back in the 20th century, refashioning was aimed more strategically at enthusing each new generation with a new purpose for the bicycle.

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Since its inception, bicycling has been both a beneficiary and a victim of fashion, leading to a series of booms and busts following the introduction of new models. After the highly successful and long-lived roadster type, these fashion-induced innovations included lightweight racing bikes, touring bikes, 10-speed road bikes, small-wheeled commuting bikes (Moulton type), BMX and mountain bikes, and fixed-gear bikes. Each of these might be regarded as a reaction against the system of meanings attached to a previous model, resulting in adjustments to the design of the bicycle without moving significantly away from the basic form. The exception to the rule is the recumbent, a radically different design which has maintained only a marginal position, despite setting speed records.141 Children’s bicycles (the major market in the US in the 1960s) have entailed a system of meanings embracing novelty, futurist fantasy, faux motorbikes and spaceships. Lightweight racing bikes and touring bikes of the 1930s offered significant technical advantages in the arena for which they were designed, yet these were also associated with cultural movements which extended their significance far beyond the practicalities of bicycling (see Chapter 2). In general, functionality has played a secondary role to trends and fashions in the success of such new models. Lightweight racers with narrow wheels have less rolling friction than roadsters, and 10-speed bicycles improve the experience of touring and commuting in hilly terrain, yet most of these design advantages are negligible in everyday use for ordinary people, who might gain more from a slight reduction in body weight. Even the smallwheeled commuter bicycles like the Moulton of the 1960s barely perform the function of commuting more efficiently than an ordinary roadster, although as a folding bike, the Brompton is favoured by rail/bike commuters. Similarly, mountain bikes, or ‘all-terrain vehicles’, despite the moniker, are rarely used on mountains and most are never used off-road. This sets their primary use on roads in conflict with their technical design criteria: fat tyres generate unwanted rolling friction. In addressing the apparently differentiated market sectors of commuting, recreation and sport, manufacturers have targeted the self-image of their customers more than their practical needs. As with the original safety bicycle market, this might involve offering high-quality/high-value products clearly segregated from cheaper offerings to pander to the self-image of aspirational middle-class consumers. For this group, purchasing a bicycle is a lifestyle choice and a reflection of status. The introduction of new models in the 20th century has been largely driven by middle-class fashions, as determined from time to time by trends advertised in lifestyle magazines.

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Different forms of use are secondary to questions of appearance, taste and peer group pressure. An overweight middle-aged man might have as little need for a carbon fibre racing bike as a twenty-year-old woman might for a retro ladies’ roadster in pink with a wicker basket, yet both might be seduced by the potential these objects have to enhance their self-image. This also works in reverse, with many serviceable bicycles being discarded when they fall out of fashion. As the bicycle is propelled by human effort, part of the image associated with its use is the manner in which that effort is visibly applied. As Nicholas Oddy has shown, the original roadster design forces the rider into a ‘sit up straight’ posture, and includes chain guards, mudguards and other accessories which emphasise comfort, safety and ease of movement.142 A middle-class notion of gentility and apparently un-laboured (and un-gendered) work are presented in the design, and this was accentuated in safety bicycle posters of the early 20th century in which conservatively dressed riders appear to be sitting ‘correctly’ and exerting minimum effort. This design – and self-image – can be directly contrasted with that of the lightweight racing bicycles from Europe introduced between the wars, with their raffish drop-handlebars and ‘straining at the leash’ posture. This design seems to involve all parts of the body in the muscular effort to produce forwards motion. It is about exercise and speed and intended to appeal to a very different demographic: predominantly young, male and athletic. As the middle classes in much of the developed world began to abandon their bicycles for motor cars after the Second World War, the bicycle’s social relevance was reduced, while its system of meanings (in the US especially) was defined by its use as a toy for children, and as a vehicle for workingclass men and women unable to afford a motor vehicle. During the 1950s and 1960s, the image of the bicycle suffered, with the notable exception of the Netherlands and some parts of continental Europe, where class, age and gender had never been strong factors in determining bicycle use. Elsewhere, the bicycle’s image would need refashioning if the middle classes were to be persuaded back into the saddle and the bicycle industry restored. Touring bicycles and small-wheeled commuting bicycles such as the Moulton would go some way to achieving this in the 1960s and 70s. The Moulton suggested an image of a slightly eccentric executive cycling to the railway station or office with his briefcase tied to the back pannier, while the touring bicycle was by definition a recreational machine. With both machines, the middle classes were exercising a lifestyle choice, and were not driven by necessity. Choosing to use a bicycle rather than motor

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transport took on greater significance during the oil crisis in the West in the 1970s. A bicycle boom in the US at this time was largely fuelled by the import of 10-speed bicycles from the UK, Europe and Japan.143 The bicycle’s system of meanings was extended here to include making a statement about pollution and the environment, reinforcing the image of the middleclass cyclist making healthy lifestyle choices. This marked the beginnings of an environmentally aware user group, many of whom continued to use a bicycle after the end of the oil crisis (see Chapter 4). Towards the end of the 20th century, when manual and non-manual labour were no longer clear demarcations of social status, the bicycle’s system of meanings began to include associations with alternative and fringe social groups who would radically refashion the bicycle and redefine majority bicycle use. The mountain bike revolution of the 1980s was started by a disaffected group of young Californian men with a penchant for low-cost off-road thrills and spills. They began to customise old, fattyred Schwinn ‘clunkers’ to compete in fringe cyclo-cross events in Marin County in the late 1970s.144 By the early 1980s, mountain bikes went into mainstream production with distinctively ruggedised frames, 24" wheels with fat, deep-tread tyres, index gear shifts, straight handlebars and frontfork suspension. But it was probably the self-image associated with the mountain bike that accelerated sales rather more than its technical specification. This image was distinctly masculine and initially a little rebellious, redolent of an alternative, risk-taking, youthful and freewheeling Californian lifestyle. Mountain bikes and less rugged but more inclusive urban ‘hybrids’ dominated the bicycle market in the US and UK in the 1980s. For this generation, these were ‘bicycles’, while the previous market leader, with its drop handle-bars and thin wheels, would subsequently be known as ‘road bikes’.145 Like the Schwinn clunker from which it was derived, the mountain bike is not the bicycle at its most beautiful. Its value is most evident in its functionality and technical performance, appealing largely to men for whom this might have an abstract or fetishistic function more than a practical one, given that they may never actually ride their machines downhill over rocky terrain. Finely adapted to off-road use and cyclo-cross, its image began to suffer when cheap faux mountain bikes arrived in large numbers, making an incongruous and not always welcome arrival on urban streets and pavements. In the wrong environment, a bicycle’s system of meanings can quickly acquire a negative image: no longer cool, the urban hybrid in this form suggested a necessity for the less well-off, especially students and the unemployed.

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Fortunately for the aesthete, models have emerged since the 1990s which are far more pleasing on the eye and better suited to road use. Fashion, aesthetics and practicality are jointly responsible for fixies and high-end road bikes taking precedence over mountain bikes and hybrid offshoots in bicycle shops today. Again, these do not qualify as new forms of bicycle, and are actually closer in form than the mountain bike to the original safety. While high-end road bikes could be regarded as expensive and often beautifully engineered versions of lightweight racing bikes of the 1930s, the fixie is a reintroduction of the track racing bike, which has always of necessity been stripped down to the bare essentials. There is a beauty in the simplicity of the fixie, although the self-image it conveys might have more to do with its association with modern urban cowboys on wheels, the bike messengers who made a significant impact on city streets in the 1990s.146 As the hybrid mountain bike became ubiquitous, the fixie emerged as a simple lightweight alternative for a new generation of ‘cads on castors’ (see reference in Punch Magazine in Chapter 2). The image reflects a cool, ‘freewheeling’ (although the pun doesn’t fit) and alternative lifestyle, while the machine itself has a technical purity and is symbiotically connected to its rider. It is as uncluttered as the mountain bike was encumbered with gears, brakes, fat tyres and suspension units. As already mentioned, the global bicycle industry today rests on the reintroduction of new versions of earlier models in a kind of postmodern mishmash of bicycle history – a recycling if you like. Although fixies and road bikes might dominate today, mountain bikes, commuter bikes and novelty bikes are still being produced, and even the Communist era Phoenix and Flying Pigeon brands are being built in China again for a new niche market, although they now come in a large range of bright colours (see Chapter 4).

INVENTION AND REFASHIONING FURTHER AFIELD Bicycle histories tend to be western-centred, confirming the idea of western technological dominance and the diffusion of western technology and knowledge outwards to the rest of world. But it is important to account for culturally specific histories both within and beyond the western divide, and to regard these as local variations, not simply exotic outgrowths of western history. As a technical object, the bicycle might seem ubiquitous, but diverse cultural meanings have become attached to it in different parts of the world. It is precisely because of its ubiquity that differences attributable to particular socio-cultural contexts stand out (see Chapter 3). The

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rise of the popular safety bicycle coincided in the 1890s with modern forms of marketing and the invention of colour lithographic printing, the latter giving rise to visually striking bicycle posters (see Chapter 2). Invention was directly associated with a modern concept of creating fashion through the commercially directed construction of desire and image; the bicycle can therefore be considered a pioneer in the development of the consumer society as we know it today. Significantly, until recently most commercially driven reinventions of the bicycle147 were aimed at the developed world, while the original black safety bicycle (commonly, the ‘roadster’) remained the standard across most of the developing world.148 With globalisation, all of this is set to radically change as we enter a period of continuous and simultaneous refashioning. The bicycle’s system of meanings and the self-image of the 21st century global bicyclist are becoming eclectic and multicultural, all of which bodes well for the future of a noble invention (see Chapter 4).

TWO

M O B I L I T Y: T H E PRACTICAL AND CULTURAL IMPACT OF BICYCLING IN THE WEST

SOCIAL AND CULTURAL IMPACT OF BICYCLE MOBILITY In the 1890s, many saw the bicycle as a liberating force, especially for women and the lower classes. Its arrival coincided with a period when mobility – in both a real and an imaginative sense – was becoming a crucial element of everyday modern life. The bicycle promised to contribute to the progressive and futurist spirit of the age, but although it was celebrated as an expression of essential freedoms, emancipation and social progress, it was never quite the radical agent of change it was sometimes claimed to be.1 During the turbulent times of the early 20th century, the bicycle’s cultural meanings were generally more conservative than radical, as the futurist associations of the late 19th century gave way to more grounded realities of domestic harmony, healthy lifestyle, social coherence and stability. By locating bicycle mobility in some of the wider contexts of social and cultural modernity, this chapter examines its symbolic as well as material impact, with a particular emphasis on its role in the class and gender relations of the time. The restricted western focus here reflects the bicycle’s emergence as a product of western industrial modernity. This focus will then be widened in the next chapter to contrast the different ways in which the technology and the social practice were appropriated by nonwestern societies. The safety bicycle’s rise was inaugurated by the fashionable upper classes of Europe in the 1890s as they flaunted their expensive bicycles, riding hesitatingly and often under tuition in the parks of London and Paris. Society women were especially drawn to the display, and no expense was spared on their exclusive custom-built machines. For a time, the bicycle was a mark of class; yet it was simultaneously a sign of being modern, and this 67

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duality may have sat uncomfortably within some upper-class households in Europe. While it lasted, fashionable bicycling was spectacular. Where the French velocipede and the Ordinary had brought the atmosphere of the circus and music hall to the street, the safety boom of the 1890s introduced the glamour of the ballroom to the public spaces of Europe, often accompanied by typical fin de siècle excess. In 1896, The Lady Cyclist magazine reported that: [all] last summer the cycle press chronicled [Lady Warwick’s] appearance on her white bicycle, in all white attire from head to foot … All this autumn she has been riding in a moss-green suit, with a moss green bicycle to match, and now another bicycle has just been sent down to Warwick, to her order – chocolate brown, this time, with narrow gold lining.2 As is often the case, however, appearances can mask a contradiction in the cultural meanings attached to the bicycle. In this case, Francis Evelyn Greville, Countess of Warwick (also known as ‘Daisy’), was in fact a rebel, a socialist and supporter of the Suffragette movement. She was also probably the subject of Henry Dacre’s hit song ‘Daisy Bell’ (1892),3 so the multilayered cultural signifier of the bicycle has at once multiple associations in aristocratic excess, radical socialism and popular culture. Battersea Park and Hyde Park in London were opened up for high society women and men to take to the wheel, and this bicycle craze among the aristocracy (in the sometimes disguised company of crypto-socialists and New Women) was further fuelled by royal endorsement, as confirmed again by The Lady Cyclist: [a]lmost all the royalties at home and abroad have now become bicyclists, and there is hardly a Princess of the blood Royal to be found in England or the Continent who has not become a devotee of the wheel within the last two years.4 Yet high society’s love affair with the bicycle lasted only a few seasons. In his essay ‘Fashion and Her Bicycle’ (1899), Max Beerbohm describes how the female English upper class during the 19th century would flit from croquet to archery to tennis, discarding one in favour of the next. When bicycling becomes the latest fad, ‘Fashion’ is already preparing a place for her outmoded machine in the attic.

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By 1899, the bicycle had largely fulfilled its function for the upper classes, who discarded it partly because it was no longer a novelty, and also because it was no longer a sign of exclusivity. When H. G. Wells’ lowly draper’s assistant in The Wheels of Chance (1896) could afford a second-hand model, this might have signalled the end of bicycling among the upper classes, who would return to more enduring symbols of rank once the boom years were over. According to Beerbohm, after the bicycle, ‘Dame Fashion’ might have been temporarily distracted by the novelty of the motor car, but he predicted that ultimately the horse would prevail: ‘she will tower equestrian in the bikish chaos, and the horses of her barouche will shy among the serried motor-cars of the middle class’.5 Although there was a sudden collapse in bicycling as a fashion among the upper classes during the 1898 season, Beerbohm’s sketch exaggerates its demise. Upper-class men and women continued to ride bicycles in the suburbs and around their country estates, less for ostentatious display than for healthy exercise, which was itself becoming a new fashion in Edwardian times. This group, faithful to their expensive hand-built machines, still constituted a large share of the bicycle market in Britain until the late 1920s. Meanwhile, sales worldwide continued to rise as the mass-produced bicycle slowly became affordable for the lower classes. The fashionable classes certainly accelerated the progress of the bicycle, but it was the patronage of a much wider society that would sustain it. A dramatic drop in the exports of bicycles from the US at the beginning of the 20th century was another premature indicator of the bicycle’s demise, giving Henry Ford and other motor manufacturers cause to declare bicycling a passing fad. It was of course in their interest to inveigh against the bicycle, and they did have history on their side: Draisines (1820s) and French velocipedes (1860s) now seemed but short-lived novelties. The Ordinary created a bicycle culture beyond novelty, but that machine too was outmoded by 1890. New technologies like the motor bicycle and motor car might then have also dumped the safety bicycle in the dustbin of history if a number of social and economic factors had not intervened: even in the US, where culture and automobility were set to be more closely tied than in any other part of the world, most people were unable to afford a motor car until the 1950s; outside the US, the global market for bicycles continued to expand throughout the 20th century. As the bicycle continued to work its way across the social spectrum, it became a conspicuous consumer item for the middle and lower classes. Glen Norcliffe considers the possibility that in Canada, ‘cycling had a bigger

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influence on social modernity through its class relations than through its gender relations, in essence because it served for much of the bicycle era as a highly visible status symbol’.6 Although status might have been one of the reasons for the lower middle classes to purchase a bicycle, the main impact of bicycle mobility on both class and gender was more profound than this. In the newly industrialised West, the world of working-class women more closely mirrored that of working-class men than that of upper and middle-class women. Bicycle mobility brought both men and women of the same class into closer proximity, and it did occasionally allow the separate spheres of class to intersect. The impact on class, as the bicycle reached down through a stratified social order, was to give women and men unprecedented opportunities to extend their horizons socially and geographically, to transcend domestic confines and (to a limited extent) to move beyond the class and gender circumstances of their birth. From the 1890s to the 1920s, the bicycle was conceived and often marketed as the ‘wings’ of the lower orders, suggestive of greater freedoms to come. Evangelical ministers in America were quick to associate the winged figure of the bicyclist with the divine, as a ‘scientific angel’ leading the way for the righteous towards heaven.7 In a more concrete sense, middle-class women were major beneficiaries of bicycle mobility, as they enjoyed the freedoms of an expanding domestic sphere. For millions of working-class women and men, bicycle mobility was more utilitarian, its main function being a mode of transport between home and factory. This provided a wider range of workplaces for them to ply their trade, but the factory system was the main beneficiary in being able to draw on a widening pool of labour.8 In considering its appeal to different classes, Beerbohm claims that, for the upper classes, the bicycle was ‘but a new toy, not a necessity’, while for the proletariat, it would become ‘not merely a necessity, but a great luxury, too’.9 As he predicted, the bicycle would soon prove a necessity for the general populace, and this working-class history is often overshadowed by the upper-class hubbub created by the boom of the 1890s. He associates the ‘luxury’ that the masses would come to appreciate with the idea of ‘locomotomania’: the sheer kinaesthetic pleasure derived from speed and motion, a pleasure transcending class and gender. The bicycle helped to assimilate many facets of ‘the new’. It was a status symbol, but more importantly it was a symbol of the times, connecting its owner with what Marshall Berman calls that ‘mode of vital experience’ that characterised modernity.10 This sets its cultural meaning in western society within a matrix of modern experience. As a cultural response to modernisation and the advance of the new, modernism would find in bicycle mobility

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a subject for explorations into dynamism and existentialism.11 In the work of the Irish writers Samuel Beckett and Flann O’Brien, for example, the bicycle as a figure of speed, as well as a prosthetic, skeletal extension to the human body, suggests imaginative connections between material and figurative dimensions. These literary imaginings derive from the real impact of bicycle mobility in extending the human body’s capabilities, while at the same time launching the senses into a gravity-defying realm where balance and momentum are paramount.12 Bicycle mobility as the dynamic, forward motion of the human body under its own power became associated in the western cultural imaginary with human, and by extension social, progress. As modernity increased that sense of projection, the bicycle came to symbolise travel towards the future, and this was frequently depicted in modernist art and literature (see below). In the 1880s and 1890s, the bicycle had suggested the promise of emancipation from class, gender, stifling domesticity and parochialism. It helped precipitate – and then exploited – the breaking down of spatial barriers and through this the crossing of social boundaries. But in the 20th century, radically conflicting ideologies produced visions of the future flickering between bright utopia and dark dystopia. Bicycle mobility then became aligned less with radical cultural forces than with more conservative and reactionary ones. By the time of the First World War, bicycle use in Europe had started to become a metaphor for measured progress, balance and harmony. When it no longer symbolised the new – displaced as a cultural signifier in this respect by the motor car and aeroplane – the bicycle came to represent a human-centred and steady model of ‘going places’. After the war, bicycle mobility would then have a new role as a therapeutic response to the psychological damage of war, economic crisis and industrial pollution. The ‘Outdoors’ movements and touring clubs became a channel for this therapy, changing the nature of bicycling across Europe.13

BICYCLE MOBILITY AND THE CONDITION OF MODERNITY Social historians have often remarked on the material consequences of bicycle mobility for modern society,14 but little has been said about its conceptual relations with modernisation. The economic imperative towards rationalisation and efficiency at the core of industrial modernisation has often been conceived as an attempt to speed up time. Capitalism demands ever faster means of production and accumulation, and as the geographer David Harvey has shown, the technological and organisational

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shifts that occurred at the end of the 19th century ‘revolutionized’ spatial relations; the drive to ‘annihilate space through time’ led to a condition he has labelled ‘time-space compression’.15 This condition altered patterns of mobility around the beginning of the 20th century, and the bicycle was implicated in this materially as well as conceptually. In the first case, the bicycle was at the forefront of developments in industrial mass production, leading technological innovation which not only gave rise to the modern bicycle itself (see Chapter 1), but also paved the way for the aeroplane and the motor car, which would have further impacts on patterns of mobility in the 20th century.16 Growing into one of the largest industries in the US, bicycle production spurred the development of precision engineering (enabling exchangeable components), machine tools and electrified assembly lines that were capable of turning out a new bicycle once a minute.17 In order to match this scale of mass production, new forms of cultural conditioning were applied to encourage mass consumption. Potential consumers for products such as the bicycle were groomed by new forms of marketing, advertising and distribution, as well as trade shows and celebrity endorsements, all of which were pioneered by the bicycle industry and adopted later by the motor industry and manufacturers of domestic appliances. Bicycle production was therefore implicated directly and indirectly in the changing patterns of mobility shaping modern society. Bicycle mobility has further conceptual impact if it is regarded through theories of cultural modernism, and in particular the opening of new perceptual windows on modern life. Stephen Kern links technological innovations such as the bicycle with the formation of a modern consciousness and cultural imaginary: From around 1880 to the outbreak of World War I a series of sweeping changes in technology and culture created distinctive new modes of thinking about and experiencing time and space. Technological innovations including the telephone, wireless telegraph, x-ray, cinema, bicycle, automobile and airplane established the material foundation for this reorientation; independent cultural developments such as the stream of consciousness novel, psychoanalysis, Cubism, and the theory of relativity shaped consciousness directly. The result was a transformation of the dimensions of life and thought.18 Kern refers to technologies such as the bicycle as elements in the ‘material foundation’ of modern consciousness, but further than this, the

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experience of bicycle mobility altered perceptions of the modern world through its impact on mental space, giving it both material and existential influences on modern experience. Yet if the new forms of spatiality with which the bicycle was associated became the ‘embodiment’ and ‘medium of social life’ in western modernity, the question arises of how these might be received differently in non-western societies, or reconfigured in postmodern society.19 In this respect, the diffusion and reinvention of the bicycle as a modern technology becomes an important area for cross-cultural scrutiny (see Chapters 3 and 4). Bicycle mobility has a universal impact on perceptions of time and space through concepts of freedom, constraint and contingency, but although these are universal, they invariably have local causes and consequences. We start by investigating these in the limited context of western society.

SOCIAL SPACE AND SOCIALISM: CONSTRAINTS, CONTINGENCIES AND FREEDOMS Bicycle mobility has had a significant role in producing new social spaces. For example, when bicyclists began exploring routes out of London in the 1890s, heading through the suburbs and on down the famous Ripley Road towards the South Coast, they were escaping the city and simultaneously forging new connections between urban, suburban and rural sites.20 In the process, they formed new social networks and a bicycling community in whose social space traditional barriers of class and gender were being tested. Through regional and nationwide associations, bicycle touring became socially acceptable and popular. It also had the potential for political influence. From the 1890s onwards, mixed clubs allowed men and women to meet beyond the confines of domestic space, unchaperoned for the first time. The historian T. H. Escott notes in 1897 that women, following ‘their urge towards emancipation’, were also forming their own clubs; and even servant maids and footmen were given access to bicycles ‘to take their airing on their Sundays out’.21 In such newly emerging social spaces, escape seemed possible from domestic confines and from the system of industrial capitalism, described by Max Weber as an ‘iron cage’, imprisoning workers in the ‘technical and economic conditions of mechanical and machine production’.22 If bicycle mobility enabled a temporary escape from this ‘iron cage’, it did so with some irony, given the bicycle’s associations with the actual conditions of machine production within the factory system.

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Nevertheless, for socialist bicycle clubs there was a political goal in the mobility this machine could provide. In Germany, the ethos of The Workers’ Cycling Federation (Solidarity) was to spread the word of social democracy through bicycling events, rallies and meetings. It was part of a socialist subculture which included other organised sports and healthy outdoor pursuits, all designed to create a ‘complete self-contained world opposed to bourgeois society’.23 Founded in 1893, it grew into a significant political movement, with 150,000 members in 1913 and over 300,000 in 1930, making it the largest national sports association in the world.24 As Solidarity’s influence grew, worker-cyclists dominated bicycle culture in Germany, wresting it from the bourgeois world in a move quite unthinkable in England. The middle classes in Germany became increasingly reluctant to associate themselves with the bicycle, now tainted by association with socialism. Solidarity was able to survive state repression by limiting its political activities and appearing to focus on bicycling as a healthy working-class pursuit. However, this did not prevent the Nazis from recognising it as a threat and banning it in 1933, when they nationalised and unified all sports associations.25 In Britain, Solidarity’s equivalent was the Clarion Cycling Club, founded in 1895 to promote a peculiarly English form of utopian socialism, strong on women’s suffrage but with otherwise vague political goals. Like its German counterpart, it drew strength from the comparisons easily drawn at the turn of the century between the sordid industrial towns and the natural beauty of the surrounding countryside. One Clarionette wrote: ‘I claim that the frequent contrasts the cyclist gets of the beauties of nature and the dirty squalor of the towns makes him more anxious than ever to abolish the present system’.26 The juxtaposition of industry and areas of outstanding natural beauty would have been particularly striking in the north of England, where most of the Clarion clubs were formed. But not everyone was so appalled by scenes of industrial modernity. A tradition of industrial tourism in Britain began in the 18th century, when it was common to ‘combine visits to sites of natural beauty with side-trips to mines, factories and brickworks’.27 Continuing this tradition, Harry Inglis describes in Scotland a ‘fine view of the Straiton Oil Works … with the burning heaps of slag thrown out from the retorts’.28 In any case, the degree to which cycling clubs were able to mount political resistance to the system of industrial capitalism was limited, and perhaps a rather empty gesture. For one thing, although Clarion members were sympathetic to the plight of manual workers, they indulged in bicycling mainly as a hobby. Their idea of socialism was based on a multi-faceted ideal, loosely associated with

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vegetarianism, arts-and-crafts movements, feminism and a general sense of anti-establishment, anti-modern utopianism.29 A movement driven by disaffected members of the middle class was never likely to mobilise the proletariat and threaten the status quo. According to one newspaper, Americans returned to bicycling in the 1930s (in 1936 over a million bicycles were sold) because it was ‘the most convenient means at hand to express their biological and spiritual dissatisfaction with the machine age’.30 And yet their activity supported the economic basis of the machine age by initiating a huge rise in production. Purchasing a bicycle, or using one to travel to work, enmeshed the bicyclist in the system of capitalist production. The socialist, utopian and anti-modern sympathies to which bicycle mobility was attached in some quarters, failed to produce any effective political opposition to the capitalist system. Indeed, it might also have helped sustain it, with social bicycling acting as a pressure valve and re-engendering a sense of community. In providing some self-control over mind and body, and an escape for men and women chained to production lines or confined to domestic space, bicycle mobility encouraged a sense of self-determinism. The bicycle was in this respect a more fitting vehicle for liberal politics than for socialism.

HETEROTOPIA AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL GAZE Using the ‘panopticon’ at the centre of Victorian prison design as a metaphor, Michel Foucault has argued that in modern society, control and normalisation of the populace is effected by maintaining surveillance – by imposing visual control over space. Like the ‘iron cage’, the ‘panopticon’ is another metaphor for the presence of power structures in social space acting on the modern consciousness.31 As a postmodern response to this, Foucault later proposed a theory of ‘heterotopia’ as complex spaces that subvert or provide temporary escape from dominant institutionalised spaces. In heterotopia, different spaces and/or times occupy the same physical space, giving the subject a sense of travel or transcendence without going anywhere. Cinemas, theme parks and heritage sites are prime examples of heterotopia commonly found today. The concept of heterotopia can also be used to consider the way bicyclists experience the space of the road unfolding as they pass along it. The dynamic opening out of mental space along the continuum of the road produces an ever-changing heterotopia. Coupled with a sense of well-being from the physical exercise, this forms the basis for the sense of freedom and transcendence commonly experienced in bicycling. This is further

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extended and enriched where the road passes through scenes redolent of personal or shared cultural memories. In her novel The Red and the Green Iris Murdoch refers to the psycho-geographic properties of a road: ‘loaded with some pungent but undeclared consciousness of […] childhood’.32 This is the common experience of returning to childhood or to other seemingly innocent worlds in the past. The scenes though which the road takes the bicyclist might also resonate with attachments to nature, localised rituals and history. And the therapeutic effect of gently passing through such a complex of other space-times, while simultaneously engaging in physical exercise, has been recognised by many writers, including the nature poet Edward Thomas, for whom bicycling and walking were necessary remedies for depression. The bicycle was also very useful to Thomas in carrying him across the varied landscapes of Southern England that feature so strongly in his work. In a sweep across the country, the bicycle tourist is provided not only with an overview of the natural world, but also with opportunities for social encounters and engagement. The interconnectedness of social phenomena might then be glimpsed in what Ford Madox Ford called the ‘sociological gaze’. In The Soul of London, a title which presupposes a kind of psycho-geography, John Attridge suggests that Ford aims to project a steady eye that ‘sweeps the whole social landscape’, taking in ‘all aspects of life’.33 This abstract idea has real potential as the bicyclist escapes the urban crowd, leaving behind the self-absorption and solipsism that might haunt the metropolitan soul. Just such an escape – if slightly contrived, as he did not make the journey in one go – is found in Thomas’s In Pursuit of Spring (1914), perhaps the finest bicycle travelogue of the period. Thomas was especially attuned to the countryside as well as to the sociological landscape of its margins at a time of transition. He describes a ride across a wide section of Southern England, where modernisation is gradually making its mark on a landscape deeply studded with history and tradition. As he does so, he reflects on sharp contrasts and discontinuities between modernity and tradition, technology and nature. But rather than dwelling negatively on the disruptions and discontinuities brought by modernisation, he focuses on new relations forming between country and town, and between rural and industrial life. He is particularly drawn to the fringes and margins where these overlap, such as gypsy encampments and market gardens.34 Bicycle mobility provides for Thomas a platform to survey the changing modern scene ‘steadily and whole’, something E. M. Forster thought impossible, given the pace of change at the turn of the century.35

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PATTERNS OF MOBILITY AND AUTONOMY The significance of mobility in histories of cultural modernity has been recognised for some time.36 In social studies, a shift in emphasis, from the study of fixed and settled institutions to theories of spatiality, mobility and flows, owes much to the work of French theorists, including Jean Baudrillard (1968; 1987), Michel de Certeau (1984), Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1987), Henri Lefebvre (1991), and Bruno Latour (1987). In this French tradition, Baudelaire’s figure of the flaneur is a key reference point.37 Bicycle mobility occupies some of the same physical and theoretical space as flanerie, with both touching on that other major phenomenon of modern urban space – the crowd. As the major cities of Europe and North America expanded, however, the urban centre would become increasingly difficult to comprehend as a whole – the crowd was on the move. Ford Madox Ford suggests that ‘changes in our habits of locomotion’ constituted a sign of the times, with the restless, never-ending crowd a sign of unknowability.38 Certainly bicycle mobility constituted one such change by extending the amorphous and impenetrable metropolitan crowd, and producing new proximities in the suburbs. In the US, where bicycle mobility was more quickly overtaken by automobility, the bicycle craze of the 19th century is said to have ‘lined up along the same continuum’ as the rise of the motor car and the American ‘sprawled out city’.39 The bicycle and the motor car were both responses to a demand for personal mobility in the expanding cities of the late 19th century, and in this respect bicycle mobility paved the way for automobility. Although short-lived in America, the rise of bicycle mobility would demonstrate that the fixed lines of the railroad and streetcar would not satisfy the locomotive needs of American society; the bicycle was already influencing the design of the American city before the motor car was introduced. The motor car might have displaced the bicycle as a figure of speed a century ago, yet to this day, bicycle mobility rivals automobility in terms of autonomous motion.40 Mike Featherstone defines automobilities in general as ‘modes of autonomous, self-directed movement’, emphasising the point that ‘auto’ here does not refer to the engine of a motor car, but to freedom from the constriction of fixed tracks.41 The motor car becomes drastically less self-directed in urban congestion, or where it is channelled onto motorways, or ‘autoroutes’ – rather a misnomer given they are designed to restrict the motorist’s autonomy substantially. The promise of the freedom of the open road – a popular myth in motor car advertising – is shattered

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today by congestion in the monotonous asphalt corridors which constitute some of the ‘non-places’ of modernity.42 While bicycle mobility is increasingly constrained by bicycle lanes, it is less dependent on the infrastructure of filling stations, parking lots etc. Yet even the bicycle cannot enjoy totally autonomous motion where it depends on suitable surfaces and permission to use them. For Baudrillard, the pleasures of automobility are primarily associated with speed, because this creates virtual, if not real, autonomy: speed is at once transcendent and intimate. It implies the mastery of space qua abstract sign of the real world, and the exercise of this mastery involves narcissistic projection … by lifting social taboos and at the same time releasing us from immediate responsibility, the mobility of the car removes a whole set of resistances concerning ourselves and others: dynamism, brio, infatuation, daring – all flow from the freedom of the driver’s situation.43 Bicycle mobility also provides a version of this ‘narcissistic projection’; if it is slower, the sensation of speed on a bicycle is enhanced by greater physical engagement and more exposure to surrounding spaces. As modernity advanced in the West in the late 19th century, the idea of ‘existential spatiality’ was beginning to supersede attachments to traditional place-bound community, in both theory and practice.44 With a greater sense of mobility, partly resulting from new forms of locomotion, urban populations had an enhanced sense of mobility and spatiality. Humans are said to be able to cope with severing ties to traditional place-bound communities through a capacity to ‘objectify the world by setting themselves apart … by creating a gap’.45 While this is sometimes represented in modernism as a negative sense of alienation, bicycle mobility reengages the subject through narcissistic projection and a mastery of space en passant. This sense of mastery is derived from having literally and figuratively gained ground through dint of physical exercise. By contrast, the motor car, steam train and aeroplane all enclose the subject in a detached but moving space, in a perceptual envelope. This experience of being static in a moving element generates what Nigel Thrift calls a ‘speculative experience of the world’.46 This is an essentially touristic experience because it is superficial and filmic; through an uncanny inversion, the traveller becomes immobile and detached as the world seems to pass the window of the vehicle, rather than the other way around. Pedestrian travel is more embodied and place-bound than bicycle mobility, but mastery of space is more limited. Ground gained step-by-step can

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be less expansive: there is little sensation of speed and motion is absorbed into the surrounding space. In contrast with bicycle mobility, walking in modern times is associated more with the labyrinthine spaces of the modern metropolis, or with nostalgia for the lost spaces of nature. Bicycle mobility has greater potential for transgression than walking because the bicyclist can more readily breach the boundaries of social space. This is vividly portrayed in Thomas’s In Pursuit of Spring, as he crosses from ‘posh’ upper-class suburbs, to ‘sordid’ lower-class districts, to gypsy camps and the temporary abodes of itinerant beggars. Roadside inns sometimes form the interstices of these social spaces, providing meeting places, places to experiment with different personae and refuges from social conflicts experienced on the road. By contrast, Thomas is more obviously treading the traditional ground of romantic retrospection in his walking book, The Icknield Way. He describes how early roads ‘wandered like rivers through the land’, and we still say that a road ‘goes’ to London, as we ‘go’ ourselves – ‘Some roads creep, some continue merely; some advance with majesty, some mount a hill in curves like a soaring seagull’. As if resisting the current of the times, Thomas praises the dilatory and digressive movement of the winding country lane, tracing the ancient, meandering paths of men and beasts. He denounces the straight road, and by extension the railway, which is indicative of the abstract lines of modern space: Why go straight? There is nothing at the end of a road better than may be found beside it, though there would be no travel did men believe it. The straight road … can only be made by those in whom extreme haste and forethought have destroyed the power of joy.47 In this anti-modern sentiment, Thomas rejects the full pelt of futurism to be literally concretised in elevated highways and autoroutes.

BICYCLE MOBILITY AND THE POLITICS OF THE ROAD Although more generally associated with personal freedom and emancipation, bicycle mobility has often been constrained by legislation and the concrete hindrances of bad roads and lack of bicycle paths. Access has been the concern of cycling clubs, associations and action groups since the 1880s, with many actively involved in campaigning for improvement. Road safety, rules and legislation, and conflicts with other road users have been major issues for the League of American Wheelmen (LAW) and the

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Cyclists’ Touring Club (CTC) since the 1890s.48 Conflicts began in urban situations where bicyclists shared paths and roads with pedestrians and horse-drawn vehicles. These were exacerbated by the introduction of new transport systems and wider land ownership, which brought an increased sense of ‘territoriality’ and assertion of the proprietary use of land. Even in the days of the Draisine, laws were enacted to keep the machine off pavements and sidewalks, banishing it to the shared space of the public roads (see Chapter 1). The first recorded legal case in Britain involving a pedestrian–bicycle collision was made against the Scottish blacksmithturned-inventor, Kirkpatrick Macmillan, in Glasgow in 1842 (see Chapter 1). He was fined five shillings for allegedly riding on the pavement and knocking over a child on a machine (most probably a tricycle) which he claimed to have ridden all the way from Old Cumnock (40 miles away).49 There followed many more altercations between cyclists and other road users, which were reported in the cycling and national press in the UK and North America.50 In the US, after much campaigning, legislation to give bicyclists the same legal rights and privileges as other road users was passed in 1897, and local corporations became liable for maintaining roads. Campaigns for dedicated bicycle paths met with mixed results. Brooklyn was the first city in the US to construct a path exclusively for bicycles in 1895. The Coney Island Cycle Path was followed by other dedicated paths in Minneapolis and Seattle. But the more grandiose schemes for elevated wooden constructions with electric lighting were never completed. What was to be the Pasadena Cycleway ran up against a powerful competitor in the form of the Southern Pacific Railroad.51 The question of exclusive or shared surfaces for bicycles has remained fraught. In response to the increasing number of road accidents involving bicyclists and motor cars in the UK, the government attempted to introduce segregated bicycle paths alongside new roads from 1935. But the attempt was half-hearted, with most paths falling into disuse because of lack of maintenance and poor design. Significantly and perhaps perversely, the CTC refused to lobby for bicycle paths on behalf of the nation’s ten million cyclists.52 It reasoned that bicycle tracks would be prohibitively expensive, and bicyclists might be compelled to use them, leaving the roads clear for motor vehicles. The UK government was itself divided about bicycling, on the one hand promoting bicycling in 1933 with the Cycling for Health and Beauty Campaign (clearly targeting women), while giving financial support to the motor trade.53 By the 1960s, the UK government had more or less abandoned any initiatives aimed at bicycle use, other than promoting safety issues.

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As urban bicyclists began to explore roads into the countryside for the first time, conflicts inevitably occurred. While touring bicyclists felt the countryside opening up to them – the road a path to freedom and new prospects – to carters and other road users they were a nuisance. It is easy for the bicyclist to take mobility as an extension of his or her personal space, rather than as a protrusion into the shared social space of the road. Even within the same socio-cultural environment, there has always been conflict. And when early bicycle tourists attempted to exercise their personal mobility further afield, on the roads of China, Turkey and parts of the Middle East, they often met with hostility and violence. In the account of his ride around the world, John Foster Fraser records how he and his fellow bicyclists, Lunn and Howe, were ‘stoned by Mohammedans because they alleged we were Christians, and […] pelted with mud in China because Celestials were certain we were devils’; on a slightly more positive note, ‘there were less than a dozen fights with Chinese mobs’ and he only had to pull his revolver on them a couple of times.54 Where legislation has been used to limit bicycle use, it often signals political control rather than public safety. Bicycling was banned in Germany in 1916, apparently to conserve rubber for the war effort. Punishment was harsh: a hefty fine or one year in prison.55 Severe restrictions on bicycling in Germany had already been in force since the 1890s, when bicyclists were obliged to carry passes, and many roads were closed to them for all or part of the day. As the freedom of bicycle mobility worried authorities, bicycles were supplied to policemen and plain-clothed local militia to exercise social control.56 In the late 20th century, the Myanmar authorities banned bicycles from Yangon, and historically, in many places, relations between the state apparatus and bicycle mobility have been fraught. In the 21st century, this tension has found expression in the bicycle’s new role as a general vehicle of protest, resistance and social awareness (see Chapter 4). The class politics inherent in conflicts between road users is colourfully illustrated in H. G. Wells’s The Wheels of Chance. The novel is based on some of Wells’s own bicycling experiences, presented in the form of a social satire reflecting the strains in a class-conscious society coming to terms with modern life. The novice bicyclist Hoopdriver’s first altercation is with a heathkeeper, who offers him unwanted advice as he attempts a running repair: Hoopdriver: ‘I wish you’d leave off staring at me.’ Heath-cutter: ‘You’re pretty unsociable … Why don’t you ride on a private road of your own if no one ain’t to speak to you? … Ain’t I good enough to speak to you?’ (15–16)

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The tetchy labourer asserts his right to the social space of the public road, pointing out that if an aspiring gentleman bicyclist wants privacy, he should restrict himself to the private roads of his estate. Ignoring the heathkeeper’s sarcastic tone in a comment to a passing carter: ‘’E’s a bloomin’ dook, ’e is. ’E don’t converse with no one under a earl’, Hoopdriver persuades himself that the bicycle has raised his status: His social superiority had been so evident that even a man like that noticed it. No more Manchester Department for ten days! The draper Hoopdriver, the Hand, had vanished from existence. Instead he was a gentleman, a man of pleasure, with a five pound note, two sovereigns, and some silver. (17) Wells’s social satire is based on the premise that in the 1890s bicycle mobility crossed the fault lines of class and status. On a bicycle, shop assistants and clerks like Hoopdriver could become associated with gentlemen or, at the other end of the social scale, with ‘scorchers’ – what the magazine Punch would call ‘Cads on Castors’ (see below) – whose appetite for speed and disregard for other road users suggested a subversive sub-culture of lower-class young men. In this class-conscious English society, bicycle mobility elevates Hoopdriver from a ‘Hand’ to a man of leisure with surplus wealth. He is a small but important cog in the machine of industrial capitalism, but bicycling into middle class, his machine becomes the vehicle and the ‘passport’ that allows him to explore the leafy suburbs and country towns where he might rub handlebars with the better classes.

ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF BICYCLE MOBILITY Compared with the material changes to the environment brought about by the introduction of the motor car, the impact of bicycle mobility might seem minimal. Yet Iain Boal has suggested causal links between the bicycle and ‘the history and culture of “automobilism” and [therefore?] to the development of ecologically destructive roads’.57 While the first part of this claim is undeniable, there seems no evidence to suggest that the development of roads and paths solely for bicycle use would necessarily have been destructive. Bicycle clubs and societies campaigned for improved roads before the motor car made them an imperative, but any negative environmental impact from bicycling has surely been overshadowed by the system of automobility. While bicyclists dreamed of a utopian Pasadena Cycleway,

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most American cities followed the modern blueprints of Le Corbusier and others in constructing elevated concrete highways with limited access, exclusively for motorised transport. Haussman’s redesign of Paris had already ‘rationalised’ the older, organic city with blocks and straight lines separating communities. Elevated highways took this rationalist ethos to another level, virtually eliminating social interaction altogether for the sake of efficiency. While the impact of bicycle mobility on the built environment might have been limited, changes to the ‘soft’ environment and social space through extending the ‘time-space paths’ of bicycle users have been considerable.58 As a social practice, bicycling helped facilitate zoning and the production of delineated urban and suburban spaces. With new bicycles and railway season tickets, workers could live in the suburbs and garden cities of England while commuting up to 50 miles a day to work. Some new housing and industrial estates were designed around bicycle mobility, widening the pool of available labour and shaping a modern landscape based on a factory/office–suburb–railway nexus. What we might call the ‘system’ of bicycle mobility could ultimately affect all aspects of modern life, labour and love, even to the extent of broadening the gene pool.59 It enabled men, women and children to reach the next town or village routinely, with significant impact on ‘outbreeding’. In research into working-class courtship mobility in rural Dorset, evidence was found of an increase in extra-parochial working-class marriages when the bicycle was commonly available between the First and Second World Wars.60 In America, bicycle mobility also meant that young people could travel from small towns to the city to attend shows, concerts and the cinema, thereby broadening their intellectual and cultural horizons as well as romantic ones.61

BICYCLE MOBILITY AS A SOCIAL LEVELLER, OR THE WHEEL AS STABILISER As a social revolutioniser it has never had an equal. It has put the human race on wheels, and has thus changed many of the most ordinary processes and methods of social life. It is the great leveller … All are on equal terms.62 As a leveller, the bicycle encouraged social stability during periods of upheaval, political tension and economic uncertainty. The rise of the bicycle in the 1890s coincided with the rapid spread of industrial modernisation, when booms and busts were precipitated by ‘intense phases of spatial

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reorganization’.63 The beginnings of the American bicycle craze coincided with financial panic in the US; during the depression of 1893–1896 there were violent clashes between troops and workers, and a farmers’ revolt. By 1897, the US economy revived, radical populism petered out and political peace returned. Richard Harmond records that during this period, ‘there were those who insisted that the bicycle had been a mechanism of stabilization’.64 According to this theory, the bicycle helped mobilise the workforce and gave workers a sense of independence and self-determination, although the extent of this as a general condition may have been overestimated. Firstly, the idea of the bicycle as a ‘great leveller’ assumes most could afford one, and that on wheels, no man or woman would be significantly advantaged over another. Yet in the mid-1890s, the bicycling crowd everywhere was highly visible and elitist, and this might well have ingrained class difference and fuelled class envy rather than ameliorating it. As fashionable bicycling gave way to middle-class recreational bicycling and then in turn to working-class utilitarian bicycling, it did become more inclusive, but it would be going too far to suggest this produced extensive social levelling; bicycle mobility was like a wave passing through a class structure that persisted substantially intact in England through most of the 20th century. In the rest of Europe, especially in the Low Countries, the bicycle was probably a much more effective leveller. Unlike the radical levellers of the 18th century, bicyclists in western countries were more inclined to socialise rather than politicise class and gender difference. This was probably due to the influence of women in late 19th century bicycle culture, who ultimately domesticated the practice after their initial controversial (and highly politicised) entrance to the scene as New Women. Despite the persistence of class and gender difference, bicycle mobility produced new social spaces in which previously unimagined meetings and liaisons could take place ‘across the lines’. It was able to bridge social divides, either through clubs and societies where it might be ‘licensed’, or by potentially transgressive random associations. Such loosening of ties would test traditional concepts of middle-class morality and conduct, dispensing with forms of etiquette designed to erect barriers between the sexes.65 In The Wheels of Chance, Wells teases poor Hoopdriver by thrusting him into a liaison with a young female cyclist, Jessie, who is quite above his class. He pretends to be a colonial adventurer, but is exposed when his meagre savings expire. Wells also teases the would-be radical New Woman, Jessie, who sets out ‘wearing a patent costume with button-up skirts, and mounted on a diamond-frame safety with Dunlops’, declaring her

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independence: ‘If only I could burgeon out of all that hinders me! I want to struggle, to take my place in the world. I want to be my own mistress, to shape my own career.’ Led astray by an opportunist cad, she is rescued by Hoopdriver, who, although well meaning, is representative of a patriarchal society with limited ideas on gender equality. This is evident when he is unable to conceive of a woman wanting to be her own mistress: he can only assume she is escaping from an ‘undesirable marriage’.66 For Jessie and Hoopdriver, the bicycle promises flight from constraint and hindrance towards social equality, liberation and advancement. Yet in Wells’s social satire, freedom is short and sweet. Both must return to earth, grounded and circumscribed by the still unyielding realities of social modernity in England. Across the Channel in France, however, the situation appears to have been more promising … or more fanciful. If Maurice Leblanc’s novel, Voici des Ailes (1898) is representative, bicycling adventures in France were not constrained by Wellsian social realism. Like Wells, Leblanc was a keen bicyclist writing from experience, but he attached bicycle mobility to a more progressive, soaring sign of modernity. His two sexually liberated couples felt ‘like birds skimming the earth but with their heads radiant in the clouds’; ‘We have wings … They are the beginning of something better when we shall hover in the skies … Wings to leave the world behind us, its wickedness and stupidity, here are wings for our souls set free’.67 And in this French version of bicycle escapism, the couples do switch partners and emerge into a new life, even if this has the appearance of a promiscuous dance with time – an escapist fantasy. Despite its irrealism, Leblanc’s novel gives an indication of how, in the excited optimism of the extended fin de siècle, bicycle mobility conjures up linked fantasies of speed, freedom and sexual liberation. Such notions were represented graphically in the cover illustration of Voici des Ailes, as well as in some of the advertising posters of the period.

BETWEEN EARTH AND AIR: THE EQUIVOCAL SEMIOTICS OF THE BICYCLE Through such cultural associations as those explored by Leblanc, bicycle mobility expressed ideas of speed, freedom and the future, consistent with an emphasis on the ‘transient, fleeting and contingent’ elements of cultural modernism.68 For the Futurists, the figure of the speeding bicyclist symbolised escape from history and tradition. Yet for Heidegger, the ‘elimination of spatial barriers’ suggested by new patterns of mobility might also

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induce a ‘sense of terror’.69 The alternating sense of freedom and terror was one strand of what Baudelaire defined as ‘modern life’. But when optimism for the future waned, as it did during the First World War, another strand asserted itself: a yearning for ‘the eternal and the immutable’.70 When the bicycle’s novelty was superseded by its presence as a common everyday object, its cultural meaning became attached to the eternal strand more so than the fleeting, and the bicycle then came to represent a stabilising rather than revolutionary force. So when it ceased to signify the ‘new’, manufacturers began to exploit the urban dweller’s nostalgia for a traditional way of life, a fantasy of escaping the modern world of machines and the sordid environs of working-class urban life in a return to the timeless world of the countryside. The romanticised image was a fiction imposed on the harsh realities of rural life in England and Continental Europe, but this did not seem to lessen its efficacy as an escape. Between the wars, the bicycle in England was particularly associated with touring down country lanes where quintessential Englishness was preserved intact. The illustrator Frank Patterson captured the nostalgic, anti-modern turn in his many sketches for cycling magazines and books (Figure 2.1). Harmond records a similar turn in America, where ‘[t]he very technological progress which the bicycle typified had brought about a tension-prone, and sometimes strife-torn, industrialised society’, and bicycle mobility offered cyclists the opportunity for forgetfulness and flight.71 ‘Flight’ is used here in the sense of an escape from present realities, a therapeutic subterfuge from the anxieties of modern life. From a Marxist perspective, such escape might be construed as a bourgeois fantasy designed to throw a veil over the forces of industrial capitalism, which alienated workers from social reality through the dispiriting and confining monotony of factory labour. Yet in practice, bicycling shared with other popular pastimes at the beginning of the 20th century the promise of coherence and, ironically, given its associations with flight, a sense of grounding for ordinary workers. This idea is illustrated in The Soul of London (1905), in which Ford Madox Ford gives the example of a cashier whose aim was to ‘cover, on his bicycle, every road of the United Kingdom’ (86). Referred to as a ‘Hand’, it is as though he has been reduced to a body part, to his use-value in industrial society. But the cashier responds to his dismemberment by constructing the bicycling tour as a ‘displaced image of totality, a surrogate for social coherence’.72 Bicycle mobility enables him to conceive of tracing such a totality, and while the idea of covering every road in the country might seem obsessive, touring bicyclists were able to cover up to 70–100 miles a

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Figure 2.1 ‘The Seasons’, Frank Patterson (1938) Source: Taken from the book Memories of Frank Patterson by Jim and Janet Willis (np: Birmingham, 1990). By kind permission of Mrs. Janet Willis, on behalf of Jim Willis.

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day in a circuit of English lanes, and perhaps some were engaged in similar quests for extension and coherence. Certainly, by recording precise itineraries, times and distances, the journals and logbooks of cycling club members suggest a desire for order and continuity in a fragmented modern world. The First World War brought a brutal and literal form of territorialisation, epitomised in trench warfare. Kern has suggested that the war and the form it took was in part a reaction to the anxiety felt in a modern culture where time was speeding up and space was radically altered by the elimination of traditional boundaries.73 From the futurist airiness of flight, the culture of modernity plunged into a form of grounding that verged on interment. The elimination of spatial barriers had been intensified by the introduction of the aeroplane – in wartime, a dark parody of the idea of ‘winged progress’ that had heralded the arrival of the bicycle. The cultural meaning of the bicycle was also changed by war. Not only was it adapted to military use, but it also became a symbol of a different kind of flight, away from both the mud of Flanders and the maelstrom of urban space. The bicyclist turned to the countryside to seek redemption, and out of this urge grew the ‘Outdoors Movement’, which was particularly strong between the wars in England, France and Germany. As thousands of urban dwellers took up hiking and bicycling, this reconnection with the countryside would have romantic, nostalgic, health-giving and sexual resonances. In Germany, however, the health movement had a more sinister side when bicycle touring was absorbed into a radical form of nationalism in which exercise was directed at flexing the nation’s muscle. The bicycle remained a popular form of transport in the UK and other parts of Europe until the 1950s and beyond. As it became more embedded in social life, bicycle mobility produced new domestic spaces of sport and leisure. In the 1900s, mainstream bicycling society was very different from that formed in the days of the Ordinary (1870s–1880s), when ‘[men] constructed bicycling activities as acts of male bonding, often surrounded by militaristic trappings’.74 The safety bicycle allowed a significant gender transformation in bicycling from an exclusively masculinist pursuit to a more domestic and feminised one.

GENDER TRANSFORMATIONS THROUGH BICYCLE MOBILITY The impact of gender relations on bicycle mobility in western society needs to be considered in the context of the demand for women’s rights at that time, and an associated crisis in masculinity. The shifting gender relations

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of social modernity shaped the practice of bicycling in late Victorian society, and in turn bicycle mobility provided a highly visible sign of transformations and conflicts in the (re-)gendering of social space. It is commonly asserted in gender studies that hegemonic masculinity was a driving force in nationalist and imperialist ventures, as well as the power and agency behind industrial modernity. But gender roles delineating the public sphere for men, while confining women to a domestic sphere, were never so clearcut. In the first half of the 20th century, the world of work was often presented as a man’s world, despite the fact that many factories, shops and offices were highly dependent on women’s labour.75 The theoretical gender divide would be further challenged as a crisis of masculinity combined with the emergence of the New Woman. In the 1880s, the Ordinary reigned supreme as a ‘toy for the boys’, its design effectively precluding all but fairly fit male riders. Membership of bicycle clubs at the time implied ‘an explicitly masculine understanding of sporting life and its proprieties, within a masculine discourse of capitalist competition’,76 In Britain, the manliness of the bicycle club reinforced the masculinist ethos of field sports deliberately promoted at male-only public schools, while the CTC held club runs and races that were the highlight of all-male sporting life in this period. The hierarchy of the club was maintained in a strict formation, with the captain in front and other members ranged in order of seniority and race results.77 It was a parade of masculine prowess, replete with uniform, ribbons and badges, the paraphernalia of a militaristic association. Although a few women did master high wheelers, these were an exceptional group consisting mainly of celebrated artistes. The first mass-produced bicycles, therefore, introduced an exclusively masculine practice to the streets.78 Bicycle clubs attempted to dress this in a gentlemanly and disciplined (neo-militaristic) veneer, but young male scorchers, or ‘bicycle cads’, subverted the fashioned decorum of bourgeois society with their reckless speed. This introduced a different form of masculinity into bicycle culture – the ‘laddish’ element is not a recent phenomenon, as confirmed by Punch in a satirical song called ‘Blazy Bill, or, the Bicycle Cad’, which appeared in the August, 1893 edition (73). Mr. Punch adapts Harry Dacre’s popular song ‘Daisy Bell’ in defence of the long-suffering pedestrian against that ‘Jehu of the Bike’. The first chorus goes: Blazy! Blazy! Give me a chance, Sir, do! I’m half crazy,

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All for the fear of you. You haven’t a stylish way, Sir, I can’t admire that ‘blazer’ (Which you think so sweet). The curse of the street Is the Bicycle Cad – like you! This was not Mr. Punch’s first attack on the ‘cad on castors’, as he was also known. A writer in the Hong Kong China Mail alludes to the ‘home’ magazine in berating his presence in the colony at the end of 1892 (see Chapter 3). With women joining the rebellious and transgressive ‘bicycle cad’ on the streets, a strain appeared in the established gender order. A crisis in masculinity was accompanied by the assertion of a widening domestic sphere, and both of these factors would challenge patriarchal orthodoxy. Working alongside women, male factory workers, clerks and shop assistants felt less ‘manly’ than their rural forebears, despite the fact that women had always been equally important to rural labour. Masculinity among all classes was further challenged by the increasing importance of the domestic sphere in nurturing children, and the emergence of the home as the primary site for decisions about domestic consumption, including the purchase of major items like bicycles. Women assumed control over two crucial areas of social life, while the masculine sphere was shrinking to the workplace, the public house and working men’s clubs – or in the case of the upper classes, their offices and gentlemen’s clubs. This is not to say that men did not continue to dominate public and political life, but in the widening domestic sphere, women generally assumed command. The cult of physical fitness through organised sport and exercise might have provided men with a separate sphere, but by the 1890s women had already started to join them, with bicycling the most popular outlet. In 1896, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine published ‘The Stout Miss Hopkins’s Bicycle’ by Octave Thanet, and this heralded public awareness of the ‘dread of growing stout’ among middle-class women.79 Both men and women were susceptible, suggesting a new awareness of the body and the beginnings of social change. Escott observes that in the 1890s, ‘sex emancipation’ and the ‘modified physique of both sexes’ were the most striking changes in ‘the new generation of young men and women of the middle class’; he attributes much of this to the practice of bicycling.80 Bicycle mobility no longer carried specifically masculine associations, as women began to follow ‘their urge towards emancipation: with their own clubs, the bicycle and tennis instead of croquet, they would go far towards

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becoming “New Women”’.81 By breaking into the male monopoly on physical exercise and outdoor recreational sports, women were presented with a novel opportunity to test their physical abilities and limits.82 A different kind of crisis in masculinity was evident in the harsh treatment of homosexuals, whose sexual transgression was interpreted as a form of social and political dissidence capable of tarnishing the nation’s manliness. Oscar Wilde’s trial in 1895 galvanised public opinion, turning him into a hate figure for single-handedly corrupting the youth of Britain. The idea of gender transformation seemed then to strike at the heart of the establishment, and the satire that greeted the emergence of the New Woman on a bicycle is further evidence of an irrational fear stalking the land. Women, it seemed, were beginning to extend their influence from the domestic sphere through new social spaces produced by bicycle mobility. By extending domestic space into the public sphere, they threatened masculinity on its own ground. As the New Woman gradually adapted to bicycle mobility, or rather, as bicycle mobility adapted itself to the New Woman, the fear of ‘gender transference’ emerged, of the masculinisation of women and the feminisation of men.83 But, as Patricia Marks points out, the satirists’ many attempts to portray the New Woman bicyclist as large and energetic, in contrast with her puny male partner, had the effect of destroying the myth that women were helpless in outdoor activities.84 In an editorial of 1896, The Lady Cyclist makes the point that by overcoming this stigma, women would be much better placed to demand more general emancipation: Woman, until recently, was for ages regarded as a dependent being in the family; in social, educational, religious, and political matters, and in most outdoor exercises, she was looked upon as almost helpless … The tens of thousands of wheelwomen of the country who have demonstrated that their sex are not an inferior portion of the human family in this wonderful form of outdoor sport have rendered untold aid to the cause of equal suffrage, by dispelling the mistaken idea of women’s dependence and helplessness.85 Opposition to bicycle mobility for women was still voiced, and not only by the established patriarchal order and the satirists at Punch. In America, Charlotte Smith campaigned against bicycling for women on the grounds that it presented moral dangers to young working-class women. In her view, ‘[m]any a girl has come to her ruin through a spin on a country road’.86 This may have been true, but a young woman might also find

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romance and fresh air, and the risk of ruin was surely no greater for a bicyclist than a pedestrian. Smith received little support for her case either from middle-class campaigners for women’s rights, or from satirists amused by the way the bicycle seemed to be producing more assertive women. The beneficial effects of bicycle mobility for middle-class womanhood and society at large were presented by the indefatigable and matronising Frances Willard in her oft-cited pamphlet, A Wheel within a Wheel, published in 1895. In terms of gender, the metaphor of the ‘wheel within a wheel’ might suggest the smaller domestic realm of womanhood encircled by a larger public sphere dominated by men, but this does not seem to be Willard’s intention. Rather, she uses bicycle mobility as a metaphor for life, with her own struggle to master the wheel an example of how to overcome the destabilising misfortunes of life conspiring to unseat women. Falling from the wheel reminds her of how the world seems ‘in hours of darkness and despondency; its iron mechanism, its pitiless grind, its swift, silent, on-rolling gait [oppressing us] to pathos, if not melancholy’. The cure lies in mastering the machine until ‘good health and plenty of oxygenated air have promptly restored the equilibrium’. Continuing the metaphor, she draws a parallel between herself plus the bicycle and ‘myself plus the world, on whose spinning-wheel we must all learn to ride’.87 Willard’s world was, of course, a million miles from that of ordinary working-class people, to whom the idea of spending two months in the grounds of an English country estate learning to ride an expensive bicycle with the support of three teachers might have seemed a little self-indulgent. Her book takes the bicycle’s metaphorical possibilities into home-spun sermonising, with very little to say about the bicycle or bicycling as such. She does nevertheless make several important points about the gendering of bicycle mobility. Firstly, in appreciating that the ‘physical development of humanity’s mother-half would be wonderfully advanced by that universal introduction of the bicycle,’ she notes that this is bound to happen, not necessarily because women want it to, but because it is in the interests of the ‘commercial monopolies’, since ‘if women patronize the wheel the numbers of buyers will be twice as large’ (38–39; emphases added). Coming from America, Willard shows an informed knowledge of the business world, good insight into how the modern world turns and an awareness of the increasing role women have to play. Secondly, Willard’s obsession with fresh air and exercise leads her to consult a doctor on the subject of women’s health. She is assured that freedom from restricted clothing and exercise will improve the circulation of blood in the lower limbs and genitalia (56–57). This is perhaps one origin of the

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general concern that women would receive sexual stimulation in the saddle (it also suggests that male doctors proposing this had an imperfect grasp of female physiology). The degree to which women were able, through bicycle mobility, to move from domestic to public space has probably been exaggerated, but the benefits in health and well-being were surely significant. By the mid 1890s, concerns for the health risks of riding bicycles were outweighed by recommendations, for middle-class women especially, to get exercise in an increasingly sedentary society.88 The following extract from the Contemporary Review in 1898 is typical of the more enlightened discourse: A bicycle ride, therefore, combines the maximum of fresh air and change of scene with the minimum of injurious effort, and to the delicate will afford exercise without exhaustion, and to the strong will open up the country and give access to places which otherwise would be unattainable to those without horses.89 This is clearly aimed at the large number of people in the non-equestrian middle classes, and at both men and women: the ‘delicate’ and the ‘strong’ – although for satirists in the 1890s it was not always clear which was which. Although Willard’s pamphlet is primarily aimed at promoting women’s bicycling, its main contribution concerns both men and women. Recognising that the fate of women in society is only partly the result of their own choices and actions, she sees the benefits for men and women together sharing the social space produced by bicycle mobility as a prelude to working together towards a fairer society. She over-optimistically and perhaps too kindly anticipates that the typical masculine characteristics of England’s youth (‘bluff’, ‘swagger’ and ‘bravado’) would be mollified if the presumed superiority of young men on the road were to be challenged by their sisters’ newfound expertise (40–41). Dispelling myths of ‘woman’s incompetence to handle bat and oar, bridle and rein, and at last the crossbar of the bicycle’, Willard seeks to domesticate bicycle mobility, to find ‘good fellowship and mutual understanding between men and women who take the road together’ (40–41). It is not simply a matter of extending the range of women’s domestic space into the masculine public sphere, but of re-gendering it altogether. Mackintosh and Norcliffe refer to Willard’s promotion of ‘domestic cycling’ as the introduction of a ‘genteel’ and ‘womanly’ practice,90 and this re-gendered practice is of course not restricted to women. The safety bicycle, which required relatively minor modifications

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to accommodate women, was by the 1890s an emblem of non-masculine, ‘sociable’ bicycle mobility. Although there were plenty of exceptions and this transition took a little longer than is suggested, Marks is right to claim that ‘the lone [masculine] sport of Ordinary riding gave way to family expeditions and a new easy-going relationship between the sexes’.91 Never slow to blow a raspberry at new social practices involving women, Punch took a slightly different view of this ‘easy-going relationship’. Women taking to the wheel were usually depicted as either hopelessly blousy and incompetent, or frighteningly masculine and expert. In a cartoon from Punch in 1895 (Figure 2.2), the women, dressed almost identically to the man, are not so much entering the masculine sphere in a spirit of harmony as threatening to completely transform it: Cycling magazines and novels began to exploit the romantic possibilities of cycling, and there seems plenty of evidence to suggest that mixed outings provided opportunities to meet the opposite sex without a chaperone. In Wheels: A Bicycle Romance (1896), two American women set off on a bicycle tour of Europe disguised as men.92 They meet their beaux, apparently the main purpose of the trip, and make plans to marry in Venice,

Figure 2.2 ‘What a Charming Surprise’, Punch (15 June 1895) Source: © Punch Ltd.

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but they do so while maintaining their masculine disguise, almost as if the women were exploring a transgender fantasy. This in turn attracts rather than repels the men, leaving all four to indulge in being happy ‘bachelors’ together. Bicycle mobility in this case becomes a vehicle for exploring shades of alternative sexuality as well as women’s liberation. For most women, bicycle mobility was an opportunity to find a marriage partner, rather than, or in addition to, a passport to greater independence and freedom from social constraints.93 This is evident in the pages of the Lady Cyclist, which reported news and views on ladies’ cycling. Although the intention of the magazine might have been to popularise bicycling for upper middle-class women, most of the features are clearly designed to shape etiquette (and the feminine form) and maintain the status quo of gender relations. Over half the advertising is for fashion items, and the short stories are popular romances in which middle-class women are either looking for a husband or fantasising about a romantic escapade. The publication – edited by a man (Charles Sisley) – is shy of any radical thinking and we can deduce that its main aim was actually the suppression of radical views. As Jinya Huang has suggested, its discursive construction of the ‘ideal lady cyclist’ seems at odds with the idea of the New Woman, or is aimed at absorbing her into mainstream society.94 Following the Art Deco style popular in bicycle posters of the time, the magazine’s front cover places a demure woman in front of a medieval window, above which are wheels sprouting wings. Despite the wheels acting as symbols of freedom, the dominant theme in the image is one of constraint and decorum. The sudden disappearance of The Lady Cyclist in 1897 coincides with the decline in bicycling as a fashion for the upper classes, but it might also suggest that women bicyclists no longer wished to be patronised. One of the main social consequences of gender transformation which can be safely adduced to bicycle mobility was the increased visibility of women in the public spaces of modernity. Janet Wolff describes the streets of European cities as locales notable for the lack of respectable middle-class women taking the air and visiting cafés with the casual assumption of normality that men enjoyed.95 If women did assume a similar urban gambit, they were subject to the male gaze and their appearance was loaded with innuendo. Bicycle mobility changed this by flooding and transforming the social space of the cities and towns with respectable women, who carried their moral authority from the domestic sphere to the street. Women could now wheel above suspicion, although not entirely immune from the odd critical glance. Advertisers continued to exploit a lingering sexual

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Figure 2.3 ‘Beauty on a Bicycle’, BSA Publications (1939) Source: By kind permission of the National Cycle Archive, Modern Records Centre, Warwickshire, UK.

curiosity, often using images of scantily clad ‘nymphs’ to sell bicycles. Sex was continuing to sell in 1939, when the British bicycle manufacturer BSA published a pamphlet called, ‘Beauty on a Bicycle’ (ghost-written for the actress Ann Seymour; Figure 2.3). Designed to provide advice for women on purchasing bicycles and joining touring clubs, it deliberately uses glamorised images of Hollywood stars posing with bicycles. This association with ‘leggy’ film stars was exported to China, where Shanghai bicycle posters followed the trend (see Chapter 3).

REPRESENTATIONS OF BICYCLE MOBILITY IN MODERNIST ART AND LITERATURE Having explored the important material consequences for social modernity of bicycle mobility, we turn now to its representation by writers and artists in the context of cultural modernism. The bicycle commonly

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appears as a plot device in novels, where it might help to organise liaisons, or be used to symbolise things modern, especially with respect to women in society.96 In modernist art and literature, the bicycle may also be used as a metaphor for exploring relations between the body, the mind and the world, and sometimes these are informed by modern theories of perception and the atomic form of matter. For Harvey, modernist art shows: ‘[a] fascination with technique, speed and motion, with the machine and the factory system, as well as with the stream of new commodities entering into daily life’.97 In all these respects, the bicycle makes a fitting subject. Furthermore, on a more abstract level, modern artists and sculptors were influenced by theories of dynamism, and were particularly responsive to the interesting challenges presented by the bicycle’s unique interrelationship between forward movement, balance and steering.98 They struggled to represent the motion of the machine and its rider through static art forms, and found the bicycle’s minimal contact with the ground especially resonant. The gravity-defying lightness of being suggested by the bicyclist’s near-flight over the ground resonated with modernist aesthetics, which were particularly drawn to representing forms of time and motion. Because it introduced a new form of motion, the modern bicycle was also an obvious subject for the cinema. The Lumière brothers’ first movie in 1895 was not of a steam train heading towards camera, which is the one most people remember, but rather of workers pouring out of the family-owned factory in Lyons. Most of the workers are women on foot, but towards the end of the short sequence a man is seen pushing and trying to mount a bicycle, scattering pedestrians in the process. He is closely followed by another man, seated on and proudly riding his machine towards the camera.99 In poster art, the bicycle is generally presented in a stylised form that emphasises motion and kinaesthetic experience at the expense of a detailed depiction of the machine. As a vague, semi-fantastical source of motion, the bicycle poster might have been designed to counter negative associations with machines as the curse of modern society.100 If posters represented the idea or ideal of bicycle mobility rather than technical accuracy, this suggests that they were designed to sell the social practice of bicycling rather than the machine itself. In posters like that of ‘Cycles Gladiator’ (Figure 2.4), a neo-classical, mythical or romantic setting finds the bicyclist – usually female – enjoying effortless progress in a world without hills or gravity. These commercially oriented representations had the dual effect of feminising bicycle mobility

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in a way that idealised women, while at the same time titillating men.101 Matt Seaton has called the bicycle a ‘richly associative object, conjuring up images, memories, feelings and hopes’.102 This richness can be seen in the wide range of art it has inspired, beginning with the poster art that probably did most to imprint the bicycle on the popular imagination. Colour lithography and the modern bicycle were developed around the same time, and were both perfected in the 1890s.103 The bicycle poster epitomised art in an age of mechanical reproduction, and brought consumerism right into the frame of modern culture. Glossy and glamorous images produced for bicycle manufacturers – often with a frisson of sexual excitement – have been used to sell consumer objects ever since. The customer is presented with a representation of the object, but this is almost entirely displaced by an aura that suggests an experience of riding, captured in a flight of fancy. The details of that fancy may be drawn from classical literature, romantic landscapes or futurist fantasy, and include surreal images of birds, naked women, the circus, space travel and country lanes. In Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men on the Bummel, the narrator strips away the fancy when he poses the question: ‘is it with bicycling as with all other things: does Life at no point realise the poster?’. He continues in contemplative mood:

Figure 2.4 ‘Cycles Gladiator’ Poster (1895) Source: © Alamy.

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When one comes to think of it, few bicycles do realise the poster … the object of the artist is to convince the hesitating neophyte that the sport of bicycling consists in sitting on a luxurious saddle, and being moved rapidly in the direction you wish to go by unseen heavenly powers … Generally speaking, the rider is a lady … No fairy travelling on a summer cloud could take things more easily than does the bicycle girl, according to the poster. Her costume for cycling in hot weather is ideal. Old-fashioned landladies might refuse her lunch, it is true; and a narrowminded police force might desire to secure her and wrap her in a rug preliminary to summonsing her. But she heeds not. Uphill and downhill … she passes, a vision of idle loveliness; her fair hair streaming to the wind, her sylph-like form poised airily, one foot upon the saddle, the other resting upon the lamp … Less often, it is a mere male thing that rides the machine. He is not so accomplished an acrobat as is the lady; but simple tricks, such as standing on the saddle and waving flags, drinking beer or beef-tea while riding, he can and does perform.104 The novel goes on to expose the reality of a strenuous tour in which the body strains to carry rider and machine up each hill, with an intense awareness of physical limits. In some modernist art and literature, the idea of bicycle mobility touches again on the idea of effortless motion, probing the edges of human existence – this lightness of being that bicycle mobility can induce is described by Thomas in his In Pursuit of Spring: Motion was extraordinarily easy that afternoon, and I had no doubts that I did well to bicycle instead of walking. It was as easy as riding in a cart, and more satisfying to a restless man. At the same time I was a great deal nearer to being a disembodied spirit than I can often be … I fed through the senses directly, but very temperately, through the eyes chiefly, and was happier than is explicable or seems reasonable. This pleasure of my disembodied spirit (so to call it) was an inhuman and diffused one, such as may be attained by whatever dregs of this our life survive after death. (210) The euphoria produced by bicycle mobility immediately evaporates, however, as the depressive Thomas associates the ‘disembodied’ experience with the lifting of life’s burdens after death. Bicycle mobility appealed to modernist writers and artists searching for an aesthetic form in which fragmentation caused by modern experience

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might be channelled through a unity of idea and expression. Industrial capitalism, new technologies, consumerism and the startling revelations of theoretical physics all added to the material complexity of modern life. In response, modernism sought ways of shaping artistic and literary space to contain multiple subjectivities and fragmentary times and spaces. Cubism was an attempt to spatialise time and capture multiple perspectives, and the bicycle’s unique form of human-powered motion made a fitting subject for the technique. Umberto Boccioni attempted to capture the speed of the racing cyclist in his Dynamism of a Cyclist (1913). Embracing the possibilities for escaping history into a machine-driven future, this example of Futurist art is not only a celebration of the machine, but also an attempt to represent dynamic relations between man, machine and the surroundings through which he speeds. The representation has two opposing facets: on the one hand, the ‘cyclist’ embodies the cult of speed, which embraces the future, but on the other, speed disrupts and distorts the picture, fracturing any harmony of time-space-being and introducing a sense of conflict. The Russian futurist painter, Natalia Goncharova, presents further negative aspects of bicycle mobility in The Cyclist (1913) (Figure 2.5) by staging an unmatched contest between the agency of the individual and the power of the state. The freedom of human-powered mobility is challenged here by

Figure 2.5 The Cyclist, Natalia Goncharova (1913) Source: © Encyclopedia/Corbis.

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the headwinds of Soviet state control and suppression. The finger of power pointing in the opposite direction to the cyclist’s destination suggests that his efforts are not rewarded. He is bent to the task, straining with the effort, unlike the heroic figure of the racing cyclist in western art. In the early 20th century, modernism and the avant garde confronted an age of mechanical reproduction, which challenged the concept of the ‘original’ in art. Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Readymade’ art directly questions the idea of authenticity and uniqueness in a technological age. Fountain (1917), for example, seems to be designed as ‘anti-art’, but with Bicycle Wheel (1913) (Figure 2.6) Duchamp’s simple construction of a bicycle wheel fitted to a

Figure 2.6 Bicycle Wheel, Marcel Duchamp (1913) Source: © Alamy.

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kitchen stool has an aesthetic integrity that reaches beyond the object. This moves the ‘discursive art’ of the period, in which the object is designed as a critical questioning of some aspect of art, forwards into an emerging kinetic art.105 Breaking away from abstract spatial form, Duchamp uses the wheel to represent motion, in a simple transformation to mobility as representation. Like painters and sculptors of the period, modernist writers also searched for a new form in which to convey the complex time and space of modern experience. Representing the mental spaces of memory and consciousness were of particular interest. Yet, as most writers realised, the task so often seemed beyond their abilities – and perhaps beyond the power of representation. To Samuel Beckett, the failure in artistic and literary expression to reproduce modern experience – or to convey realistically a sense of subjective consciousness – becomes in itself a dominant theme. In the bicycle, he seems to have found a motif that embodied a fundamental aspect of human existence – aspiring and failing.106 A similar idea seems to have occurred to a contributor to Scientific American in 1899, when he describes bicycle mobility as ‘one expression of the great world of struggle of mind to overcome the inertia of matter’.107 With death hovering over the inevitability of human failure, characters in Beckett’s work might sometimes appear to achieve grace in unity and effortless progress, but at the same time they experience, like Thomas (see above), a sense of disembodiment as a prefiguring of death. Bicycle mobility is then associated with an alternating life struggle/death wish. In The Calmative, Beckett comes close to producing an illustration of the effortless, ethereal bicycling seen in the posters: He was pedalling slowly in the middle of the street, reading a newspaper which he held with both hands spread open before his eyes. Every now and then he rang his bell without interrupting his reading. I watched him recede until he was no more than a dot on the horizon.108 The narrator of this highly ambiguous ‘post mortem’ tale – who has already announced his death in the first sentence – follows the ‘dot on the horizon’ until he closes in on the bicyclist. On a bicycle himself and inspired by the other, the narrator suddenly finds his own exertions fall away in what becomes a vision of final moments, of the transition to a disembodied ‘I’:

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I had no pain whatever, not even in my legs … I quickened my step with the result that I swept forward as if on rollers. This is not me, I said, let us make the most of it. Finding myself in an instant a bare ten paces in his rear I slowed down so as not to burst in on him.109 The narrator announces that he is definitively not himself, and having vacated his physical self he has transcended bodily limitations. In The Third Policeman (1940), Flann O’Brien similarly finds that the ultimate experience of bicycle mobility is not of this world: ‘A breeze had sprung up from nowhere and pushed tirelessly at my back, making me flit effortlessly through the darkness like a thing on wings’ (194). He is like a ‘thing’ on wings, because at the end of the journey he discovers, like the narrator in The Calmative, that he also is deceased. Both Beckett and O’Brien take the bicycle on a path towards man– machine unity, only to arrive in disembodiment and deconstruction. At this point, the representation of man/woman–machine takes the wings of a desire whose fulfilment can only be found in death. This places bicycle mobility at the centre of a modernist dilemma: the yearning to escape history and flee the irreducible site of the body is fraught with alienation. Yet existential distancing can sometimes lead to more positive or humorous associations. For example, in Beckett, the bicycle’s prosthetic qualities can effect ‘an uncanny congeniality with the body’, leading to confusion of the boundaries between inside and outside, self and world.110 Beckett’s choice of bicycle mobility perfectly suits a common theme of extending bodily capabilities through ‘abstractions of distance’, while at the same time ‘hyphenating’ the body with the material world. While the speeding bicycle might be described as an ‘agent of telekinesis’, the rider’s bottom registers a ‘palpable union with the road’. This ‘anal hyphen’, as Daniel Katz calls it, is explicit in Beckett’s early poem ‘Sanies I’, where he describes a day of sweet showers, no care in the world and ‘heaven in the sphincter’.111 Although the aeroplane and motor car were soon to surpass it for speed, the bicycle, as Beckett humorously notices, extends the physical capabilities of the human body. It forms a crux, evoking abstract ideas of distance while literarily seating the body on every bump and gradient of the physical road. Bicycle mobility is therefore a more intimate, sensual, as well as more universal, experience of motion. In the context of modernism, it is suggestive of a futurist zeitgeist, which finds harmony between the machine and the body. New liberties are explored, first through physical extension

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of the body, and then by extension of the sensorium and imagination. The unity of machine-body-spirit moving forward with kinetic harmony and balance was a powerful symbol of the age. Yet this symbolism of the bicycle was very specific to western art and modernity. In the next chapter, nonwestern contexts are explored to give a wider range to the diverse cultural meanings conveyed by the bicycle as an object, and as an extension of human capability.

THREE

CROSSINGS: THE DIFFUSION OF BICYCLE CULTURE ACROSS ASIA AND AFRICA

The bicycle first appeared in China, Japan and the European colonies of Asia and Africa between 1880 and 1920. As an exotic foreign object, it was often regarded with suspicion and ridicule; as a representative of an imported technology, it also met with resistance when it was seen as the agent of a foreign imperialist culture. In time, the bicycle would overcome these cultural obstacles and become absorbed into local societies, transformed into a home-grown everyday object. Prior to local production getting under way, this acculturation operated with bicycles still being imported from Britain and Japan. This process occurred at a different pace in different places, and this chapter will consider this variation as a measure of how ready non-western countries were to adapt to westernstyle modernisation. Not surprisingly, the bicycle was swiftly adopted in European-run colonies around the world, and in the western-run treaty ports of China. Japan was the first Asian country to have a local bicycle industry of note, with India and China following a long time later. As with the import of other everyday technologies, the bicycle had profound effects on social life and culture wherever it went. Initially, the diffusion of technologies like the bicycle might have been seen as an extension of western power, especially where colonialism was being consolidated in Asia and Africa. Indeed, new forms of communication and mobility were essential to the maintenance of modern empires, and the bicycle played a part in this. In the final throes of Empire, however, it was turned against the colonial masters and used as a vehicle of insurgency. By the mid-20th century, the bicycle had shed its western associations, and through acculturation and local empowerment it was transforming social life across Asia and Africa.1 This chapter will explore some of the different cultural meanings it acquired as it went. 105

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To begin, the bicycle had first to work its way down through the hierarchies of society to find the critical mass that would sustain bicycling as a common practice. Following a similar pattern to that in Europe, bicycling began as a fashionable modern pursuit for the rich in the colonies of India and the treaty ports of China in the 1890s. But where in western society it trickled down to the middle and working classes within just a decade, it generally took much longer in Asia and Africa. The time lag is a reflection of how slowly modernisation took hold, as this affected the availability and affordability of new technologies. Without modernisation, countries in Africa and Asia were not equipped for bicycle production and would have to rely on imported bicycles, which always came at a premium. In any case, countries with pre-industrial rural economies had only a small section of the population that had any disposable income at all. The majority of people living in the undeveloped world did not have sufficient income to purchase a bicycle until after the Second World War. Social division and the size of the poverty gap were contributing factors to this time lag in both China and the British colonies, while in Japan and the Dutch East Indies these were less of a barrier. But another major factor affecting the acculturation of the bicycle in certain Asian and African contexts was the lack of women as significant actors. As we have seen, women took a leading role in promoting bicycle culture in the West from the 1890s onwards, and this guaranteed its success. In Africa and much of Asia, cultural barriers to women riding bicycles were still present as late as the 1950s and 1960s. The bicycle would therefore bring few benefits to women, whose exclusion from the social practice confirmed the degree of patriarchal control in certain traditional societies. As a general rule, the bicycle’s rate of acculturation in non-western societies could be measured against their capacity to adopt western-style (technological) modernity.2 To some extent, the appearance of the bicycle in non-western societies between 1890 and 1940 could therefore be read as a talisman for modernity. As predominantly and explicitly western imports, new technologies like the bicycle were liable to confirm the narrative peddled by European colonial powers: advancing western civilisations would come to gradually dominate the rest of the world through science and technology. Of course, by the time of the bicycle, the US would also be in implicated in this project, even if it was simultaneously denouncing colonialism. Non-western societies were by definition distanced from the centres of industrial development and modernity (although not for long in the case of Japan). As a highly visible and sometimes spectacular technology, the bicycle attracted a great deal of public attention. It was immediately

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identified with foreign culture rather than home-grown innovation, and in China this would prove a major obstacle, leading to its belated arrival in what would subsequently become the Kingdom of the Bicycle.3 As in the West, the bicycle was a sign of ‘the new’, but the foreign character of the future it signalled gave it an altogether different aura. Because it signalled progress towards western-style modernity, it was met with violent resistance in China, although most other countries in Africa and Asia were more welcoming. Nevertheless, it often took some time before the bicycle’s western associations (technological and imperial) gradually diminished and the bicycle could be fully absorbed into non-western societies. In China, the bicycle was so absorbed into the state-sponsored culture in the 1960s that most citizens believed (and still believe) that it was a Chinese invention. By the 1930s, the bicycle had lost much of its exotic, foreign aura across Japan, the treaty ports of China, colonial India and Southeast Asia; a decade later it would also be absorbed into local culture in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and colonial Africa. The bicycle retained its associations with modernity, but in a global context these took on new and complex cultural meanings as modernity was itself transformed and translated. As a result, between 1890 and 1930, Japan and China presented opposing contexts for western-style modernisation. Enthusiasm for modernisation in late Meiji Japan would not be matched in China for decades, and this lag would have a major impact on world history as well as the history of the bicycle. The popular appeal of the bicycle would eventually overcome cultural and economic obstacles all across Asia and Africa, although progression to mass bicycle ownership only occurred after major economic transitions to bring down the cost of producing bicycles locally and to increase wages so that they were affordable. Many modern objects arrived in Asia and Africa through what the West has become accustomed to seeing as the global diffusion of western technology between 1870 and the 1930s. Of these, things like electric torches, soap and matches were easily appropriated and absorbed into everyday life as purely utilitarian objects.4 Yet in this process of adoption, the taint of imperialism was still evident. For example, adverts for Lifebuoy soap aimed at the subjects of the British Empire suggested a diffusion of light and cleanliness from the colonial centre, a beacon of civilisation reaching out to the developing world.5 While this encoded a rhetoric of trade imperialism and empire, the use of low-value utilitarian products like soap in the everyday life of Asian and African societies was probably not regarded as a threat to traditional culture. The everyday was furnished, but not transformed, by soap, matches and electric torches. On the other hand, the

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bicycle certainly would have transformative effects, even if it took some time for these to work their way through the social hierarchy, given the economic obstacles to widespread bicycle use. Together with industrial machinery, the telegraph and the steam train, the bicycle was introduced to China in the 1890s, at the end of the late Qing period. Such technological innovations at first profited only western entrepreneurs and a select group of Chinese. As a consequence of the Opium Wars, western powers exerted considerable influence along the coastal fringe of China. According to Emily Hahn, western-style modernisation went at such a pace that by 1890, ‘the new civilization was penetrating, raucous and speedy and redolent of machine oil, like the first railway built [by the British] in China, between China and Woosung’.6 As foreign interventions rather than home-grown innovations, these were not always welcomed. Anti-modern and anti-British sentiment was sufficiently strong for China’s first (western-sponsored) railway to be torn up, and the rails dumped and left to rust on the shores of Formosa.7 Ultimately, the tide of modernisation was irresistible even in China, where resentment towards the West’s growing power and influence had been building since the 1850s. In 1898–1901, just as the safety bicycle first began to reach China, the Boxer Rebellion broke out, leading to a virtual ‘war’ against foreigners.8 With such resentment towards the West, China’s path to modernisation and a technology-driven future proceeded with faltering steps.9 Modernisation in Japan, on the other hand, went at a much faster and more consistent pace. Seemingly less obstructed by resentment towards the ‘foreign’, Japan embraced new technologies, and developed its own bicycle industry, copying, assembling and exporting bicycles before 1900. At this time, the bicycle was still a rare sight across most of China outside the foreign-run treaty ports.

TWO-SPEED ASIA: THE INTRODUCTION OF BICYCLES TO CHINA AND JAPAN Early bicycles were occasionally seen in Asia during the 19th century, and the Ordinary became a fairly common sight on the streets of Shanghai and Tokyo by the end of the century. The earliest record in Chinese history of the bicycle is the widely circulated report of a Chinese diplomat visiting Europe in search of useful industrial innovations. In 1866, he reported seeing some form of Draisine and a prototype French velocipede.10 But it seems that primitive bicycles were regarded at this time by Chinese authorities as curiosities with no immediate practical application for the military,

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nor any obvious benefit to industrial development. With labour so cheap, there was no demand in China for such an expensive form of personal transport; nor was there a domestic market for consumer goods, or a culture of sport and recreation requiring bicycles. So when the safety bicycle was introduced to China in the late 1890s, the ensuing, short-lived bicycle craze was enjoyed exclusively by westerners, Chinese diplomats, returning students from Japan and the West, and a wealthy, cosmopolitan Chinese elite. The lack of middle-class consumers, who had driven the market for bicycles in the West (and in Japan) in the 1890s, was a major factor in the slow path towards mass cycling in China. Significantly, it was the International Settlement of Shanghai where the bicycle was first introduced to China. As a highly modernised international hub, exotic goods and services were always easy to find here. Since the 1880s, Shanghai had kept pace with the West in technological innovation and commodification. By 1890, cotton mills were being constructed on the outskirts of the city, while parks, public spaces and highways presented a modern prospect comparable with any western city.11 Foreigners were mainly responsible for this western appearance, but many rich Chinese took advantage of its modern conveniences and business opportunities. Ordinary Chinese came looking for work as clerks and coolies, presenting a starkly divided society. Shanghai was quick to copy western fashions, so when the safety bicycle arrived in the 1890s it was an immediate success. Outside areas of western influence in China, however, the bicycle was unknown or actively resisted as a symbol of western imperialism. This stark contrast was noted by the British cyclists Fraser, Howe and Lunn when they crossed the country in 1897 on their round the world adventure. Only very occasionally does Fraser’s account of the journey, which was widely reported in Chinese newspapers, mention anything other than rude hospitality and outright hostility towards the cyclists.12 This was perhaps to be expected, given the official Chinese line that foreigners had invaded the country, supplied opium to its people and exploited its riches, and were destroying its culture. Fraser, Howe and Lunn were attempting to cross China when the Boxer Uprising was imminent, leading to foreign missions being attacked and the Empress Dowager calling for foreigners to be killed. Riots against foreign institutions were commonplace, even in Beijing and Shanghai, and an international force was mustered to quell the rebellion.13 Although Chinese officials made cursory attempts to protect the British cyclists, they were clearly unwelcome across the country, not for who they were, but for the assertion of western influence in China that their journey unfortunately appeared to symbolise. The

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friendly or benign curiosity their adventure attracted in other countries was replaced here by the immediate threat of physical violence as local Chinese acted as if resisting an invasion. The British cyclists narrowly survived stone-throwing mobs and ‘boxers’, and on several occasions came close to starvation. Against the boxers they used their own fists, and occasionally a revolver. Any comfort they enjoyed was usually courtesy of western missions and consulates, oases of civilisation to the bicyclists, if foreign incursions to most Chinese.14 On arriving in Shanghai, the contrast could hardly have been more marked for Fraser, Howe and Lunn. The city emphatically marked the gap in China between feudal tradition and an emergent western-style modernity.15 The foreigners were escorted into Shanghai by four American cyclists who came to meet them, and they were invited to luncheon by Mr and Mrs Hogg, at what struck Fraser as the very ‘English-sounding village’ of Jessfield. Afterwards, a reception was held in their honour on a brightly decorated houseboat, followed by a procession headed by mounted police and carriages. They were joined by 200 cyclists by the time they reached Jessfield Road, providing a spectacle of more bicycles at one time than they had seen altogether in five months crossing China.16 The bicycle parade was as much a celebration of Empire as a personal triumph for the bicyclists. A bicycle race had already been chosen to mark Queen Victoria’s 60th anniversary earlier in the year, and this event, held on the racecourse west of Nicheng Bridge, was well attended by foreign bicyclists and reported widely in the Chinese press (Figure 3.1). In an article in the local press, there was praise for the new machines, which sped ‘like hawks flying over thousands of miles in the twinkling of an eye’.17 This poetic description shows a naïve fascination with modern objects, with no interest at all in the workings or practical use of bicycles in China. Politically motivated resistance to western imports like the bicycle started to evaporate in the main Chinese cities as the Empire emerged from the first Sino-Japanese War. The old traditions of the Qing Dynasty began to give way in 1911 to a more modern republican state. Yet other social and economic factors remained a barrier to the bicycle’s wider penetration. Western manufactured goods remained the preserve of westerners and rich Chinese, for whom bicycling was less an alien cultural practice than the public expression of a privilege that confirmed both rigid Chinese social strata and the neo-colonial division of society. Citing a British Customs official in 1901, Amir Eesfehani attributes the tendency for officials and the wealthier Chinese to purchase western luxury goods to the desire for

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Figure 3.1 ‘Cycle Race in Shanghai’ (1897) Source: Tian-shi-zhai Pictorial, vol. 1, no. 8, 1897. With kind permission of Tao Xu, Shanghai.

conspicuous displays of their wealth and to ‘exhibit the progressiveness of their owners’.18 While a local elite in China developed a penchant for exotic western goods to flaunt their wealth and status, and to appear modern, there was a growing realisation among some leaders of the need to promote westernstyle modernity as the means to future prosperity. But this realisation was more acute and more urgent in Japan, where an ethos of western-style capitalist modernisation was already well established by the 1890s (despite some resistance from the samurai class). There were particular cultural as well as economic reasons why China was in the crawler lane by comparison. Outside the main cities, there was no capital investment and consequently no modern production facilities. Neither was there a large market for expensive imported bicycles, which were beyond the means of most Chinese. The general lack of women taking up bicycling in China also predicated against a western-style boom. In the West, women had played a major part in extending bicycling society in the 1890s, but bicycling for

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Chinese women was exceptional even in the treaty ports, and was considered improper in the countryside until the 1930s. Female students in the missionary schools were among the first to ride bicycles. They were introduced to the American practice of healthy exercise for women, which in China was seen as a way of bringing an end to the practice of foot-binding. Bicycling was one of the main forms of physical exercise for these female students, and there is a record of a bicycle event held at a sports meeting as early as 1906 at the Female School and Kindergarten of Ximen Waiwuben.19 Charlie Soong had lived in America for eight years before returning to China, where his family of three daughters would have major roles to play in modern China; he also became a keen bicyclist. It is widely reported that he bought his ten-year old daughter Ai-ling a bicycle in 1900, and bicycled with her along the Bund. Hahn suggests that this might have made her one of the first Chinese girls to own a bicycle.20 Lessons were available for women to ride bicycles in Zhang Yuan Garden in Shanghai in the 1910s,21 following the fashion in the parks of Paris and London. But fashion and celebrity bicycling had none of the impact in China that it had in America or Europe. Emulation was limited to the elite in Beijing, Shanghai and other treaty ports, and if the Emperor Yi rode his bicycle as a child around the Forbidden City in the early 1900s, it was as a lonely figure isolated from the tide of history about to sweep away the Qing Dynasty. One pragmatic extension of bicycling in Chinese society was effected by high-earning ‘sing-song girls’ – the hostesses, dancing partners and prostitutes who were part of the colourful social life of Chinese cities.22 For these women, bicycles were a luxury, but also a convenience and a fitting accoutrement to their alternative lifestyle. They would brazenly take photos with bicycles in a studio, and ride them in the parks of Shanghai.23 Although the sumptuous world of this group bore little resemblance to the everyday life of women in China, it was not censored. Indeed, novelists and writers for Picture Daily actually celebrated the elegance of these painted ‘beauties’ on wheels, in words and images (Figures 3.2 and 3.3). Accompanying the image in Figure 3.3 is the following commentary: From time to time they moved their golden lotuses with a smile and slightly revolved the rubber wheel going to and fro through the fragrant grass, what a beautiful picture it is! Someone praised [the scene]: we saw beauties riding bicycles, their eyebrows occasionally knitted and their golden lotuses tightly stuck to the pedals. Their slender arms came in and out of the sunshine. What a charming picture!24

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Figure 3.2 ‘Agile Ladies Riding’, Shanghai (c. 1930) Source: Picture Daily c. 1930. With kind permission of Tao Xu, Shanghai.

Figure 3.3 ‘Women Riding in the Field’, Shanghai (c. 1930) Source: Picture Daily c. 1930. With kind permission of Tao Xu.

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The ‘golden lotuses’ are the feet, which were traditionally bound, and the picture could therefore be read as a reference to moving from traditional society to the modern world. But once again, the spectacle is observed through a poetic lens, with no technical curiosity or practical interest in the machine itself.25 In a more open society, such a display might have signalled the expression and assertion of female independence, as it had for the bohemian female riders of the French velocipede in Paris in the 1860s (see Chapter 2). What is common to both groups on either side of the world, however, is the association between bicycles and ‘loose women’. This is an association that the images above seek to obscure by regarding the scene through a traditional lens. It makes an interesting comparison with the neo-classicist fantasies of some western bicycle posters, which show women in a more obviously sexualised light. One of the common explanations for the failure of the bicycle to gain ground in China outside the international enclaves has been that the elite of China were more inclined to pay others to carry them in sedan chairs or rickshaws, the latter being imported from Japan after 1874 (when production of the Ordinary was already in full swing and available for export). With no social progress on the horizon, the availability of cheap labour was a given, and this, combined with the innovation of the rickshaw, made the Ordinary a far less attractive means of transport to most wealthy Chinese. It may well have seemed perverse to these men to invest in difficult to ride bicycles which required them to employ their own muscle. Personal mobility and the opportunity to extend the body’s efforts in healthy exercise were not an attractive proposition, neither was there was any desire to emulate others (least of all the ‘uncivilised’ foreigner). As if this was not already disincentive enough, a further objection in China was that the bicycle could be a source of potential embarrassment, and this was to be avoided at all costs. In the days of the Ordinary, rich Chinese were reluctant to expose themselves and risk losing face by failing to master the foreign wheel. When western bicyclists made a spectacle of themselves, the attraction for most Chinese onlookers was generally one of detached amusement mixed with hostility towards foreigners. Sightings of bicycles in Shanghai had been rare during the 1870s, when velocipedes and the Ordinary were commonplace in London and Paris. But one early reference in a Chinese guide to Shanghai, Hu you zaji (1876), records the remarkable sight of foreigners riding bicycles as a spectacle not to be missed by the Chinese visitor.26 By the end of the 1880s, the Ordinary had become a familiar sight, and the formidable athletic agility of

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foreigners perched on their high wheelers was celebrated in Shanghai newspapers. Yet according to Eesfehani, ‘[The] Chinese were completely absent from the scenes depicted.’27 Abstinence is partly explained by the cost of the machines (more than double the price in England), but for those Chinese who could afford them there was also a degree of schadenfreude, described in contemporary Chinese reports as ‘amusement over the fallen cyclist’. A cartoon printed in the journal Huatu Xinbao (The Chinese Illustrated News), presents a young Chinese man’s attempt to ride an Ordinary; it ends with him being unceremoniously thrown into a pond (Figure 3.4).28

Figure 3.4 ‘Ride a bicycle and fall in water’, Shanghai (1880) Source: Hua Tu Xin Bao, Shanghai, vol. 5, August 1880. With kind permission of Tao Xu.

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The fall is witnessed by two onlookers and the cartoon together with its commentary are devised as a lesson in hubris, and a practical warning against the difficulties of trying to master the foreign contraption. Perhaps of greater significance in the cartoon’s message is the underlying message to Chinese youth: if you seek to emulate foreign ways, you might come a ‘cropper’29 and be shamed in front of your neighbours. Sensitivity to public humiliation in this situation might also extend to a general anxiety in China about imitating the West and thereby admitting to its own technological inferiority. In his analysis of the history of the bicycle in China, Eesfehani reads the potential for disgrace as an example of the ‘biggest cultural obstacle to the spread of the bicycle in 19th century China’.30 Although this might have dissuaded some of the Chinese elite, it was economic factors that prevented these relatively expensive machines finding their way into Chinese households in the 1880s. We should also remember that the Ordinary was never a popular machine in the West, with a small minority of regular users among relatively fit men. This all changed in the West when the much easier to ride safety bicycles arrived, but no such uptake occurred in Shanghai when the safety was introduced in the 1890s, because few Chinese could afford one unless it was supplied by their employer. Both inside and outside the treaty ports, affordability was the greater barrier. Any suggestion that Chinese men were physically incapable of riding the Ordinary is belied by the fact that ethnic Chinese were among the first to use the bicycle in Asia. Kees van Dijk has suggested that ‘It may well be that the Chinese in Singapore were forerunners of this worldwide trend [of bicycle commuting]. Chinese blacksmiths rode the high bicycle or high-wheeler […] to their work at the Tanjong Pagar Docks […] in the 1870s or 1880s’.31 This was at a time when the Ordinary was primarily used for leisure and recreation in the West. Enthusiasm for the bicycle was also evident when Chinese notables joined Europeans and Indonesians riding Japanese safety bicycles in the Netherlands Indies at the end of the century.32 This further suggests that it was socio-economic rather than cultural or ethnic differences that prevented the bicycle spreading in China until much later. Although there is anecdotal evidence that the Chinese rejected the Ordinary on cultural grounds, the modern bicycle met with a different reception. With the arrival of the safety in the 1890s it becomes clear that any cultural obstacles are replaced by political and economic factors. The continuing absence of the Chinese from the global bicycling scene between the 1890s and 1930s reflects a dilemma particular to China. The bicycle

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was a challenge to traditional ways and a visible reminder of foreign technological superiority. Yet to ignore modernisation and western-style industrialisation would be to condemn China to falling further behind the West. This dilemma had particular resonance where accepting western-style modernisation heightened the sense of humiliation wrought by the Opium Wars and subsequent treaties that ceded governance of China’s key trading ports to foreigners. The nationalist government of Sun Yat-sen attempted to modernise, but there remained political resistance to western-style modernity and capitalist modes of production. The bicycle’s advance was therefore limited to foreign enclaves and the major cities which were open to the West. Where Japan had thoroughly embraced the bicycle and other western goods by the 1890s, China retained ideological objections and was otherwise hampered by the widespread poverty of a feudal economy. There was every reason to suspect the bicycle of being a Trojan horse, bringing western modernisation to enthral the Celestial Empire, but this was a politically motivated narrative to defend the failure of the Empire. The social and economic conditions that prevented the advance of the bicycle in China were also preventing the country from emerging from decades of poverty and corruption into the modern era. But this was slowly beginning to change. Citing an article in Shenbao entitled, ‘The Opening of Social Mode’, Tao Xu suggests that after 1900, ‘the psychological defence of nationalism was finally broken down. Instead, the concept of “Celestial Empire” was replaced by the worship of foreign things’. Where previously, western goods were criticised and no one dared to imitate foreigners, ‘Harsh blame and mockery were replaced by deep admiration and desire.’33 If this claim can be substantiated, it represents a huge cultural turn, in the atmosphere of which the bicycle would take on a very different, almost opposite, meaning in China. Certainly among the more western-looking Chinese in Shanghai, the bicycle began to be considered as a ‘civilised and ingenious machine’, and when the first locally funded mechanised flour factory was built in Shanghai in 1900, the owners used a bicycle as their trademark. As in the West, the bicycle now symbolised the advance of industrial modernity, and this significance was exploited in marketing other products.34 Yet any transformation from anti-foreign sentiment to the celebration of foreign goods and values was still mainly limited to the western-run treaty ports until the 1930s. Social mobility and physical mobility were more rigidly connected in Chinese society. Those who could afford the bicycle felt that propelling themselves rather than paying someone to convey them around the city was demeaning, so they took a rickshaw. Walking or taking

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a public ‘wheelbarrow’ was the alternative for the lower classes.35 Such visible and public demarcations of class persisted for decades. This was no place for social levelling, and the lack of diffusion of the bicycle across China in the early 20th century reflects the absence of the kind of social mobility that might ensue from full-scale modernisation, according to a western model of development. The small group of cosmopolitan Chinese who rode bicycles before the 1920s included ‘returned students’, journalists, diplomats and businessmen. Chen Leng, founder of the Shanghai newspaper Shibao, was typical. Returning from studying in Japan to found the daily newspaper in 1904, he was keen to demonstrate his cosmopolitan outlook, which he did by riding a bicycle and adopting other faux western customs of dress and lifestyle borrowed from Japan.36 But this group were exceptional, and not until the national government began to create new urban social spaces after the 1911 revolution did the bicycle begin to penetrate Chinese cities. A bicycle industry then began to figure in more progressive state policies, although it was not until the communists came to power in the 1940s that this really advanced, as bicycling would then become synonymous with a workingclass revolution. The bicycle’s long road to China bypassed the middle classes – possibly a phantom group in China anyway, and certainly not as evident as in the West – but when it reached the proletariat it was as an ideological necessity. In the late 1930s, before the communists introduced affordable bicycles by taking control of the bicycle industry and providing state funding, a thriving second-hand market emerged in Chinese cities.37 For the working classes, who had seen no significant increase in wages for decades, this might have provided an opportunity to own a bicycle. As in the West, those who could afford new bicycles cast off older models in favour of the new imports, especially the improved safeties and high-end English roadsters, as well as new bicycles from Japan designed especially for the Asian market. But even the second-hand market was still out of reach for the vast majority of Chinese. The dream of owning a bicycle to improve their employment prospects as traders, movers and messengers would remain unfulfilled until subsidised local bicycles were available in the 1950s. Frank Dikotter mentions the presence of imported models for sale in Chengdu in 1909 as evidence that ‘the bicycle rapidly conquered other parts of the country’,38 but the claim is several decades premature. The exorbitant price of the cited Chengdu bicycle ($150) was already double the average cost in Britain, where a worker could buy a brand new machine for about two months’ salary (or acquire one on hire purchase). A Chinese worker,

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however, would have had to pay nearly double his annual wage at a time when he would have been spending more than 80% of his income on food and rent.39 Even the much cheaper imports from Japan were out of reach of most Chinese workers. By contrast, in Shanghai hundreds of bicycles were supplied to the British-run postal service in 1920, but by then it was already the practice for adult foreigners and the Chinese elite to travel in motor cars. Even an aficionado like Chen Leng was persuaded to give up his bicycle and use a motor car for the sake of appearance. In a traffic survey at a busy intersection in Shanghai’s International Settlement in 1918, there were counted 14,663 rickshaws, 942 horsedrawn carriages, no sedan chairs and 772 bicycles.40 By this time, the rich Chinese and colonial elite had already moved from sedan chair and bicycle to motor cars and rickshaws, leaving bicycles to their children. Rickshaws were by far the most common form of transport in the city. The presence of ‘hundreds of bicycles’ outside the gates of the Tung An Bazaar in Beijing, reported by Jermyn Chi-Hung Lynn in Social Life of the Chinese in Peking (1928), also gives an exaggerated impression of the spread of bicycles in China. It is explained by the considerable foreign patronage of the bazaar. Here, the western-style shops and restaurants were a honey pot for an unrepresentative bicycling society of foreigners and cosmopolitan Chinese.41 In other Chinese cities, such as Suzhou, the bicycle did not begin to outnumber horse drawn carts and sedan chairs until after the Japanese invasion of the late 1930s.42 Significant local production of the bicycle did not begin in China until 1930, more than 30 years after Japan began to build bicycles. Given Japan’s greater enthusiasm for modernisation since the 1880s (and their territorial ambitions in northern China), it is not surprising that it was a Japanese entrepreneur, Kojima Kazusavuro, who established the Chinese bicycle industry, opening three factories in Shanghai, Tianjin and Shenyang between 1936 and 1938.43 These were nationalised in 1949 and, like the rest of the bicycle industry and the steel industry on which it relied, their future was then determined by a centrally planned economy rather than commercial enterprise or popular demand.44 The People’s Republic of China (PRC) then strongly supported the bicycle industry, subsidising manufacturers and offering loans to purchasers. All of this allowed China to gradually reduce its dependence on British, German and Japanese imports, which had dominated the market between the wars (1918–1937). The PRC reached its production target of one million bicycles by 1958, but it took several decades for the bicycle to rise to its symbolic, revolutionary role in China’s long march towards modernity – when Deng Xiaoping promised to

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put a Flying Pigeon in every home. The bicycle finally reached all Chinese towns and cities by the mid-1970s, and yet less than half of rural households owned a bicycle even then.45 Popular use of the bicycle did not herald a breakthrough into capitalistic modes of production in China, as it did in most other countries; in sharp contrast, the communist-backed bicycle industry spearheaded a centrally planned economy.

THE RISE OF THE BICYCLE IN JAPAN By comparison with China, the rise of the bicycle in Japan was meteoric. Since the Meiji Restoration of 1868 (the year the French velocipede appeared on the streets of Paris), Japan had taken a positive attitude to modernisation. The last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, who had stepped down in 1867 to make room for the Restoration, reportedly bought an Ordinary in 1887, perhaps inspired by having seen Thomas Stevens on his widely reported journey through Japan on a Columbia Ordinary in 1886.46 Between 1880 and 1912, enthusiastic Japanese entrepreneurs began to import western bicycles and set up shops for repair and distribution. Evidence of the production of early bicycles can be found in records of the ‘Empire Bicycle Factory’ in Tokyo. In 1887, wood and iron constructions were produced here based on the boneshakers and Ordinaries from Europe and the US, and it is possible that some form of early bicycle was produced in Yokohama as early as 1879.47 The Japanese industry was quick to copy western industrial production methods, and was assembling safety bicycles with pneumatic tyres as early as 1892.48 It did not present a challenge to the global dominance of the UK, Germany and the US until after the Second World War, but Japan was nevertheless a significant exporter of bicycles between 1925 and 1938, and was the undisputed centre for bicycle production in Asia before the war.49 Despite this rapid advance, there was a fairly long transitional period between importing complete foreign machines, assembling foreign frame sets and components, and gradually producing and assembling complete home-grown products. Since 1904, local producers had been building bicycles to ‘suit the physical build of the Japanese’, and between 1907 and 1910, Japanese branded bicycles began to outnumber imports.50 But after this, the situation became more complex through multinational developments such as the establishment in 1910 of a branch of the English Premier plant, using British capital, on the site of the Japan Dunlop Rubber Company.51 At this time, Japanese-made English models were produced in parallel with imported English bicycles and locally made Japanese brands.

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Clearly there was room for disingenuous rebranding, and there were complaints in Japan and overseas about the dubious provenance of bicycles originating here.52 But with Japanese models at roughly half the price of imported models, and with the Japanese army placing large orders, the modernised Japanese bicycle industry became firmly established. Users of early bicycles in Japan were mainly a wealthy elite who welcomed modernisation, even in its foreign guise. By the late 1880s, local distributorships had been established to serve samurai-administrators, while bicycles for hire (kashi-jitensha) became popular for those who could not afford to purchase one.53 Thousands of imported rental bicycles were available in major cities, although the fashion declined once private ownership took off. In the 1890s, top-of-the-range imported safeties reached the towns and villages, and were popular among the newly affluent middle classes who used them for recreation, even setting up western-style bicycle clubs.54 For them, the imported bicycle was a status symbol, along with the camera and the hunting rifle. Emulating the European upper classes was part of the attraction in acquiring these objects. As in Europe, the production, distribution and use of the bicycle in Japan had consequences for class mobility. The bicycle trade itself allowed men of relatively low standing in society to raise their status, not through owning and riding the bicycle, but through establishing independent businesses which gained the patronage of the upper classes. Fortunes were to be made from supplying well-known imported brands and pandering to the needs of well-heeled customers. A new breed of business owner was evidence of mobility in an otherwise rigidly hierarchical society, and ambitious technocrats were key to the advance of modern manufacturing and entrepreneurship in the late Meiji period.55 The bicycle remained an aspiration for the lower classes in the rural areas for several decades, because the rate of trickle down was restricted, as in China, by affordability. By 1900, the bicycle was commonplace among middle-class Japanese, but the cost of imported bicycles and components was still prohibitive for the less well-off, who had to wait for cheap, massproduced bicycles. This is more or less what happened in the West, but one contemporary Japanese observer thought that bicycle use began with the lower classes. He referred to it as the preserve of ‘flippant fellows of the low class’.56 This might allude to an unofficial and largely unrecorded local history of bicycles assembled by blacksmiths and amateur enthusiasts from whatever components came to hand for the thrill of downhill racing. Fraser refers to the peculiar appearance of such fellows in the account of his journey across Japan in 1898; it is a scene worthy of a Punch cartoon.57

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In shape, the Nagoya velocipedes were something approaching that of our old ordinary. The big wheel was usually a cast-off cart wheel, bound with iron … the backbone was the branch of a tree … sometimes … a bar of iron – and the back wheels had, without exception, devoted their energies in prehistoric times to trundling a wheelbarrow. The seat consisted of a sack tied to the backbone … The rider, his kimono tied about his waist, would mount, wearing his big wooden clogs all the time, and, gripping the handle-bars and leaning well back, was able to push splendidly.58 Such anecdotes give an alternative impression of the bicycle in everyday social life. In bicycling around the world, Fraser and others pioneers were well placed to make such observations and draw contrasts, even if these were prone to cultural stereotyping. Their narratives were framed by their expectations and those of their readers, and were often clichéd and racist. But they were alert to evidence of the diffusion of western technology, and were conspicuously involved in the process as they rode their bicycles round the world. The ‘shock of the familiar’ was sometimes experienced where the signs and trappings of the modern were juxtaposed with the exotic, strange and unfamiliar. Fraser recorded such instances in the treaty ports of China (see above), and again in Japan, where Fraser’s dysfunctional cultural compass made the experience all the more acute. A rapid transition to modernity was evident, but all the signs of a pre-Meiji Japan were still visible, which evoked for Fraser the quintessential, if stereotypical, cameos of the exotic East. Prior to his visit, Japan was to Fraser and his fellow bicyclists ‘the land of the rising sun, the realm of the Mikado, a region known only to us pictorially through cheap tea-trays, screens and fans’ (418). He describes many scenes of a highly decorative and decorous Japanese culture, where lay the origins of those cheap imitation fans, screens and tea-trays (actually made exclusively for the European market, as he later discovers). But juxtaposed with these vignettes are scenes confirming the rising tide of industrial modernity. For the British bicyclists, the contrast with China could hardly have been greater; they found long stretches of fine roads, welcoming inns and modern towns with electric lights. In Hakarta, Fraser records ‘cotton mills. Telegraph poles bearing sixteen wires … a big railway station’, ‘thoroughfares [with] a bustling, energetic, wide-awake air’; all of which provides ‘a good sight of Japan in its new clothes; not the picturesque, curio-providing Japan, but the commercial Japan, vying with Western lands in trade, outdoing the Westerners in sharp practice, and even making

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bicycles, though the ball-bearings be of lead’ (424). Despite the obligatory put-down of the upstart foreigner, Fraser notes the challenge to western hegemony from Japan, and raises the contemporary spectre of the ‘yellow peril’ which was set to challenge the West on its own grounds: technology and trade. The manufacture of bicycles in the Far East might have come as a surprise to Fraser because it signalled the extent of the global diffusion of western-style modernisation and industrial capitalism. Although it had less impact on the landscape than cotton mills, telegraph poles and railways, the bicycle was becoming a visible indicator of the global advance of social modernity.

THE BICYCLE IN CHINESE AND JAPANESE VISUAL CULTURE Different cultural responses to the bicycle in China and Japan are reflected in the visual culture of both countries. Japanese woodblock prints show that the bicycle was already integrated into stylised depictions of modern streets in the 1880s. As modern objects were already targets for popular social satire, this suggests that they were already absorbed into the Japanese cultural imaginary. The bicycle was accepted to the point that it was hardly exceptional in scenes of Japanese modern life. The visual representation of the bicycle in China reflects more complex relations with local culture. As already mentioned, early depictions refer mainly to the spectacle made by foreigners on bicycles in the treaty ports. The bicycle is seen as something exceptional, not absorbed into everyday life. The poster by Hang Zhiying (Figure 3.5) reflects a later phase. It was produced at the height of what would later be regarded as the ‘decadent’ Shanghai society of the 1930s. The association between the immaculate imported bicycle and the female model is designed to produce a sexually charged object of desire. Sex was also used to sell consumer items in western posters, but not quite so directly. The Chinese model reflects the influence of western modernity in Shanghai, and especially the influence of Hollywood screen idols. But in this poster, the girl is not just a sex object reflected though the prism of a western male gaze. In the local context, she also represents the ‘modern girl’ of Shanghai who made a point of appearing in revealing clothes and smoking cigarettes in public. The poster contributes to a short-lived move to assert a non-traditional role for Chinese women in the heady atmosphere of 1930s Shanghai.59 While it began to bring luxury European goods to the attention of consumer-minded affluent Chinese, advertising was itself transformed as a cultural practice for a brief period in China. The

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Figure 3.5 Bicycle calendar poster, Zhiying Studio, Shanghai (c.1930) Source: Lao yuefen pai (Old calendar picture), Song Jialin, (Shanghai: Shanghai hua bao chu ban she [Shanghai Pictorial Publishing House], 1997).

Zhiying studio in Shanghai produced hundreds of advertising posters in the 1930s. The ‘calendar girls’ combined western consumerism and glamour with authentic Chinese visual elements and hybrid fashions to advertise cigarettes, domestic products and sports activities. For Ellen Johnston Laing, sportive poses, such as that struck by Zhiying’s bicycle girl, ‘perpetuate the stationery pretty-girl image as the girls stand next to a bicycle with one foot on the pedal […] or pose alluringly, poolside’; it was an opportunity to ‘exploit a now legitimate display of bare arms and legs and shapely torsos’.60 In this narrow window before the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937, an interesting gender politics was being played out and the bicycle was implicated in its cultural dynamics. The assertion of female form in the poster of the ‘bicycle girl’ emphasises the female body in the context of western-style modernity, signalled in the short hairstyle and high heels. The poster brazenly sexualises women to

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appeal to male and female customers. Through a western paradigm, the poster might suggest the liberation of the modern woman from the tight constraints of domestic roles, signified by traditional Chinese dress. At the time, though, it might have been difficult to find this subtext in Zhiying’s figures of alluring figures of women in revealing clothes, sometimes seminude; or to dissociate them from images advertising prostitutes in the treaty ports.61 What is certain is that the art of the calendar girl became a target for the Communists when they came to power in the 1940s. In the new regime, calendar girls were seen to epitomise the decadence of western imperialism and the consequent corruption and commodification of Chinese women and traditional Chinese values – they were quickly destroyed.

OUTPOSTS OF THE WEST AND WINDOWS ON THE EAST: THE BICYCLE IN SOUTH AND SOUTHEAST ASIA The technical development of the safety bicycle in the 1880s took place amid great social, economic and industrial flux in western society. To some extent, the modern bicycle could be seen as a product of social upheaval and industrial revolution in the West (see Chapter 1). But when non-western countries imported the bicycle, relations between society and what was already a fully evolved technology were very different. The machine itself required surprisingly few changes in adapting to new environments, but the practice of bicycling was often fundamentally altered. Bicycling had been popular in western bourgeois society, so at first it adapted quickly and easily to European society in the colonies. It found a ready market in colonial society among the fashion-conscious and those taking recreation. The reckless riding of Mr Punch’s ‘cad on castors’ also turned up in the colonies. Referring to the rise in the number of safeties in Hong Kong and the potential threat caused by them, a writer in the Hong Kong China Mail praises a magistrate for fining a young Portuguese lad for reckless pedalling that resulted in an old lady being knocked down in Old Bailey Street. A $5 fine and a further $5 in damages was the way to treat the ‘bicycle fiend’, he concludes.62 A colonial network in which the home culture was copied in miniature ensured that the bicycle boom of the 1890s would reverberate around the globe. Before the motor car usurped it, social bicycling in the foreign settlement of Shanghai was extensive (see above), and the fad soon extended to the upper classes in all the British colonies. In 1896, the Lady Cyclist reports that even Bermuda, ‘has caught the cycling fever badly. Every lady rides, and uses her bicycle instead of a carriage … a bicycle being the smart way

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of getting about’.63 Ordinary residents of the colonies, however, would in most cases have to wait until bicycling as a cultural practice gained wider relevance in colonial or, more often, postcolonial society. Bicycling was not tightly controlled by colonial regimes, but Arnold and DeWald might overstate how it would ‘pass […] with relative ease into the work-regimes, recreational activities, social life, and cultural aspirations of colonised and postcolonial populations’.64 The general diffusion of bicycling in the colonies was not easy or speedy, despite the best efforts of European bicycle manufacturers, who saw in the colonies a vast potential for their products. Indeed, this market would conveniently prop up the British production of bicycles during the decline of the late 1890s, and again after the First World War. Colonialism undoubtedly accelerated the diffusion of western technology such as the bicycle. It was in particularly high demand throughout the European colonies and settlements of Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South America. The Cyclist magazine reported that Britain exported nearly 25,000 bicycles to its colonies in a single week (w/e 4 December 1896). Over 20,000 were destined for Australia and New Zealand, and the remainder were divided between Durban (1382), Penang (101), Bombay (537), Madras (461), Singapore (342) and Shanghai (116). This snapshot gives an indication of the extent of the colonial bicycle boom; it accounted for 20% of the UK’s share of world exports in 1900, rising to nearly 50% in 1912.65 Although prices had fallen dramatically by this time, the majority of these bicycles were still destined for westerners and colonial administrators. It was not until the 1920s onwards that poorer Europeans and the working classes of Asia would be able to afford bicycles in large numbers, and then mainly because cheaper Japanese models were available.66 Expensive British bicycles still accounted for over 40% of the value of imports in Asia in 1929, against 7.5% from Japan, while in India imports from Britain did not peak until 1945–1948, when they touched 200,000 a year.67 Following western marketing practices, hire purchase and lease arrangements were introduced to India to boost sales. British bicycles continued to dominate until domestic assembly and production, sometimes in partnership with British firms, geared up after Independence to help meet the staggering national target of 500,000 bicycles a year.68 Like their counterparts at home, wealthy Europeans in the colonies of Asia also abandoned the wheel when the fashion passed. This was especially evident in the British colonies, where the upper classes could afford horses or, when they became available, motor cars. A bicycle club for Bombay was proposed in the

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correspondence column of The Times of India as early as 1869,69 and both this and the Calcutta Bicycle club flourished throughout the 1890s. When Fraser, Howe and Lunn arrived in Calcutta, they were met by ‘hundreds of cyclists’ who came out to meet them and then rode six miles with them back into the city.70 Other colonial clubs fared less well. The Singapore Cycling Club, founded in 1890, attracted few members and ceased to exist six years later.71 Clearly bicycling as a fashion was just as short-lived here as in London’s Belgravia, and for many of the same reasons (see Chapter 2). Bicycling as a cultural practice in the colonies was firstly an indicator of rank, helping to demarcate and maintain social hierarchy. It is significant that bicycling became more widespread where colonial society was more mixed. In British Malaya and Singapore, bicycling as a form of social recreation dropped away as soon as the upper classes abandoned it, but in the Dutch East Indies, where colonial society was much older and far more racially mixed, a more European culture of bicycling continued after the 1890s. For example, bicycle races were held in Java as early as 1900 for the substantial second tier of society comprising less affluent Europeans and Indo-Europeans. The popularity of bicycling among Indonesians continued to grow; they soon formed their own bicycle clubs and Dijk records that ‘youngsters […] discovered the bicycle as a vehicle for demonstrating bravado’,72 a custom which has easily transferred to motorbikes in recent years. Although significant as an indicator of a less hierarchical colonial society, bicycling as a recreation in Indonesia among the indigenous and mixed populations of a ‘middle status’ was a relatively minor element of colonial bicycle culture. It was a sideshow to the emphatic shift from bicycling as a fashionable exercise for a western elite in the 1880s and 1890s, to a practice that answered the more pressing utilitarian demands of the working classes. While the domestic market in the UK was shifting to lowbuilt roadsters and, by the 1930s, to lightweight machines linked to the new middle-class fashion for outdoors recreation, the export market was dominated by utility models and solid 28” full roadsters.73 Bicycle-powered rickshaws (Figure 3.6), no more than a novelty in the West, were specially produced for the Burmese market from the 1920s; by 1927 there were 68 manufacturers producing tricycles for commercial use.74 This was a heyday for the UK bicycle industry as it responded to new markets at home and in the colonies, while holding off the challenge from local production in Asia. From an Asian perspective, it marked the point where bicycling was reinvented as a local practice. From the 1920s onwards, the bicycle carried few connotations of western technology, and very little of the sense of futurism that accompanied its rise in the West.

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Figure 3.6 Woman riding bicycle taxi, Macassar, Indonesia Source: RM © Bettman/Corbis.

Rather, bicycling would be recontextualised in Asia and Africa, and this would begin to drive the global bicycle business. A distinction had already opened up by the 1930s between expensive Raleigh bicycles, associated with older forms of recreational bicycling, and cheaper Hercules machines, designed as workhorses for the working classes rather than status symbols for the rich.75 The image of the colony simply as an outlet for the diffusion of western technology is only part of the picture. Where the bicycle crossed from a microcosm of European society into wider colonial society, it entered a milieu constituted in different social hierarchies, work patterns and cultural practices. Tentative steps were taken towards crossing the social divide

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between coloniser and colonised where European colonial administrators went about their business on bicycles. This did not last long, mainly because as the bicycle began to cross from a high-value commodity for the few to an everyday object for the many, the authority of colonial administrators came under threat. The problem of racial distance and decorum was also exacerbated by the unsuitability of European dress codes and physiology, which at certain times of the year would turn a western bicyclist into a perspiring mess. Most senior colonial officials therefore limited their exertions and maintained their dignity by using a horse or motor car. Visiting a hill station in Sri Lanka in 1910, Leonard Woolf, a British colonial administrator and writer, had the best of both worlds by riding his horse uphill and bicycling down, relying on his servant’s perspiration to get his bicycle up the hill in the first place.76 When colonial civil servants began to use motor cars to conduct their business they had no need to stay overnight in villages on trips up country. This had the effect of distancing them from the people they governed, although estate staff in Indonesia and Malaya continued their rounds on bicycles as late as 1920.77 The bicycle offered prestige to the upwardly mobile in colonial society for a brief period. With the availability of the motor car in the 1920s, it began to mark out a second tier of nurses, missionaries, police sergeants and local functionaries, such as postmen. Flickering problematically on the edge of this group were modern western women seeking to increase their mobility and assert their independence. Consciously or not, they challenged masculinised systems of colonial power, and would in this respect have taken their lead from women’s rights activists at home. A popular example in literature is found in Paul Scott’s novel, The Jewel in the Crown (1966), where the missionary, Edwina Crane, and the nurse, Daphne Manners, ride bicycles in end-of-the-Raj India. Scott also uses the bicycle here as a plot device to create proximity (and friction) between different elements of late colonial society, so it could be argued that its more significant function is to explore deepening racial tensions. As in the West, the cultural practice of bicycling gradually worked its way down the social scale in European colonies. In the process, it exposed ambiguities and fault lines in the social hierarchy. As suggested in Scott’s novel, the bicycle had the potential to bring western women and native men into closer proximity in India, threatening the social structure with both gender and racial transgression. At the same time, middle-class Indian men, who had been involved in bicycle clubs since the 1890s, sought to improve their self-image and that of the nation through the physical exercise of bicycling. In Bengal, the practice became a ‘matter of patriotic importance, a means

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Figure 3.7 Transportation of coal by bicycle, Jharia coalfield, India Source: RM © Franco Pagetti/VII/Corbis.

of countering […] European representations of Bengali babus as “effeminate”, “effete” and physically inept’.78 Similarly, young men in Vietnam could aspire to compete on a physical level with their French counterparts through bicycle racing. Through the assertion of their fitness and masculinity, they sought to emulate the colonisers and transcend racial difference. For many local women in Asia access to bicycling was restricted, with no glimmer of that emancipation through the wheel enjoyed by western women. It was exceptional for local women to ride bicycles in India, partly because of practical issues of dress, but mainly because it was socially unacceptable. Like caste, gender was largely resistant to the modernising and levelling potential of the bicycle. In India, as in China, the only females outside the main cities permitted to ride bicycles in the 1950s and 1960s were schoolgirls and students. While there were similar objections in parts of Southeast Asia, women bicyclists with more bike-friendly costumes were a common site on the streets of Saigon and Hanoi in the 1930s.79 While the popular image of bicycling in the colonies contributed to the social formation of class, the utilitarian properties of the bicycle had more immediate material consequences for everyday life across Asia. Workshops, sales outlets and ad hoc repair facilities for bicycles became an integral part of street life in India, Vietnam, Burma and Indonesia from the 1920s onwards. These material interventions entered the local culture as

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commodities and tools, a means of commuting to and from work, and the means of work itself. They were essential therefore to local labour markets and economies. The bicycle was modified to carry goods or passengers, and these vehicles would greatly facilitate the sprawl of Asian cities from the 1940s onwards by making it easier for local businesses to extend their theatres of operation, and making it feasible for city workers to commute from the outskirts. But just as the bicycle did little to expedite the emancipation of women in Asia, it also did nothing to prevent the continued exploitation of the poor and the vulnerable (Figure 3.7).

COLONIALISM, MODERNITY AND NEO-PRIMITIVISM: THE BICYCLE IN AFRICA The impact of the bicycle in the European colonies of Africa bears some comparison with that in the colonies of South and Southeast Asia. Most Africans first saw a bicycle between 1890 and 1910, during the period of colonial consolidation. The ‘iron horse’, as it was often referred to, was not celebrated as a harbinger of modernity, but rather as the sign of an advancing colonial machinery which would drastically alter their lives.80 Bicycles were initially as ‘dreaded as the first white men who rode on them’,81 but when absorbed into the local culture, they might be revered, coveted and imbued with magical properties. Privileged villagers, traders, estate foremen and those working for the colonial service began to own bicycles from around 1930 onwards. This had a significant impact on social hierarchies and locally determined forms of empowerment during and after colonisation. However, local empowerment did little to enhance local economic development. Africa saw none of the technology transfer that had assisted development in Japan, India, China and the rest of Asia. Even after colonialism, with bicycles thoroughly integrated into village life and indispensable to many households, most were imported and relatively expensive. In rural villages, the profit from owning a bicycle was marginal. Bicycle repair shops appeared in villages from the 1950s on, often becoming a focal point for the community, but any direct economic benefit of the technology was limited to transport, easing the flow of people and goods between village and market. In the predominantly rural areas of Northern Ghana, for example, bicycles were for decades primarily used for weekly trips to markets up to 50 km away to sell produce and buy household goods. Men also used the bicycle to get to their fields and back, traditionally carrying little while their wives walked home carrying heavy loads on their heads.82

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Women in Africa, as in much of Asia, were deterred from participating in bicycle culture until the late 20th century. In traditional villages, this exclusion meant that the emancipation of women did not follow the introduction of the bicycle. Unlike their counterparts in the West, African women found that the bicycle reinforced their subordination, and made the gender divide all the more conspicuous. For a number of reasons, the potential of the bicycle in Africa was never realised to the extent it was in Asia. The development of bicycling from personal transport to more profitable uses, such as conveying goods on a larger scale, widening spheres of trade or operating mobile mini-markets, was slow in rural Africa.83 While bicycles in Southeast Asia were modified and adapted to local transport and business needs in the 1920s, nothing comparable occurred in Africa until the 1960s. However, the impact of the bicycle on the social hierarchy, for men at least, was significant. In the Belgian Congo, for example, the bicycle was clearly a marker of ‘a rising middle status’. Like maternity wards and sewing machines, bicycles were incorporated into what Nancy Hunt calls a ‘semiotics of colonial life’.84 During the colonial period, the bicycle signified social mobility, prestige and proximity to the colonial circles of power. This complex of meaning was at times divisive for the African community. It also seeded a desire, which has lingered in the cultural imaginary as regret for the passing of the ‘good times’ of colonialism. Strange as it might seem, in the late 20th century, Hunt has detected a postcolonial nostalgia among old men in the villages of the Congo. For them, the bicycle was a reminder of a time under colonialism when foreign goods were plentiful, compared with the relative deprivations of the present.85 Before 1950, a few local people had been provided with bicycles to do the bidding of colonial administrators, missionaries and estate owners. Owning a new bicycle still carried prestige for Africans in rural villages as late as the 1970s, but having access to one in the 1930s was exceptional: it singled out the privileged few. Hunt gives the example of a ‘boy’ called ‘Tata Tula’ who was given domestic, administrative and teaching duties by western missionaries, and worked his way up to foreman on a rubber plantation. He was considered ‘lucky’ to have had a bicycle in 1931, and together with his other possessions this defined his ‘in between’ status. Through this paradoxical social position, he was later remembered by some of his neighbours as a ‘white man’, living the life and adopting the manner of the Europeans.86 Extensive local bicycle ownership in Africa occurred after the arrival of the motor car, as it had in the colonies of Asia. For the colonial

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classes, the bicycle would then become a signifier of downward mobility, while it was evidence of upward mobility for Africans. Hunt refers to a letter by a male nurse who was sent with his family to a new post. The journey began in a truck, but later the nurse was ordered to take himself and two of his children on by bicycle the remaining 78 km to Yangonge. The rest of his family completed the journey in the truck of a ‘White Man’. There is no mention of dissent, and the implication is that the order given by the ‘White Man’ was to be summarily obeyed. This occurred in the 1930s, probably on roads which were constructed using forced labour to open up the coffee and rubber plantations during the Congo’s modernisation. Expanding bicycle use became possible on the roads built for motor cars and trucks, but this was a time of flux for the villagers, often forced to uproot their homes to make room for new roads, or taken to join work gangs. Europeans on bicycles might have become an increasingly rare sight by the 1930s, but the bicycle was still associated with colonial power. Where it was used by missionary-nurses, such as the one mentioned above, the service to colonialism was twofold. The nurse’s role combined Christian evangelicism with the implementation of a rigorous system of public hygiene aimed at protecting the health of westerners and their principal workers. Despite its darker, more repressive associations, Hunt esteems the bicycle as ‘a symbolic marker of middle status, a marvellous technology, and a manner of dress. Its activity, cycling, released latitude for expressive borrowing and creativity in the historical making of a native colonial “high” style – or évolué – style’.87 The bicycle’s role was perhaps more symbolic than of practical benefit to Africans because the possibilities for economic advancement in rural Africa were scant, both during and after colonialism. If material advantages were limited, bicycles could nevertheless enhance the cultural life of the village. In describing the bicycle as a ‘manner of dress’, Hunt draws attention to the function of the bicycle as a platform for ostentatious display, cultural expression, and sometimes a cross-cultural fashion statement (Figure 3.8). Bicycle culture was still central to Nigerian village life in the 1970s. Even though the cost of new bicycles was relatively expensive ($180–$200), most men owned at least one bicycle (compared with only 25% of women).88 Among married couples, women and children usually rode on the back of the bicycle with the patriarch at the handlebars. Any other arrangement was considered poor bicycle etiquette. Bicycles were primarily used for utilitarian purposes, yet a fashion emerged in Nigerian villages in the 1970s

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Figure 3.8

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Bicycle culture in an African village

Source: RM © Angelo Cavalli/Corbis.

to embellish machines, not only with practical appendages to carry people and loads, but also with more esoteric decoration. This seems to have extended the bicycle’s role into the cultivation of self-expression, as Ugorji and Achinivu record: Some villagers decorate their bicycles with new gadgets: e.g., with more expensive bells, horns, flags, seat-covers, etc. A few go further and inscribe their personal philosophy on the bicycle frames or the bags attached to the rear. Thus one reads on frames such mottoes as ‘Echi di ime’ (meaning, literally, ‘Tomorrow is pregnant’ but loosely interpreted as ‘You never know what tomorrow has in store’), ‘One with God’, etc. But the women tend to find all this gadgetry on bicycles unnecessary. They consider the practices to be the fad of men.89 Another exclusively masculine practice in the Nigerian village was performed by ‘magic cyclists’ – these ‘men who ride bicycles with juju’, who would come from the city to demonstrate their acrobatic skills on the bicycle.90 The ‘magic cyclists’ show the degree to which the bicycle had become embedded in local culture. No longer a carrier of ‘white man’s’ power and influence, it was now a prop for the reinterpretation of traditional forms of performance. As the new technology was absorbed into

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local practice, Nigerian villagers seemed less interested in its potential for economic advances than their counterparts in Asia. Most saw the advantage of bicycling over walking in the ‘relaxed sense of time’ it engendered. No longer having to wake at 5 a.m. to walk to market could mean the promise of a good lie-in. As one village bicyclist put it: ‘Since I am not going to trek, I might as well take things easy and not rush things’.91 The bicycle’s signification within traditional African culture has provoked an interesting debate in western academic circles about primitivism and cross-cultural transference in postmodernism.92 At an exhibition of African art in New York in 1987, a sculpture having the title Man with a Bicycle was selected by the celebrated African-American writer, James Baldwin. He says that he chose this work because it was not in the mould of African ‘Primitivism’, like most of the other exhibits. He felt it was more of the present than of the past, describing it as ‘contemporary’, ‘jaunty’, yet ‘very authoritative … grounded in immediate reality by the bicycle’.93 But although it appears to contain a contemporary reference to a man going to market on his bicycle, Man with a Bicycle (Figure 3.9) continues an ancient pre-colonial tradition of Yoruba art, even if this is now reproduced for western tourists and commodified by American collectors and auction houses. For Kwame Appiah, colonial or postcolonial references such as the bicycle turn this otherwise traditional object into neo-traditional art.94 In other words, the bicycle is assumed to be part of a western intrusion, confirmed in the catalogue, which states that the ‘influence of the Western world is revealed in the clothes and bicycle of this neo-traditional Yoruba sculpture which probably represents a merchant en route to market’.95 The incorporation of ‘modern’ elements (the bicycle and certain clothes) into a traditional form of African sculpture suggests a ‘double coding’ which is typical of western postmodern art: a deliberate juxtaposition of two or more forms, styles or influences challenges the unity and artistic integrity of the object. But for Appiah, the ‘influence of the Western world’ stems from colonialism, so the double coding has a strategic function, disqualifying it from being regarded as postmodern. If this is correct, the representation of an irresistible western intrusion into African tradition would make Man with a Bicycle a postcolonial work. But is there a danger that, in reading this figure through the lens of western academic discourse as a melding of primitive and modern elements, it is being re-contextualised, taken out of the circumstances of its production? Because of a contemporary fascination with this postmodern-postcolonial work, a 20th century African sculpture has become elevated to a gallery piece whose celebrity and commercial value are assured.96 We can assume

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Figure 3.9

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Man with a Bicycle, Yorumba, Nigeria, 20th century

Source: Exhibition catalogue ‘African Aesthetics: The Carlo Monzino Collection, May 7–September 7, 1986’, Susan Vogel (The Center for African Art: 1986). Photographer Mario Carrieri.

that the sculpture was originally produced for the western market rather than a local African one; furthermore, it is conceivable that its creator was aware of postmodern trends in art and was not surprised to find his work appealing to the curators of a New York exhibition. In other words, it should not be assumed that Man with a Bicycle is innocent of its cultural crossings and subsequent re-contextualisation. It is necessary to examine it from both directions if its several contexts are to be apprehended. It is easy to miss the point that another translation has taken place prior to the creation of the work – the bicycle’s cultural translation in Africa. Confidently identified as a ‘modern’ element in the exhibition catalogue,

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the bicycle had in fact already been translated from its ‘modern’ western origins and become embedded in the culture of the Nigerian village by the 1970s. What Baldwin found interesting and contemporary in the juxtaposition of modern and (neo-) traditional elements was the product of his own western-centred perspective, rather than part of the artist’s design (assuming he was not consciously producing an artefact for the New York art scene). Significantly, the name of the individual creator is not given in the exhibition, only the names of the western owner and photographer, and a generic name for the culture (Yoruba) that had produced Man with a Bicycle. Baldwin’s assumption that the bicycle continues to signify the ‘modern’ in opposition to the ‘traditional’ needs to be challenged. One effect of this stance is to reinforce the old colonial divisions between modernity and African society, while in fact everyday modern technologies such as the bicycle were long since acculturated and have already taken on local apparel and meanings. As Tanoukhi points out in his more recent critique, Man with a Bicycle and the debate surrounding it are about what is ‘new in America’, not what was ‘new in Africa’.97 We must allow the probability that the sculptor carved what he saw about him, not strategically for the western market, but in response to the everyday reality of a Nigerian village somewhere between the 1950s and 1970s. This would make it a neotraditional representation of contemporary life which was disinterested in, or which had a quite different understanding of, what westerners might regard as modern. As Appiah concludes, Man with a Bicycle is produced by someone who does not care that the bicycle is the white man’s invention: it is not there to be Other to the Yoruba Self; it is there because someone cared for its solidity; it is there because it will take us further than our feet will take us; it is there because machines are now as African as novelists.98 So in the end, Appiah shifts attention to the unity of Man with a Bicycle as a testament to the bicycle’s acculturation and embeddedness in African culture. Unfortunately, the idea that this might be extended to all machines and novelists does, however, rather collapse the specific argument about the bicycle into a general platitude.

CONCLUSION – THE DIFFUSION OF EMPOWERMENT? The spread of western technologies such as the bicycle to the rest of the world is commonly described as a process of diffusion. Whether diffusion

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is driven by a selective borrowing of new technology by the periphery, or by strategic promotion from the centre, a notion of western technological supremacy would seem to be the inevitable conclusion. It is indisputable that the direction of bicycle technology transfer between 1880 and 1930 was predominantly from the West to the rest of the world. Counternarratives claiming that the Chinese wheelbarrow was a technological precursor of the bicycle, or that the Japanese rickshaw was a parallel invention, while worthy attempts to challenge western-centred histories, are no more than amusing diversions. Indeed, the fact that both of these machines later borrowed the technology of the bicycle wheel confirms the predominant direction of technology transfer.99 It would be wrong, however, to consider this diffusion of western technology as a form of cultural imperialism. The very different contexts for the introduction of the bicycle to China, Japan, Southeast Asia and Africa produced considerable local variation in the adoption of bicycle technology and the acculturation of the bicycle. Japan was the most open to western-style modernisation, and as a result it soon became a second centre in the East for the diffusion of technology. It later established bicycle manufacturing businesses in China, Southeast Asia and in its own colonies of Taipei (1909) and Seoul (1914).100 The extent to which technological innovations such as the bicycle empowered the people of Asia and Africa was also determined by local conditions, and its benefits cannot be generalised. Colonial powers did not generally prohibit the use of bicycles, and at times they even encouraged it in the interests of the efficient running of the colony. During the consolidation phase of empire, when modern forms of communication were paramount, the bicycle proved its worth with the police, the military, the postal service and other colonial services. As Daniel Headrick has shown, in the western diffusion of technology, the bicycle followed railroads and the telegraph as one of the chief ‘tools of empire’ in this regard.101 From the perspective of skilled workers and those on the margins of power in European colonies, owning a bicycle was one way to climb the social ladder. The lower classes were the last to benefit, and local women in the colonies were especially disadvantaged. In colonial and postcolonial times, the bicycle could sometimes become an instrument of control rather than empowerment. Taxes, licences and traffic laws were enacted in Asian cities to control the use of the bicycle, and the police and army followed colonial estate managers in recognising the advantage of bicycle mobility for overseeing law and order. This did not apply during uprisings, however, when the police and armed forces were found to be more effective on horseback or on foot than on bicycles.102 On the other side of the coin,

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the bicycle was used for organising resistance to colonial rule and spreading insurrection (Figure 3.10). Bicycles enabled the population to attend rallies, and the organisers of political parties to canvas. In an unusual move, women activists took to bicycles during the Telengana uprising of 1948–1951.103 During anti-colonial struggles the bicycle was used more directly in bombings by insurgents. For example, in Vietnam, its everyday ordinariness on the streets of Saigon and Hanoi provided the perfect cover for the concealment of bombs and weapons, or the bicycle could itself be turned into a bomb on wheels.104 In European society, class division had initially been thrown into sharp relief by bicycle usage; only later did domestication and popular use result in limited forms of social levelling. In Asia and Africa, such patterns were complicated by social strata already in a state of transition prior to the bicycle’s introduction. To the colonial class, modern consumer products like the bicycle appeared to validate the new imperialism by confirming western supremacy in trade and technology. As it passed from the colonisers to local administrators and the middle classes, the bicycle served as an emblem of rank through association with colonial power. But it was an

Figure 3.10 Cyclists on a General Strike, Bombay (1937) Source: RM © Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis.

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ambivalent form of empowerment, which distanced local people from their own culture. For the working classes in Asia and Africa, the bicycle would eventually become a necessity, partly because of poor public transport systems, and as a working vehicle it provided a real, rather than a symbolic means of empowerment. To conclude, by dint of its wide availability across Asia and Africa, the bicycle reflected and amplified the strains of everyday life as the transition from colonial to postcolonial society took place, and different manifestations of modernity emerged. Divisions of class and gender gradually eased as bicycle mobility was integrated into local culture. Largely abandoned by the adult representatives of colonial power in Asia and Africa by 1930 (although still a firm favourite of their children), it slowly became detached from foreign association and was transformed into a technology thoroughly absorbed and localised by the 1960s. It entered local economies at micro and macro levels, and was a force for self-expression and local empowerment more than suppression. By conveying ordinary people of his own race through his own physical exertions, the cycle rickshaw driver of Asia might have nailed himself to the bottom rung of the social ladder, yet even he has been able to transcend the sub-human servitude of his pedestrian precursor by virtue of his wheels.105

FOUR

TRENDS AND TRAJECTORIES: THE GLOBAL FUTURE OF THE BICYCLE

If current trends in bicycle production continue, the future of the industry will largely hinge on the continuation of the sports and recreation boom in the West. But shifting patterns of mobility in developing countries are also set to become a major factor. Traditional utilitarian demand in China has been gradually eroded since the rapid increase in motorised transport here in the 1990s. This is no longer the kingdom of the bicycle, yet the demand for recreational bicycles in China is compensating for the loss in demand for utility vehicles, and this is a pattern repeated across Asia. From a global perspective, the market for traditional utilitarian bicycles is declining rapidly, but the industry is now buoyed by increasing demand for sports, recreation and fashion bicycles, while bike-share schemes and e-bikes give a further boost. The extent and influence of globalisation and the emergence of a new middle class in developing countries in the 21st century has meant that the latest fashion for bicycling in the West has almost instantaneously turned into a global boom. Although some geographical differences remain, the present state of the bicycle market suggests that the culture of bicycling is far less differentiated than it used to be. As we have seen, the bicycle was a reliable marker of cultural difference during the 20th century, with considerable variation in its cultural meanings in the West, Africa and Asia. For an older generation in China today, the bicycle still signals a throwback to the poverty and monotony of life in the communist era, but for the youth and the emerging middle classes of new China it is regarded as an aspirational object, a fashion item and sports vehicle. A similar pattern is emerging across Asia and Latin America, and this expanding market for the bicycle shows how contagious is global fashion; it also shows how easily the bicycle as a cultural signifier can be translated into a different set of meanings; 141

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and once again it shows how resilient is the technical design of the bicycle, which might have changed in style in accessories, but which is little altered from the basic form of the late 19th century safety. The demise of the bicycle in China has been greatly exaggerated. In fact, worldwide bicycle production grew six-fold from just over 20 million units in 1970 to 130 million units by 2007.1 Even with the growth of motor transport in China and the subsequent disappearance of millions of bicycles from its cities, the production of bicycles in the same period outstripped that of motor cars by two to one. Meanwhile, bicycling has been actively promoted in the West by environmentalist groups and bicycle advocacy groups who have sought to increase awareness of the benefits of bicycling for the wellbeing of individuals and the planet. Ironically, this increase in popularity has led to the widespread scrapping of old bicycles and the increased production of new models, neither of which is environmentally friendly. Looking forward, the major challenge to the environment in the next decade or two will come from the half a billion additional urban residents living in, or commuting into, the emerging megacities of the developing world. India will be adding 250 million more urban residents between now and 2030, and China even more. Furthermore, the inhabitants of dense cities in Latin America are relocating to the suburbs, and many of these new areas are being designed according to outdated car-oriented modernist patterns, which Walter Hook describes in Sustainable Transport as ‘a discredited urban design paradigm that has facilitated the current climate crisis’.2 Hook makes clear that the force of these demographics will outweigh initiatives in western cities towards less car-dependent and more bicycle-friendly environments, unless there is a radical shift in planning integrated transport systems around the world. Unsurprisingly, the world production of bicycles dipped significantly in the 1990s, coinciding with China’s shift in policy towards motorising major cities and phasing out the bicycle. But since 2000, worldwide bicycle production has risen sharply and continues to climb. There are several reasons for this: firstly, China’s overall domestic demand has remained high, at about 30 million units a year; the bicycle may have been discouraged, and even banned in areas of major cities such as Shanghai, but elsewhere many towns and cities with narrow alleys and lanes unsuited to motor cars are still dependent on it. The number of trips made by bicycle as a percentage of all trips (modality) has remained constant in smaller cities such as Tianjin and X’ian (nearly 50%), as it has in parts of major cities where highways have not yet been constructed. There are also signs of a return to the bicycle in some Chinese cities, where bans are beginning to be reversed

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as traffic congestion and levels of roadside pollution rise. The speed with which these events are unfolding is staggering; it suggests a very pragmatic and decisive leadership able to implement large-scale changes to the urban infrastructure at a stroke. Worldwide bicycle production has already benefited in the last decade from a new fashion for bicycle commuting and bike-share schemes in parts of the developed world. Copenhagen, Berlin and other Northern European cities began the trend long ago, and in 2007–2008, Paris took this to a new level, introducing the Vélib rental system with 16,000 bicycles at 1,200 stations. This has calmed the traffic and revitalised the social space of some city centres by allowing intimate, human-scale social interaction to occur. Glen Northcliffe describes the ‘transitional position’ of the bicycle in modernity as being on the cusp between ‘the more circumscribed personal geographies of the mid19th century’, and what he calls the ‘space-gobbling geographies of the twentieth century’.3 But as bicycle commuting enjoys a renaissance in many city centres, it renews the desire for those older personal geographies and sense of local community. William J. Mitchell describes the Vélib as a step towards this re-inscription of locality within the city: ‘After just a few months, the liberating, equalising, fraternity-inducing free bicycle is already deeply embedded in Parisian culture. The racks have begun to function, in their neighbourhoods, as social magnets – new village wells’.4 Similar schemes have been introduced or are being planned in many cities including Beijing, Guangzhou,5 London, Mexico City, New York, Rome, Tehran, Tel Aviv and Sydney.6 Modality is slowly increasing in London and New York (2–3%), while Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Tokyo, Berlin, Munich, Paris and Montreal top the list of bicycle-friendly cities outside China with modalities of (10–27%).7 In a sign that China has already begun to return to the bicycle, Hangzhou began offering a bike rental service in May 2008, with 2,800 bikes at 60 service outlets. It has recorded over 100 million rentals since then and recently expanded the programme, offering a staggering 60,000 bikes at over 2,400 outlets.8 Other significant factors contributing to the present boom in bicycling include the global fashion for high-end bicycles for recreational bicycling, and a surging market for electric bicycles (e-bikes). With a broad-based bicycling boom in progress, it is tempting to take a positive view of the future of the bicycle, such as that expressed by James McGurn during the boom of the 1980s: The bicycle is the vehicle of a new mentality. It quietly challenges a system of values which condones dependency, wastage, inequality of mobility

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and daily carnage. Cycling provides little scope for self-aggrandisement, consumerism or big-business profit: it is perhaps too simple, cheap and independent for its own good in this age of excess. The recent cycling boom has been a heartening resurgence of the human spirit.9 Yet these commendable sentiments, typical of the liberal, free-wheeling western thinking of the time, do not entirely fit the present situation. As the largest manufacturer of bicycles in 2007, China produced 90 million bicycles out of the worldwide figure of 130 million, with more than two-thirds of these for export.10 The ‘kingdom of the bicycle’ has at the same time scrapped millions of perfectly serviceable old bicycles every year (Figure 4.1), entirely due to the fact that the fashion is for new recreational models. McGurn’s claim – that bicycling challenges a system of values that condones waste, while offering little scope for consumerism – no longer applies, if it ever did. The fashion for bicycling also underlines the new ‘inequality of mobility’ which has become pronounced in the developing world in the 21st century. Across much of Asia, standard roadsters built to last several generations have the stigma of poverty – not so much the people’s nag, as the lowly beast of an uneducated rural or migrant worker.

Figure 4.1 Collecting discarded bicycles in China (c. 1990) Source: RM © Xie Guang Hui/Redlink/Corbis.

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Colourful and expensive recreational bikes, on the other hand, are a marker of relative affluence, aspirational products for the emerging global middle class. Inequality is also evident in some medium-sized African cities where bicycling has a high modality and yet the percentage of women having access to a bicycle is staggeringly low.11 Cultural barriers are also implicated in the fact that women in the US have purchased less than 20% of the road bikes and mountain bikes sold in the last few years, while the growth in sales of men’s road bikes has been in the exclusive $3,000 to $7,000 range.12 This suggests that rather than being a social leveller, the bicycle today is as likely to be a discriminatory marker of gender and disposable income. At the other end of the scale, an overall decline in the number of Americans riding bicycles in the 21st century has been attributed to a drop in average household incomes that has left many working-class families unable to afford even the cheapest new bicycles for their children. Given that this was the largest market for bicycles in the US for most of the 20th century, this trend suggests that the poor in the US are relatively worse off than they used to be.13 The bicycle has not disappeared from the main Chinese cities, but as the new megacities expand and embrace the system of automobility, traditional black utility models are no longer ubiquitous. The sight of four or five lanes of cyclists converging at an intersection may never be seen again. It is estimated that the number of bicycles on the road in China decreased by 35%, from 670 million to 435 million, between 1995 and 2005, while private car ownership doubled from 4.2 million to 8.9 million.14 Recent statistics from the Ministry of Public Security show that the number of registered motor vehicles in China reached 233 million in 2012, including 114 million automobiles and 103 million motorcycles.15 Despite this, the Chinese bicycle industry is still thriving, mainly through the presence of western firms building high-end machines for export. Meanwhile, local manufacturers have switched from producing traditional black roadsters to a wide array of lower-priced volume products, for both domestic consumption and export.16 The domestic market has been boosted by an increase in recreational bicycling, bicycling events and club touring,17 and this has spurred the production of high-end bicycles (and their lookalikes) for home consumption, as well as for export to emerging countries, such as Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and Malaysia, where recreational bicycling is also on the rise. E-bikes also represent a growing share of the high-end market, and new models were centre stage at the Shanghai Bicycle Show in 2010.18 The Chinese e-bike industry now produces over 20 million units a year

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(20% of its total bicycle output), and it has a large share of a global industry worth $11 billion. As well as being popular in China, where most of them are produced, e-bikes have taken off in western cities, such as New York, where despite a partial ban they are popular in the takeaway food delivery business.19 The drain on the planet’s resources of producing more than 130 million bicycles a year is significant. E-bikes are especially environmentally unfriendly because of their reliance on batteries that are not recycled. Shortages of steel, butyl, rubber, titanium and other materials used in bicycle production led to price increases in 2007, as well as leaving tens of thousands of partially completed bicycles in warehouses.20 Traditional heavy but long-lasting black roadsters like the famous Flying Pigeon are being superseded by more fashionable models with built-in obsolescence,21 creating an appetite for novelty that is diametrically opposed to the ethics of sustainability and green consciousness that the bicycle might otherwise symbolise. According to rough estimates, there are over a billion bicycles on the planet and this number is growing by over 100 million a year. In the developed world, the number of bicycles per person is close to parity, and yet as Marcia Lowe has shown, the number of those in regular use as an alternative to motorised transport has been very low, a fact confirmed by all the neglected machines in garages and bike parks.22 Through its association with a healthy lifestyle, the image of the bicycle has been used to target a mainstream of educated, middle-class citizens who understand the benefits of regular exercise, even if this understanding is not always translated into action. The public promotion of bicycling as healthy exercise is not new. It was tried in the West in the 1930s and again in the 1950s (see Chapter 2), but the imperative today is slightly different. Governments in the developed world (and soon in the developing world) are trying to save their citizens from death by obesity, rather than, as on those earlier occasions, to rehabilitate them after world wars and economic recession. In a World Health Organization survey in 2005, about 31% of the world’s population were declared overweight and obese, susceptible to the ‘diseases of affluence’, such as coronary heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and osteoarthritis.23 The moderate exercise produced by taking regular bicycle trips would clearly be of benefit, and it is an easy option for governments to support it. Few, however, seem to have the vision and competence to make it happen. As Lowe pointed out over 20 years ago, public policy needs to facilitate cycling by making it safer, providing networks of cycle ways, bike lanes and wide hard shoulders on major roads, and access and parking facilities at as many nodal points as possible.24 It is likely to be

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those already fit, and with the bravado to take on the traffic who will use their new bicycles regularly. Most fail when they are reminded of the physical discomfort and perspiration and, in most towns and cities, the very real dangers of cycling. For a number of reasons not nearly as many children use bicycles as did in the 20th century. A link between declining children’s health and reduced physical activity has been recognized in the US, prompting Congress to enact the Safe Routes to Schools bicycling scheme to help combat child obesity.25 King Liu, the 75-year-old chairman of Taiwan-Giant, recently left the boardroom to set off on a 1,036 mile bicycle tour through China to promote a healthy lifestyle and improve cross-Strait relations. This could be seen as a public relations exercise with the ulterior motive of selling more bicycles in China, yet as senior advisor to the Taiwanese President, Liu has played a major role in making Taiwan bicycle-friendly. He is genuine in his desire to ‘inspire people in Taiwan, China and around the world to become more aware of cycling and embrace it as a healthy lifestyle and a solution to environmental concerns’. To highlight the symbolic nature of the endeavour, he designed a bicycle that was blue at the rear and white at the front to signify a step out of the ‘sorrow of the past’ into the ‘bright future’. Inscribed on the forks was the message: ‘Enhance the spirit of health on both sides of Taiwan Strait, enjoy the happiness of rolling on two wheels’.26 While Liu has made practical steps to further bicycling through a politics of reconciliation, the bicycle can invoke a politics of confrontation in the major cities of the West. To call bicycle commuting a ‘contested cultural site’ would be a euphemism in some western cities for the open hostility that often erupts between cyclists and other road users. Tony Parsons presents the extreme position of a non-user in a rant published in the UK’s Daily Mirror newspaper: I have always thought that it should be cyclists that are chained to lamp-posts, and not their bikes … I have seen hairy-armed men on bicycles drive up one-way streets the wrong way, weave their way through densely populated pavements, scream abuse at innocent motorists, gesture violently at terrified pedestrians and … completely ignore red lights. Red traffic lights mean nothing to the Lycra lout, the psycho cyclist, the berk on a bike … The idea of the cyclist as an eco-friendly wayfarer is tosh – he is far more likely to be a belligerent yob who was a Panzer tank commander in a previous lifetime … Bicycles are for children. They are for little boys doing their paper round. They are for little girls going round their friend’s house to play with their Barbie

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dolls … There is something seriously sick and stunted about grown men who want to ride a bike. (‘I just don’t lycra these cycling yobs’, Daily Mirror, 5 August 2002). This sketch is reminiscent of ‘Blazey Bill the Scorcher’ in the Punch cartoon of the 1890s (see Chapter 2), suggesting continuous hostility between cyclists and other road users in Britain. But Parsons’ lynch mob imagery drags that gentle satire of Punch into the gutter of 21st century sexist and reactionary populism. It expresses an extreme position in the raft of contradictory cultural meanings the bicycle invokes today, polarising rather than informing debates on the environment and urban transportation. In most of Northern Europe, bicycling has continued in much the same way as a preferred method of commuting for a majority of the population, among whom Parsons would find few supporters. Although bicycle culture has its fringe elements here, it is closer to mainstream society and opinion than in other places. In London and New York, however, the counter-culture of the bike messenger as punk anti-hero is still much in evidence. In an age where the system of automobility has become embedded in the built environment and the shared consciousness of urban life, the ‘otherness’ of bicycling can appear threatening. It is this fear of the other that Parsons articulates. As if to exacerbate this, when groups of cyclists take to the streets in protest, they extend the theoretical dichotomy of user vs. non-user into a deliberate politics of confrontation, in which the bicycle is used as a symbol for a host of issues. At some Critical Mass rallies, protestors raise their bicycles in the air in a gesture that appears more as a threat than an expression of quiet protest and worshipful solidarity. The political significance of the mass occupation of public space is not necessarily directly concerned with the bicycle at all. Where bicycle mobility moves from a social trend to a political force, commuting and recreational bicycling give way to ‘critical bicycling’.

CRITICAL BICYCLING Critical bicycling is not new. In the 1890s, groups such as the League of American Wheelmen protested specific issues that included road improvement and safety. The Suffragettes, the Clarion Cycling Club and Solidarity also used the bicycle as a means for getting their message into the public arena, deliberately politicising bicycling as a class and gender issue (see Chapter 2). In the late 20th century, critical bicycling again became associated with many issues, many of which were not directly related to the

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bicycle. It began with neo-anarchists and left-wing extremists in Europe in the 1960s. Founded in 1965, the Dutch Provo Movement prescribed street action and direct confrontation with police. Their ‘White Bicycle Plan’ proposed closing the centre of Amsterdam to all private motor traffic, replacing it with public transport and a shared bicycle scheme. More a utopian gesture than a serious transport alternative, they put 50 white bicycles on the streets for public use; these were promptly stolen or confiscated by the police. Nevertheless, the ideas of using bicycles as vehicles of protest and of providing them through a shared public amenity were seeded. An event receiving greater public attention was the National Bike Rally in London in 1979, at which 6,000 cyclists were invited to occupy the streets in an explicitly political move to ‘Reclaim the Road’.27 Other European capitals followed suit, with a massive rally of 50,000 cyclists bringing Copenhagen to a halt in the same year. While the London Cycling Campaign has continued to press for safe bicycling in the UK capital, the movement most associated with the politics of bicycle mobility in recent years is Critical Mass. This began life in 1992 in San Francisco with no specific goal other than occupying the streets. With the rallying cry: ‘We are traffic’, the idea behind Critical Mass was to reassert bicycle use in urban spaces designed for and dominated by the motor car (Furness, 2010, 79). The idea of reclaiming the streets is redolent of student protest movements of the 1960s, barricades in Paris, the anti-Vietnam War movement, Situationism and an anarchist/ Marxist subculture. Such occasions of performative action are designed to create lines of resistance in public space which are then conspicuously contested. In critical bicycling, the streets are like a stage and the barriers props, with bicyclists performing a political drama. Some might be concerned that such a spectacle only reinforces the unrealism and ludic nature of consumer society, rather than opposing these through ‘real’ political action. Critical Mass has nevertheless some connection with the politics of Situationism in attempting to resist consumerist culture, even if it is hampered by a lack of ideology – in danger of acting out a ‘spectacle’ war rather than launching insurrection.28 The automobile is now the bête noire and global capitalism is vaguely identified as the target. Although the political message is ambiguous, contradictory and even self-effacing, it is sufficiently leftist to antagonise politically conservative cyclists and non-cyclists alike. When Critical Mass began monthly rides in London, it claimed to be a celebratory procession rather than a protest. This allowed participants to bypass the legal niceties of getting permission to deliberately occupy and obstruct London traffic. Nevertheless, taxi drivers and

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other motorists recognised this as a battle for urban space, with ill-tempered conflicts often arising. Creating antagonism between road users has perhaps not been the best way forward. It contributes little to the acceptance of bicycling as something integral to urban social life, and it provokes a backlash against riders in the broader community.29 Bicycle advocacy does not need to be anti-automobile. In Denmark, West Germany and The Netherlands, where there are almost as many bicycles as people, the density of bicycle paths is matched by an extensive mass transit system and high car ownership.30 Rather than overstating the efficacy of bicycling and demonising the motorist, local and international bicycle advocacy groups, such as Copenhagenzie, the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and the Worldwatch Institute, are cooperating with local authorities to promote bicycling within an integrated sustainable transport infrastructure. As a result, there have been some major advances for urban bicycling in the last few years. The political wind appeared to change in London when a bicycling Mayor (Boris Johnson) and a bicycling Prime Minister (David Cameron) arrived on the streets, but they were both riding earlier waves they can claim no credit for. Critical Mass rides in London have now lost their political edge and been reduced to ‘fun’ events, and with police escorts (on bicycles of course) they do have a carnival air. In this subtle form of marginalisation, cyclists are granted a temporary licence to occupy urban space. But this can easily be revoked, as happened during the 2012 London Olympics, when both cyclists and their old enemy, taxi drivers, were united in their conflict with the police and organisers. Apart from Critical Mass, bicycling as a social critique operating through a mild form of social disobedience has become very popular in the West. As well as protesting issues directly related to urban transport and other lifestyle issues, it has also been used to rally support for diverse movements loosely connected with environmentalism, health, sexuality and, where they are not yet hijacked by the right, left-of-centre politics. Mass bicycle rides are also frequently used to raise funds and awareness for charities and causes. For example, Trek Bicycle retailers around the US host an annual Women’s Breast Cancer Awareness ride.31 Although there are a few detractors, such events enjoy widespread support and appear to have mainly positive outcomes. The same cannot be said for the most significant, and most heavily censored bicycle protest in recent years in China. In May 1989, Tiananmen Square became a focus for a massive demonstration against the State (Figure 4.2). Hundreds of thousands of citizens on bicycles flowed towards China’s political centre.

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Figure 4.2 Chinese student protests (1989) Source: RM © Peter Turnley/Corbis.

For a moment it seemed that the old one-party communist regime might fall, but the tanks were sent in and a terrible massacre ensued. Hundreds of students, women and children were mown down, and to its great discredit the Chinese government has still not admitted responsibility, let alone offered an apology. After the dead and injured had been spirited away, China Central Television (CCTV) repeatedly broadcast images of an eerily empty Tiananmen Square. The message was clear: any immediate threat to the entrenched leaders determined to maintain their grip on power had been eradicated. In ‘Wheels of Freedom’, Fred Strebeigh describes how coverage of the aftermath by China State TV (CCTV) begins by focusing on crumpled bicycles in the foreground. To understand why, he imagines how threatening it must have seemed to the old men in power to see such a display of youthful defiance, and how sad it was that the same old men had in the early days of the Communist regime promoted the bicycle in China, helping to put the nation on wheels to ‘raise the people’s dignity’.32 Now the crushed bicycles represent the shattering of that communist ideal, overtaken by the exercise of absolute power, and the will to wield that power over the people at any cost. The CCTV image of crumpled bicycles at the site of the uprising was expressly designed to instil the notion that overt criticism of the Chinese state would always be met with lethal force.

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BICYCLE CHIC To finish on a more positive (if relatively superficial) note, a global fashion for designer bicycles with accessories and clothing to match can be found today at the other end of the bicycling spectrum. Removed from the politics of critical bicycling – although a potential target for anti-globalisation/ consumerism rhetoric – there is a consumerist urge in ‘bicycle chic’, which is evident in the way it is presented through features in Vogue and other lifestyle magazines. This may be a short-lived fad like the boom of the 1890s, but for the moment bicycles, outfits and accessories are being sumptuously presented as objects of desire to the global consumer.33 Back in the 1890s, the bicycle craze quickly spread through the major cities of Europe, North America and the British Empire; now in an age of globalisation, 21st century bicycle chic has simultaneously blossomed in New York and Shanghai, London and Cape Town, Mumbai and Barcelona, Moscow and Sydney, Rio de Janeiro and Manila, and most cities in between. It exploits two main markets demarcated by gender: for him, the rugged off-road or racing gear; for her, urban chic. There are over 100 ‘bicycle chic’ blogs expanding on an original idea by Copenhagenzie Consulting, one of the better organised and more design-savvy bicycle advocacy groups.34 Copenhagenzie’s idea of ‘the Sartorialist on two wheels’, with its allusion to the Dandy and the ‘tweedy’ fashions of Edwardian times, also chimes nicely with the retro mode of bicycle chic, further extending its postmodern appeal. The British firm Pashley has been making traditional roadster-style bicycles since 1926, and is increasing production to meet home and export demand. Until recently, its business depended on manufacturing work bicycles for the Royal Mail and other businesses in the UK and abroad. They continued to produce hand-built machines to meet changing fashions for touring, racing and commuter bikes during the 20th century, but recently a new fashion for the older models has emerged, attracting interest at bicycle shows around the world.35 Cheaper mass-produced imitations from China are available, but in fashion-conscious circles authenticity has a certain cachet, not least among Chinese consumers who are perhaps more practised at spotting fakes. In a curious twist, traditional Pashley models are used in window displays of Hong Kong fashion stores (selling largely to Chinese from the mainland). They will also supply the bicycle if required, so the English roadster is donning new clothes (or rather new clothes are donning the roadster) to lead this strand of bicycle chic. The demand for such elegant consumer items, now available in bright colours and with

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high-fashion accessories, suggests a return to the bicycle by women of means, and this opens up another significant niche in the lucrative global market place. The fashion for fixed-gear bicycles, or ‘fixies’, takes the contemporary design aesthetic in a quite different direction, opening up markets for highend machines for wealthy aficionados and cheaper ‘BMX’-type imitations for children. The fixie has its origins in the stripped-down track bicycles of the 1890s, and apart from experiments with chainless machines and lightweight materials, its design changed little until the more aerodynamic, carbon fibre machines were produced for Olympic track racing in recent years. The fixie has a long history and it has been in continuous use on the road as well as the track.36 Its recent success as a fashion item, however, stems from its status as a punk icon in the 1970s. It was popularised by bike messengers first as a sign of the counter-culture, but the fashion has become more mainstream and the fixie has now found a significant niche in fashionable urban bicycling. It has also achieved iconic status as a design object, celebrated by modernists for its formal purity, and by postmodernists for its double-coding, i.e. signifying punk anti-art while masquerading as an objet d’art.

THE BICYCLE TODAY: CYCLING THROUGH (POST)MODERNITY At the beginning of the 20th century, the bicycle was firmly attached to cultural modernity in the West: it was suggestive of speed, mobility, progress and the future. This image has been transformed and extended in the 21st century. In one reading, the bicycle now expresses nostalgia for the past’s future, as in utopian visions of high-tech cities in which mobility was miraculously provided by vehicles producing no pollution. Yet the bicycle has more complex cultural meanings in the 21st century. These are less geographically specific than they were, since the bicycle has become a global symbol in a global market place. At the same time, the versatility, or to put it another way, the semiotic ambiguity, of the bicycle is evident in its capacity to point forwards and backwards, and to be culturally mainstream and simultaneously part of a counter-culture. The bicycle has accumulated considerable symbolic baggage over the years. As well as being the vehicle of choice for left-of-centre, green and environmentally friendly groups, it cavorts with dedicated followers of fashion in the mainstream of 21stcentury consumerist culture, and it is creatively abused by gangs of punk ‘bicycle outlaws’. Such ambiguity makes it a natural subject for postmodern

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art installations, ranging from Christo’s Bicyclette empaquetée sur galerie de voiture (1962), to an installation at the Burning Man Festival (2007), to images of ‘Bike Kill’ gangs in Brooklyn.37 Future trajectories of the bicycle, like past trends, will be determined by a combination of global and economic forces and cultural fashioning. In anticipation of a post-car world, which would follow the automobile’s last gasp in Asia, the bicycle might yet have a bright future. But the recent bicycle boom that began in the West and is now rippling out to the new middle classes in Asia has not been primarily driven by environmental concerns. These still have only a marginal, if growing influence on government policy and consumer choice. As at other times in its history, the bicycle is again involved in making political gestures which do not always translate into social change. Sometimes the bicycle is only literally a vehicle for conveying protestors as they re-occupy the streets. Yet in much of Northern Europe and Japan it is a matter of more of the same, as the bicycle quietly bridges tradition, modernity and postmodernity. Old roadster-style bikes continue to trundle the cobbles of Copenhagen and Amsterdam, and brightly coloured commuter bikes still occupy the sidewalks of Japan. If there is a global bicycle culture, the postmodern bicycle does not point in any single direction. It is a schizoid talisman, signalling post-car revolutions in urban centres, and a ubiquitous multi-purpose protest vehicle. It is associated with anti-globalisation and ‘occupy’ movements (which, ironically, are organised as global events, and exploit the same advances in electronic communications that further globalisation). Reinvented as a conspicuous consumer item, there is a serious question mark over whether the bicycle could be called a ‘green machine’. Bicycle booms and busts over the years have been the result of changing fashions as well as technological developments and economic factors. It is a herd mentality that seeks out the new and eschews the old, and this aspect of modernity has now gone global. The bicycle had a profound impact on social relations wherever it arrived. It was an agent of change, and also a product of changing social and cultural relations. In this respect, the bicycle was essentially a modern object, whose meanings are being altered by postmodern fashions and trends. Some of these point towards the future, such as the latest high-tech racing bikes and their high-street copies, some point towards the past, such as the retro Pashley-type, and some are deliberately marginal, such as the fixies. Through such postmodern contortions, the bicycle has reinvented itself and renegotiated its social and cultural significance.

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A trajectory which returns to start again from its original premise – that the bicycle was a people’s machine, designed to improve society as a whole – would seem a good point to end this history. Much of the theorisation of bicycling in recent years has had the effect of producing marginalised bicycle cultures. For example, Robin LeBlanc’s excellent study of how Japanese housewives form social groups through urban bicycling in Tokyo constructs a dichotomous relationship between ‘bicycle citizens’ and others (and between women and men, and politicians and others).38 The idea that bicycle citizens exist in opposition to others has been one of the main obstacles to creating an inclusive bicycle culture. Rather than personalising the bicycle and its rider as a discrete social unit to be dealt with and accommodated, it might be better to consider the whole system of bicycling as an integral part of the urban landscape. Bicycle citizens can also be car drivers, train passengers and pedestrians – they participate in a much wider society. The main objective should be to make bicycling easier, a part of everyday life, not an antagonistic practice set against automobility and car culture, but co-extensive with other forms of transport. Transport policies might do well to focus on integration rather than segregation, even if this means resisting single-issue pressure groups. Bicycling in the city, or anywhere, should not need to be an expression of radical individualism. In its several heydays, bicycling has always been essentially a social activity – this should, I think, remain at the centre of any future vision.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1. James McGurn, On your Bicycle: An Illustrated History of Cycling. London: John Murray, 1987, p. 160 and Robert Hurst, The Art of Cycling: A Guide to Bicycling in 21st Century America. Guildford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2007, p. 22. 2. The International Cycling History Conference (ICHC) was formed in 1990 as a forum for bicycle historians and academics. Several popular histories have appeared which interweave derivative (and not always accurate) historical information with personal memoir and anecdotes. See Robert Penn, It’s All About the Bike. London: Penguin, 2011 and Bella Bathurst, The Bicycle Book. London: HarperCollins, 2011. These confirm that bicycling is once again a topical issue and a popular leisure pursuit. For standard histories, see David Herlihy, Bicycle: The History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004; Frederick Alderson, Bicycling: A History. Newton Abbot, 1972: David and Charles; McGurn, On Your Bicycle; Robert Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle: Its Early Life and Times in America. New York: American Heritage Press, 1972; and Rob Van der Plas, The Penguin Bicycle Handbook. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983. For a more recent technical history that exposes some of the myths of earlier histories, see Tony Hadland and Hans-Erhard Lessing, Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. 3. The modern Olympics was relaunched in 1896, by which time bicycle racing in the US and Europe was already well established. 4. Edward Howland, ‘A Bicycle Era’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 1881, p. 283. 5. Wendy Griswold, Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. London: Sage, 2004, p. 13.

1

INVENTION: THE TECHNICAL EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN BICYCLE

1. Reported in discussion following paper by George Lacy Hillier, ‘Cycling: Historical and Practical’, Journal of the Society of Arts, London, 1897, 2 April. 156

NOTES, PP. 9–12

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

157

The technical history of the bicycle and its manufacture were popular topics at the Society in the 1890s. Other speakers included John Kemp Starley whose paper is discussed below. Even though the original Lallement patent was for a front-driven velocipede, Albert Pope was able to apply it to the high-wheeled Ordinaries which were imported from Europe and later manufactured by Pope and others (under Pope’s licence) in the US. The Lallement patent continued to add cost to all American bicycles and stifled innovation. Herlihy reports that Lallement was engaged in making ‘children’s coaches’ in France when he hit upon the idea of adding cranks and pedals to the front wheel of a velocipede (David V. Herlihy, Bicycle: The History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, pp. 208–209). Patents tailed off dramatically by 1900, showing that by then the design of the bicycle had stabilised (Andrew Millward, Factors Contributing to the Sustained Success of the UK Cycle Industry 1870–1939, PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1999. Accessed at the National Cycle Archive, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, MSS 328/N29/15/1/1, p. 9). Replicas of the Macmillan bicycle have been installed in the London Science Museum and the Glasgow Museum of Transport. Although the Macmillan was originally claimed to have been built in 1845, it was not ‘discovered’ until much later and it resembles rear-driven bicycles built by Gavin Dalzell and Thomas McCall in the 1860s. Other priority claims are more blatantly chauvinistic or mischievous according to Hans-Erhard Lessing, who together with other cycle historians at the International Conference of Cycle History has sought to debunk the major priority hoaxes (Tony Hadland and Hans-Erhard Lessing, Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History. Cambridge, USA: MIT Press, 2014, pp. 494–502; see also this chapter, ‘Origins and pre-texts – ulterior motives in bicycle historiography’). For examples of some ingenious approaches to human-powered transport see references to the Mechanics’ Magazine and, from 1865, the English Mechanic, cited in Andrew Ritchie, King of the Road: An Illustrated History of Cycling. London: Ten Speed Press, 1975, pp. 31–49. Note that the first mention of Kirkpatrick Macmillan appears in the English Mechanic in 1869 (Ritchie, King of the Road, p. 37). One notable example was Willard Sawyer of England, who produced a range of four-wheeled ‘self-locomotives’ commercially, showed one at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and supplied velocipedes to the Royalty of Britain, Russia and Europe (Ritchie, King of the Road, pp. 39–40). See, for example, recent Proceedings of the ICHC, which, as we might expect, emphasise international bicycle research; David Herlihy’s greater focus on the US in his Bicycle (2004); Claude Reynaud’s recent book, Le Grand Bi (2011), pressing the claims for France’s Eugène Meyer; and Hans Erhard-Lessing’s emphasis on the contribution of Germany’s Karl Drais and greater prominence given to the Draisine in Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design. The Michaux factory in Paris was already importing wrought-iron frames in bulk from a foundry in Marseille in 1868 (Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 96), while the Coventry bicycle producers were drawing on component suppliers across the UK by the 1870s. Most of the inventors and suppliers of components have been ignored by

158

10.

11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22.

NOTES, PP. 13–22

history, with the notable exception of John Boyd Dunlop, who began commercial development of the pneumatic tyre in 1888 (see also, below, J. K. Starley’s acknowledgement of the essential contribution of component makers). Although Lessing presents arguments to the contrary in Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design and Hans-Erhard Lessing, ‘What Led to the Invention of the Early Bicycle?’ Cycle History, 2001, 11: 28–36. The summer of 1869 appears to be the moment when a form of high-wheeler made its first appearance on the racetrack. It had an immediate impact and was soon the machine of choice for racers from France and England (Nick Clayton, ‘Who Invented the “Penny-Farthing”?’ Cycle History, 1997, 7: 31–42, p. 35). David V. Herlihy, ‘Mind the Gap: An Explanation for the Primitive Bicycle’s Surprisingly Low Profile from 1864 to 1867’, Cycle History, 2009, 20: 157–159. Frederick Alderson, Bicycling: A History. Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1972, p. 25. The suspension wheel was a great advance. According to J. K. Starley, early versions were made by ‘heading the spokes, screwing down screw nipples into the hubs, and tightening them with lock nuts’. Clayton credits Meyer with the invention of the suspension wheel in 1869 (Clayton, ‘Who Invented the “Penny-Farthing”?’), but E. A. Cowper of England took out a patent for a velocipede using suspension wheels made with ‘hollow felloes and steel wire spokes’ in December 1868. According to J. K. Starley, W. H. J. Grout also patented a radially spoked, nipple-adjusted wheel in 1870 (John Kemp Starley, ‘The Evolution of the Cycle’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 1898, 46: 601–612, p. 603). According to Clayton, the Cowper patent was ‘probably filed … on behalf of a French principal’ (see Clayton, ‘Who Invented the “Penny-Farthing”?’, p. 41). According to reports in the local press and a letter written to the English Mechanic in October 187[0] (the same publication which announced the Kirkpatrick machine to the world) – see Clayton, ‘Who Invented the “PennyFarthing”?’, p. 36 (the date seems to be misprinted in Clayton’s article). Clayton, ‘Who Invented the “Penny-Farthing”?’ and Reynaud, Le Grand Bi. Starley, ‘The Evolution of the Cycle’, p. 603. Frank J. Berto, The Dancing Chain: History and Development of the Derailleur Bicycle. San Francisco: Van der Plas Publications, 2009, pp. 24–25. Although Guilmet was killed in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Meyer company continued to produce bicycles after the war: Watson and Gray, The Penguin Book of the Bicycle, p. 109. See also Nick Clayton, ‘The Meyer-Guilmet Bicycle 1869 or 1879?’, Cycle History, 1991, 1: 41–56. The rear wheel was geared to 56” on the 1886 Rover. The 1884 Rover had a 36” front wheel, and 30” rear wheel geared to 55” (see Berto, The Dancing Chain, p. 38). There have been several families involved in bicycle production, including Pierre Michaux and his sons in Paris and the Starleys of Coventry whose dynasty spanned the development of the high-wheeler and the safety bicycle. The price of Ordinaries between 1875 and 1889 averaged £12–£18; safeties from 1875–1890 averaged £15–£19, but cheaper models of £6 were being produced by 1889. Wages in 1900 averaged £1 10 shillings a week (20 shillings = £1); see Millward, Factors Contributing to the Sustained Success of the UK Cycle Industry 1870–1939, p. 188. Hire Purchase agreements were also becoming

NOTES, PP. 23–28

23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38. 39.

159

commonplace, and it was possible to buy new or second-hand bicycles in 1893 for 1 shilling a week, see, for example, advertisements in Cycling, 28 January 1893, 5: 106. The 1816 global ecological ‘event’ is usually attributed to the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. As well as local devastation, the eruption affected weather systems across the western world through 1816, causing crop failures, riots and starvation. The near-coincidence of Drais’ invention and the ‘year without a summer’ (1816), when crops failed and the price of oats increased eightfold, supports the theory that the lack of horses was an impetus to the development of this form of ‘horseless’ transport (see Lessing, ‘What Led to the Invention of the Early Bicycle?’). But the price of oats, as Drais must surely have realised, was bound to fall again. Wiebe E. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelite, and Bulbs: Towards a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1995, p. 25. Alderson, Bicycling: A History, p. 14. Herlihy, Bicycle, pp. 44–45. Roger Street, ‘Johnson’s 1819 Tour of England’, Cycle History, 2002, 11: 23–27. The name was probably only used to help obtain a patent, which Johnson acquired in 1819 – the machine was more commonly referred to as a ‘velocipede’ (Roger Street, Dashing Dandies: The English Hobby-horse Craze of 1819, Christchurh, England: Artesius Publications, 2011, p. 19). Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and the Letters of John Keats (Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, March 1819). On the ‘fickleness of fashion’ and other reasons for the demise of the pedestrian hobby-horse, see Roger Street, ‘Who Killed Cock Robin? – The Early Demise of the Pedestrian Hobby-Horse’, Cycle History, 2011, 21: 64–70. Anon, The Saturday Review, September 14, 1895, 80 (99): 343–344. Street, ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’, pp. 64–70. Apart from the well-publicised taunt that it was the ‘nothing of the day’, the moniker ‘Dandy Horse’ was damage enough. George Lacy Hillier, in 1897 admitted that as a cyclist for 20 years, it was only recently that the appellation ‘Cads on Castors’ had begun to wear off, and people stopped expecting him to be ashamed of riding a bicycle (Hillier, ‘Cycling: Historical and Practical’). See Jack Rennert, 100 Years of Bicycle Posters. New York: Harper and Row, 1973 – discussed further in Chapter 2. If Johnson was selling his machines for about £8–£10 (Street, ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’, p. 68), this was more than the average annual wage for most farm workers, servants and labourers, who constituted the majority of the population of Victorian England, where workers’ wages were higher than in many other countries at the time. According to Drais, a British engineer rode one of his hobby-horses from Pau to Madrid (300 miles) in 1820, although there is no evidence to corroborate this (Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design). Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design. Street, ‘Who Killed Cock Robin?’, p. 67. Street gives the inevitability of hernias and ruptures as the main reason for the demise of the hobby-horse (Street, Dashing Dandies, p. 91). As Charles Vernon Boys put it, ‘One peculiarity of the bicycle […] is that the plane of the machine always lies in the direction of the resultant force, that the

160

40.

41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48.

49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

57. 58.

59.

NOTES, PP. 28–33

machine leans over to an amount depending on the velocity and the sharpness of the curve described.’ (Charles Vernon Boys, ‘Bicycles and Tricycles’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 1884, 32: 622–633, p. 623. One of the several competing claimants for the ‘inventor’ of the front-wheel drive mechanism is Pierre Lallement, who worked at a perambulator and children’s tricycle factory in Nancy in the early 1860s. He later moved to Paris where he continued to work on children’s vehicles and claimed to have developed a prototype bicycle privately in 1862. He later emigrated to America and lodged the first patent for a bicycle there in 1866. For an account of the competing claims for the invention of the velocipede, see Herlihy, Bicycle, pp. 84–93. Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 91. Ibid., p. 96. But according to Millward, the Michaux factory was producing 200 machines a day by 1869; Millward, Factors Contributing to the Sustained Success of the UK Cycle Industry 1870–1939, p. 11. Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 78. Ibid., p. 144. David V. Herlihy, ‘The Velocipede Craze in Maine’, Cycle History, 1998, 8: 9–14, p. 10. Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 78. Ritchie also suggests that British mechanics were less impressed by the new fad than their American counterparts as they had been working on their own velocipedes for some time (Ritchie, King of the Road, p. 67). In July 1869, Mr. R. J. Klamroth is reported to have made the journey from Edinburgh to London, at an average of 7.5 miles an hour (Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 150). Not all the feats reported were actually completed, however. According to Ritchie, two of the riders accompanying John Mayall on the first London to Brighton bicycle ride in 1869 finished the journey in a coach (Ritchie, King of the Road, p. 70). A letter from a schoolteacher in a provincial town in February 1868 enquiring about purchasing a velocipede shows the degree to which its popularity had quickly moved beyond Paris (see Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 79). Vie Parisienne, 28 January 1868 (cited in Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 83). Christopher S. Thompson, The Tour de France: A Cultural History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006, p. 9. See, for example, the frequently reprinted engraving commemorating the event in Harper’s Weekly, 19 December 1868. Thompson, The Tour de France, p. 11. Ibid., p. 55. Joel Mokyr, ‘The Second Industrial Revolution 1870–1914’, 1998, http://faculty. wcas.northwestern.edu/jmokyr/castronovo.pdf [accessed 23 February 2012], p. 7. By 1870, the English middle class and skilled workers could be earning between £50 and £150 a year, and this group had swelled to nearly 10% of the population. Although much of this would be needed for rent, food and clothing, many would have been able to afford the necessary £8 for a new Ariel Ordinary. Mokyr, ‘The Second Industrial Revolution 1870–1914’, p. 2. Vaclav Smil, Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867–1914 and Their Lasting Impact. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. See also, Mokyr, ‘The Second Industrial Revolution 1870–1914’. Mokyr, ‘The Second Industrial Revolution 1870–1914’, p. 9.

NOTES, PP. 33–40

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60. Ibid., p. 9. 61. Road networks in Britain improved greatly in the period. The Macadam method was pioneered by Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam in 1820, and a network of hard-surfaced roads had been built by the time of the safety boom of the 1890s. Modern tarmac was patented by British civil engineer Edgar Purnell Hooley in 1901 (Ralph Morton, Construction UK: Introduction to the Industry. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 2002, p. 51). 62. Between 1875 and 1900, areas on the outskirts of London, such as Hackney – which in Dickens’ novels are presented as uninhabited wastelands – were turned into a dense network of suburban houses and roads. The invention of the modern bicycle is contemporaneous with this process of suburbanisation. 63. The famous section of the Portsmouth Road (now the A3) between the Angel Inn at Thames Ditton and the Anchor Inn at Ripley. Both inns were meeting points for the Cyclists’ Touring Club (CTC). This section of the road was known in the 1880s as the ‘Blue Riband’, and according to McGurn it was regarded as the ‘best kept road in the world’ (James McGurn, On Your Bicycle: An Illustrated History of Cycling. London: John Murray, 1987, p. 155). 64. According to Duncans, the construction of a first-grade bicycle in 1898 should have cost about £10, and with a fair trade profit the selling price would then be £13, but the large manufacturers more than doubled this to allow for ‘Advertising expenses’, including ‘fees to influential directors … expense of staff of racing men and prizes for demonstration of much vaunted superiority’. All of which led to the total cost of a bicycle rising to £28 (Duncans (1898) ‘The Cycle Industry’, The Contemporary Review, 73: 500–511, p. 505). 65. W. G. George, ‘Ancient Cycling’ (notes sent to the BBC by W. G. George, October, 1939) in Papers of A. Josey (1869–1974), MSS.328 N93/1/B21, National Cycling Archives, Warwick Records Office, University of Warwick. 66. Ritchie, King of the Road, p. 66. 67. For the demise of velocipede development in the US, see Herlihy, Bicycle, pp. 124–126. 68. Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 144 and Robert Štˇerba, ‘The Early Days of Bicycle Production – History of Michaux and Compagnie Parisienne – New Questions and Answers’, Cycle History, 2013, 23: 172–178. 69. Reynaud, L’ère du grand bi en France, p. 51 (English translation by Rebecca Welland). 70. Inventors included William Sawyer of Dover, who produced four-wheeled velocipedes in the 1840s and 1850s, mainly for the upper classes and royalty of Europe (see Herlihy, Bicycle, pp. 56–57). 71. For examples of some ingenious approaches to human-powered transport see references to the Mechanics’ Magazine, and from 1865 the English Mechanic (Ritchie, King of the Road, pp. 31–49). Note that first mention of Kirkpatrick Macmillan appears in the English Mechanic in 1869 (Ritchie, King of the Road, p. 37). 72. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelite, and Bulbs, p. 34. 73. Charles Spencer, The Bicycle Road Book (1881), cited in Alderson, Bicycling: A History, p. 28 (emphasis added). 74. To appropriate the theory of Walter Benjamin in his ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ (1936).

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75.

76.

77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83.

84.

85. 86.

87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92. 93. 94.

NOTES, PP. 40–46

For a detailed engineering specification of early bicycles and tricycles, see Archibald Sharp, Bicycles and Tricycles: An Elementary Treatise on Their Design and Construction. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1977, p. 149. James Starley introduced a bicycle for ladies in 1874, but it was difficult to steer as its two wheels did not track. This gave rise to the Coventry tricycle, patented in 1876, soon followed by a ‘sociable’, and the successful Coventry Salvo tricycle of 1877 (Starley, ‘The Evolution of the Cycle’, p. 605); see also Glen Norcliffe, ‘The Coventry Tricycle: Technology, Gender and Buzz’, Cycle History, 2010, 19: 136–143, p. 136. Mokyr, ‘The Second Industrial Revolution 1870–1914’, p. 7. It is beyond the scope of this work, but it could also be argued that the factory system itself was the product of social factors – it was certainly driven by the economic and ideological forces of industrial capitalism. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelite, and Bulbs, p. 6. Ibid., p. 45. The metal suspension wheel made it possible to produce wheels larger than 40" in diameter, which had been a practical limit of wooden wheels. Clayton, ‘Who Invented the “Penny-Farthing”?’, p. 35. In 1884, the first geared safety bicycles fitted with steel ball bearing races would bring the record down to 2 min 41 s and by 1898, with the addition of the pneumatic tyre and other improvements, the record would be slashed to 1 min 35 s (Starley, ‘The Evolution of the Cycle’, p. 611). Between 1870 and 1914 infant mortality was halved and life expectancy increased as prosperity brought better nutrition, cleaner water and greater emphasis on hygiene. Mokyr, ‘The Second Industrial Revolution 1870–1914’, p. 13. Edward Howland, ‘A Bicycle Era’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, 1881, 63: 281–286, p. 281. This necessity is starkly portrayed in the Italian social realist movie, The Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica, 1948), in which the bicycle is the difference between work and unemployment, and the family’s only material asset. Mokyr, ‘The Second Industrial Revolution 1870–1914’, p. 7. Joseph Pennell, ‘Cycles and Motors in 1900’, Contemporary Review, 1901, 79 (January–June): 98–108, p. 100. Nick Clayton, ‘The Quest for Safety: What Took So Long?’, Cycle History, 1998, 8: 15–20, p. 16. According to Clayton in ‘The Meyer-Guilmet Bicycle, 1869 or 1879?’, although other historians have dismissed the earlier version as a fake. Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects [1968], trans. James Benedict. London: Verso, 1996, p. 6 citing, Gilbert Simondon, Du mode d’existence des objets techniques. Paris: Aubier, 1958, pp. 25–26. Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, p. 7. Starley, ‘The Evolution of the Cycle’, p. 608 – further references to this article are given as a page number in the text. See for example comments made a few months earlier to the Royal Society of Arts by the American, Leonard Waldo, in which he complained about ‘the scant

NOTES, PP. 46–50

95. 96.

97. 98. 99. 100.

101. 102.

103.

104.

105.

106. 107. 108. 109.

163

attention to the American Wheel’ in Archibald Sharp’s history. In the discussion that followed, Joseph Pennell (also an American and one of the most intrepid bicycle tourists of the day) complained that the Columbia wood-rimmed wheels were inferior, and it was impossible to get one of Pope’s machines repaired ‘without sending back to the factory’. One tourist found it impossible to get rid of his Columbia (Leonard Waldo, ‘The American Bicycle: Its Theory and Practice of Construction’, Journal of the Society of Arts, 1897, 46 (December): 46–55, p. 55). See for example the case for Lallement in Herlihy, Bicycle, pp. 86–88, 208–209; although a number of bicycle histories still credit Michaux. According to Herlihy the velocipede appeared ‘in Asia, the Pacific, northern and southern Africa, and even Central and South America’, between 1869 and 1870 (Bicycle, p. 144). As with later versions of the bicycle, these sightings would have been very few and far between, restricted mainly to European colonies and international enclaves (see below Chapter 3). Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 147. See Clayton, ‘Who Invented the “Penny-Farthing”?’ and ‘The Meyer-Guilmet Bicycle, 1869 or 1879?’. See sketch of ‘Price’s Improved Bicycle’ in Scientific American, 12 June 1869, reproduced in Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 125. This was cheaper than a hobby-horse in 1819 (about £10) and considerably cheaper than the $100 charged by Pope for importing English high-wheelers into the US while controlling inferior domestic production of machines with wooden wheels (see Waldo in note 94). For a detailed account of chain technology, see Berto, The Dancing Chain, pp. 28–31. O. A. van Nierop, A. C. M Blenkendaal and C. J. Overbeeke, ‘The Evolution of the Bicycle: A Dynamic Systems Approach’, Journal of Design History, 1997, 10(3): 253–267, p. 254. In 1883, a London gathering of tricyclists attracted about 400 participants, and at least one UK manufacturer was exporting tricycles to the colonies (Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 214). According to Ritchie, there were 20 manufacturers in Coventry alone, employing 1,000 or so workers and producing over 100 models (King of the Road, p. 112). In a letter to the Bicycle Touring Club, one class-conscious tricyclist counts ‘Princes, Princesses, Dukes, Earls’ among their number, and refers to tricyclists as ‘altogether a better class than Bicyclists’ (Ritchie, King of the Road, p. 113). Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 227. The Bicycle Touring Club (est. 1878) was renamed the Cyclists’ Touring Club in 1883, partly to accommodate tricyclists. James Starley introduced a collapsible tricycle in 1879 in an attempt to circumvent this problem (Ritchie, King of the Road, p. 116). For a technical comparison see, Boys, ‘Bicycles and Tricycles’, p. 623. See for example, special edition of Cycling magazine for the National Cycle Show at Crystal Palace on 20–28 January 1893, where dozens of adverts for suppliers of safety bicycles are juxtaposed with several for geared Ordinaries: Cycling magazine (28 January, 1893), 5: 106.

164

NOTES, PP. 51–56

110. There were other versions of the safety from France, such as the disputed machine of Meyer and Guilmet – see Reynaud, Le Grand Bi, and other British and American early safety models: the Facile, the Kangaroo, American Star and Lawson’s Bicyclette, which pioneered a rear-wheel driven low mount machine using chain and sprocket drive – see above, this chapter, and Herlihy, Bicycle, pp. 216–217. 111. Alberto E. Minetti, John Pinkerton and Zamparo Paolo, ‘From Bipedalism to Bicyclism: Evolution in Energetics and Biomechanics of Historic Bicycles’, Royal Society Proceedings: Biological Sciences, 2001, 268(1474): 1351–1360. 112. The record for 100 miles was set by George Smith in September 1885 on a Rover (7 h, 5 min, 16 s), although it was broken a month later (Ritchie, King of the Road, p. 130). 113. Although when the Japanese began to manufacture safeties, they reduced the standard size of the English frame and wheels for the Asian market (see Chapter 3). 114. Ritchie, King of the Road, p. 94. 115. Baudrillard, The System of Objects, p. 4. 116. For analysis of how it might be used, see B. F. S. Baden-Powell, ‘The Bicycle for War Purposes’, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, 1899, 43(257): 715–737. For use of the bicycle in French, Swiss, Dutch and Austro-Hungarian armies in the 1880s and 1890, see Michael Plavec, ‘Usage of Bicyclists in K.U.K Armee [sic] During Field Manoeuvres in Lanskroun Area in 1894’, Cycle History, 2010, 21: 36–40. 117. Hadland and Lessing, ‘Debunked Priority Hoaxes’ Bicycle Design, pp. 493–502. This very useful appendix to Lessing and Hadland’s new book provides the latest, but probably not the last word on some of the more well-known hoaxes. My thanks to Hans Lessing for giving me access to this resource. 118. The name was apparently used to describe four-wheeled diligences; see Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design, p. 494. 119. As reported in Alderson, Bicycling: A History, pp. 12–13. 120. H. V. Morton (c1940) Travel in Wartime, pamphlet by B.S.A. Bicycles, Birmingham [see MSS.328/N10/Papers of Alexander A. Josey (1869–1974) in The National Cycle Archive, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick], p. 11; a similar idea is presented in Alderson Bicycling: A History, p. 11. 121. ‘The Origin of Velocipedes’, in the ‘Papers of Alexander A. Josey (1869–1974)’ MSS.328/N10/B14, National Cycling Archives, Warwick Records Office, University of Warwick. 122. Lessing, ‘What Led to the Invention of the Early Bicycle’, pp. 28–29. 123. Jonathan Bate was the first to draw to my attention the link between the ecological disaster and literature of the period at a conference on Ecocriticism at Warwick University in 1994. See also, Jonathan Bate, Romantic Ecology: Wordsworth and the Environmental Tradition. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. 124. As suggested by Ritchie, in King of the Road, p. 37. 125. See Nicholas Oddy, ‘Non-Technological Factors in Early Cycle Design’, Cycle History, 1994, 4: 63–68, p. 65; Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 67; Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design, p. 497.

NOTES, PP. 57–66

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126. From the Gallovidian No. 4 – 1899, ‘The First Bicycle’ by James Johnston. This article established Macmillan as the inventor of the first bicycle – the myth that he fitted cranks and pedals to a Draisine that had found its way to Mr Charteris – a wood turner in Dumfries (p. 2). Macmillan fitted driving gear in the shape of cranks and levers (p. 3). See below, this chapter, for debunking of bicycle priority claims. NB according to Lessing, Johnston began his campaign in 1892 (Hadland and Lessing, Bicycle Design). The Johnston article was accessed at Warwick National Records Office, University of Warwick. National Cycling Archive MSS.328/N10/B9 Papers of Alexander A. Josey (1869–1974). 127. Oddy, ‘Non-Technological Factors in Early Cycle Design’, p. 65. 128. McGurn, On Your Bicycle, p. 31. 129. Oddy, ‘Non-Technological Factors in Early Cycle Design’. 130. To paraphrase Maurice Leblanc in Voici Des Ailes (See Chapter 2). 131. Bernstein, ‘Beauty and the Bicycle’, pp. 76–78. 132. Baudrillard, The System of Objects, p. 5. 133. Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle, p. 3. 134. The safety bicycle boom in the 1890s led to a surge in patents in the UK – over 1,000 per year, tailing off dramatically by 1900 (Millward, Factors Contributing to the Sustained Success of the UK Cycle Industry, p. 9). 135. Pennel, ‘Cycles and Motors in 1900’, p. 100. 136. Briese, ‘The German “Markenfahrad”’, pp. 127–129. 137. Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle, p. 35. 138. Duncans, ‘The Cycle Industry’, p. 504. 139. Baudrillard, The System of Objects, p. 7. 140. The e-bike may be considered by some to be a further significant technological development of the bicycle, which would eventually displace the pedal-driven bicycle, but it is perhaps akin to and more of a threat to the motorbike – at least once the prices of electricity and gasoline are on a par (see Chapter 4). 141. The Recumbent was first introduced in 1914 by Peugeot of France. A later version – the velocar of 1932, designed by Charles Mochet and ridden by Francois Faure – broke the mile and kilometre speed records for a bicycle (‘History of the Bicycle’, Hero Cycles Ltd., India, 2010). 142. Nicholas Oddy, ‘Cycling: A Game for All Players’, Cycle History, 1994, 17: 11–16, p. 15. 143. Berto, The Dancing Chain, p. 227. 144. Frank J. Berto, ‘Who Invented the Mountain Bike?’, Cycle History, 1998, 8: 25–48, pp. 30–33. 145. Berto, The Dancing Chain, p. 291. 146. Bodkin, ‘Fixed-Gear Bicycles’, p. 169. 147. Including European lightweight models, touring bikes, BMX, mountain bikes, recumbents, the Moulton and carbon fibre racing bikes. Although many of these have always been manufactured in Asia, only in the last 20 years has there been a significant Asian market for them. 148. Production beginning in Japan, India and eventually China. Competition was mainly on price and quality rather than design. Chinese manufacturers made only very slight modifications to the basic English roadster – the main alteration was to shorten the frame – see Chapter 3.

166

NOTES, PP. 67–72

2

MOBILITY: THE PRACTICAL AND CULTURAL IMPACT OF BICYCLING IN THE WEST

1. See for example, Susan B. Anthony’s claim – ‘Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel’ (c. 1898), cited in Lynn Sher, Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in her Own Words. New York: Random House, 1995, p. 277. 2. Editorial by Charles P. Sisley, Lady Cyclist, March 1896, 2(1): 7. 3. Sylvia Alving, ‘“Daisy Daisy, Give me your answer do” – “Join the Clarions”’, 12 August 2012, http://ourhistory-hayes.blogspot.hk/2012/08/daisy-daisy-give-meyour-answer-do-join.html (accessed 23 January 2013). 4. Although we also learn that the Princess of Wales could not be persuaded to upgrade to a bicycle from her now ‘entirely obsolete Coventry Rotary [tricycle]’. According to Sisley, Lady Cyclist, p. 8. 5. Max Beerbohm, ‘Fashion and her Bicycle’ [1899], in Max Beerbohm (ed.), MORE. London: Bodley Head, 1921, p. 150. 6. Glen Norcliffe, The Ride to Modernity: The Bicycle in Canada, 1869–1900. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001, p. 187. 7. Robert A. Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle: Its Early Life and Times in America. New York: American Heritage Press, 1972, p. 74. 8. A daily commute of three to four miles was easily achieved in 20 minutes, giving an extensive catchment area for employers in the new towns and suburbs. 9. Beerbohm, ‘Fashion and her Bicycle’, p. 149. 10. Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts Into Air. London: Verso, 1982, pp. 15–36. 11. Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, London: Verso, 1989, p. 29. 12. See the work of Samuel Beckett and Flann O’Brien between the 1930s and 1960s, and the discussion of examples later in this chapter. 13. Between the wars, there was an upsurge in walking, climbing, cycling and camping in the UK, which corresponded to an older outdoor tradition in Germany, (James McGurn, On Your Bicycle: An Illustrated History of Cycling. London: John Murray, 1987, pp. 144–145). 14. See, for example, Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle; Frederick Alderson, Bicycling: A History. Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1972, p. 45; Andrew Ritchie, King of the Road: An Illustrated History of Cycling. London: Ten Speed Press, 1975; McGurn, On Your Bicycle; Norcliffe, The Ride to Modernity; and David V. Herlihy, Bicycle: The History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, p. 300, all cited frequently in this book. 15. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993, p. 6. 16. Innovations such as pneumatic tyres, suspension wheels, steel tubing, gears, ball bearings and chain drives all led directly towards development of the motor car and aeroplane (Herlihy, Bicycle, p. 300). 17. Ibid., p. 278. 18. Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918. Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983, pp. 1–2, emphasis added. Although Kern’s thesis is restricted to Europe prior to the First World War, modern technology

NOTES, PP. 73–76

19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

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and the concomitant transformation in the experience of space and time was, by the end of the 19th century, already global. Apart from the US, it had spread to Australia, Canada, Russia and Japan, and to European colonies in Asia and Africa. The bicycle was one of several modern objects whose arrival signalled the advent of western modernity as it rippled out across the globe (see Chapter 3). Soja, Postmodern Geographies, p. 120. See below for discussion of the impact of the bicycle on non-western societies (Chapter 3) and postmodern society (Chapter 4). The famous section of the Portsmouth Road (now the A3) between the Angel Inn at Thames Ditton and the Anchor Inn at Ripley. Both inns were meeting points for the Cyclists’ Touring Club (CTC). This section of the road was known in the 1880s as the ‘Blue Riband’, and according to McGurn, it was regarded as the ‘best kept road in the world’, (McGurn, On Your Bicycle, p. 155). T. H. S. Escott, Social Transformations of the Victorian Age. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897, pp. 94, 165–166. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1905], trans. Talcott Parsons, London and New York: Routledge, 2001, p. 123. Hagen Schulze (1981), cited in Rüdiger Rabenstein, ‘The History of the German Workers’ Cycling Association, Solidarity’, Cycle History, 2001, 11: 160–168; see also McGurn, On Your Bicycle, p. 133. Rabenstein, ‘History of the German Workers’ Cycling Association’, p. 161. Ibid., p. 165. The Scout, May 1895, p. 16, quoted in Rubenstein, ‘Cycling in the 1890s’ and cited in McGurn, On Your Bicycle, p. 134. See Paul Smethurst, Travel Writing and the Natural World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, p. 114; and Esther Moir, The Discovery of Britain. London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1964. Cited in Nicholas Oddy, ‘The Flaneur on Wheels?’, in David Horton, Paul Rosen and Peter Cox (eds), Cycling and Society. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, pp. 97–112. Oddy suggests the flaneur on wheels might share the same interests as Inglis, but on this evidence, Inglis is more of a traditional home tourist. To paraphrase R. K. Ensor’s (1941) comments on the Clarion movement, cited in McGurn, On Your Bicycle, p. 134. Cited in Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle, p. 247. See Michel Foucault, ‘Of Other Spaces’, trans. Jay Miskowiec, Diacritics, Spring, 1986, 16: 22–27. Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green. London: Chatto and Windus, 1965, p. 162. John Attridge, ‘Steadily and Whole: Ford Madox Ford and Modernist Sociology’, in MODERNISM/modernity, 2008, 15(2): 302. For an extended discussion of Thomas’s bicycle travelogue, see Smethurst, ‘A Flâneur on Wheels?’. The phrase is used by Attridge to refer to Ford’s ideal of modern sociology (see Attridge, ‘Steadily and Whole’). E.M. Forster uses the phrase in Howards End as an ideal to counter the fragmented nature of modernity, it being ‘impossible to see modern life steadily and see it whole’, (E. M. Forster, Howards End [1910]. London: Penguin, 1992, p. 165).

168

NOTES, PP. 77–80

36. See for example the work of John Urry, Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash over the last two decades in the journal Theory, Culture and Society. 37. Contemporary studies on peripatetic mobility in modern life often refer to Walter Benjamin’s appropriation of the flaneur in Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire (The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire) 1938, and Michel de Certeau’s chapter ‘Walking in the City’ in his The Practice of Everyday Life (1984). Certeau’s essay is one of the most frequently cited in the humanities. It rode the double wave of post-structuralist thinking on spatiality/textuality, and postFreudian fascination with the city’s unconscious being, as suggested in what Guy Debord termed psychogeography in his La société du spectacle (1967), (Nigel Thrift, ‘Driving in the City’, Theory, Culture and Society, 2004, 21(4/5): 41–59. 38. Cited in Attridge, ‘Steadily and Whole’, p. 305. 39. Robert Hurst, The Art of Cycling: A Guide to Bicycling in 21st Century America. Guildford, Conn: Globe Pequot Press, 2007, p. 2. 40. In an attempt to persuade the then UK Minister of Transport, Ernest Marples, to consider the provision of cycle paths in the towns and cities of England, E. C. Claxton pointed out that traffic flowed at little more than 10–12 mph during rush hours; average journey distances to work in London were under three miles, which could be accomplished door-to-door by bicycle as fast as by car, (E. C. Claxton, ‘The Future of the Bicycle in Modern Society’, Journal of Royal Society of Arts, January 1969, 116(5138): 114–134). 41. Mike Featherstone, John Urry and Nigel Thrift (2004), Automobilities, in Special Edition of Theory Culture and Society, 21(4–5), London: SAGE, p. 1. 42. Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1995. 43. Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects [1968], trans. James Benedict, London: Verso, 1996, pp. 66, 68. 44. For a discussion of this concept as presented by Martin Buber in ‘Distance and Relation’ (1957) with reference to Sartre and Lefebvre, see Soja, Postmodern Geographies, pp.131–133. 45. Soja, Postmodern Geographies, p. 132. 46. Thrift, ‘Driving in the City’, p. 45. 47. Edward Thomas, ‘The Icknield Way’, in Roland Gant (ed.), Edward Thomas on the Countryside. London: Faber and Faber, 1977, pp. 17–19. 48. LAW formed a Committee on the Improvement of Highways in 1889. In 1891, they published the Good Roads Magazine to encourage better road-building. Albert Pope was involved in the project, and with the support of over a million bicyclists LAW started to bring about improvements by shaming and educating farmers and local authorities in the 1890s (Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle, pp. 206–214). In the UK, the National Cycling Union (NCU) and the CTC formed the ‘Roads Improvement Association’, and from 1880 the Bicycle Union had erected thousands of Danger boards to warn bicyclist of hazards ahead (Alderson, Bicycling: A History, p. 45). 49. James Johnston, ‘The First Bicycle’, The Gallovidian, 1899, 4: 2–3. Accessed in MSS.328/N10/B4 ‘The Papers of Alexander A. Josey (1869–1974)’ at the Warwick National Records Office, National Cycling Archive. 50. Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle, pp. 183–203.

NOTES, PP. 80–89

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51. Ibid., pp. 215–219. 52. ‘In Defence of the Cyclist’, a pamphlet of the Cyclists’ Touring Club, 1939. Accessed in MSS.328/N10/B28/1 ‘The Papers of Alexander A. Josey (1869–1974)’ at the Warwick National Records Office, National Cycling Archive. 53. Andrew Millward, Factors Contributing to the Sustained Success of the UK Cycle Industry, p. 315. 54. John Foster Fraser, Round the World on a Wheel [1899]. London: Methuen, 1907, p. vi. 55. Author unknown, Cycling, 8 June 1916, 51(1325). In the same issue, petrol rationing in England was seen as a means to promote cycling. Presumably there was no lack of rubber in the UK. 56. McGurn, On Your Bicycle, p. 94. 57. Iain A. Boal, ‘Towards a World History of Cycling’, Cycle History, 2001, 11: 16–22. 58. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 211. 59. John Urry uses the term ‘system’ to incorporate the vehicle with whatever is necessary to its mobility. The impact on the environment is the result of the ‘complex’ or ‘system’, which for the motor car includes elevated urban highways, parking areas, autoroutes, garages, service areas, car manufacturing and distribution, and the petroleum supply industry (Featherstone et al., Automobilities, pp. 25–26). Clearly the system of bicycle mobility, while sharing some of the road system, has had far less detrimental impact on the environment. 60. McGurn, On Your Bicycle, p. 132. 61. Richard Harmond, ‘Progress and Flight: An Interpretation of the American Cycle Craze of the 1890s’, Journal of Social History, Winter, 1971, 5(2): 245. 62. Scientific American (1896), cited in Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle, p. 112. 63. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 7. 64. Harmond, ‘Progress and Flight’, p. 249. 65. Smith, A Social History of the Bicycle, p. 113. 66. H. G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance. London: Everyman, 1896, pp. 105, 117. 67. Leblanc, Voici des Ailes (1898), cited in (and translated from the French by) Philippe Gaboriau, ‘Cycling and Functional Aesthetics in Maurice Leblanc’s novel ‘Voici des Ailes’ (1898)’, Cycle History, 1992, pp. 117–19. 68. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 11. 69. Heidegger, cited in Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 10. 70. In ‘The Painter of Modern Life’ (1861), Charles Baudelaire describes modernity as that ‘half of art’ that represents ‘the transient, the fleeting, the contingent’, as opposed to ‘the eternal and the immutable.’ The work of the artist and social commentator, he advised, was to seek the two strands and the tensions between. 71. Harmond, ‘Progress and Flight’, p. 246. 72. Attridge, ‘Steadily and Whole’, p. 304. 73. This is the central argument in his book, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918. 74. Norcliffe, The Ride to Modernity, p. 190. 75. Janet Wolff, ‘The Invisible Flaneuse: Women and the Literature of Modernity’, Theory Culture and Society, 1985, 2(3): 37.

170

NOTES, PP. 89–97

76. Phillip Gordon Mackintosh and Glen Norcliffe, ‘Men, Women and the Bicycle: Gender and the Social Geography of Cycling in the Late Nineteenth Century’, in David Horton, Paul Rosen and Peter Cox (eds), Cycling and Society. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007, p. 153–177. 77. Alderson, Bicycling: A History, pp. 42–6. 78. Mackintosh and Norcliffe, ‘Men, Women and the Bicycle’, p. 160. 79. Octave Thanet, ‘The Stout Miss Hopkin’s Bicycle’, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, December 1896, 94: 409–419. 80. Escott, Social Transformations, p. 193. 81. Ibid., p. 94. 82. Jacoba Steendijk-Kuypers, ‘Freedom on the Bicycle: Women’s Choice’, Cycle History, 2001, 10: 131. 83. Patricia Marks, Bicycles, Bangs and Bloomers: The New Woman in the Popular Press. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2000, p. 176. 84. Marks, Bicycles, Bangs and Bloomers, p. 197. 85. Sisley, Lady Cyclist, p. 430. 86. Charlotte Smith, Brooklyn Eagle, 20 August 1896, cited in Sue Macy, Wheels of Change, Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2011. 87. Frances E. Willard, A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride a Bicycle. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1895, pp. 24, 27. 88. Harmond, Progress and Flight, p. 243. 89. E. B. Turner, ‘Health on a Bicycle’, Contemporary Review, January–June, 1898, 73: 640–648, p. 641. 90. Mackintosh and Norcliffe, ‘Men, Women and the Bicycle’, p. 165. 91. Marks, Bicycles, Bangs and Bloomers, p. 185. 92. A. Wheeler, Obviously a nom de plume.Wheels a Bicycle Romance, New York: Dillingham, 1986. 93. See for example, ‘Common place book and diary of Emily Sophia Coddington’. National Cycling Archives, University of Warwick (MSS 328/N28). The cycling diary of a young woman who was a close acquaintance and probably the future wife of G. Herbert Stancer, later secretary to the Cyclists’ Touring Club. Her diary lists a series of rides, often unaccompanied, between 1893 and 1896. In 1895, she rode a total of 1,458.5 miles. Although sometimes meeting with the Coventry Cycling Club, many of her rides were solo from her home in the northern suburbs of Leeds. Probably about 20 years old, she seems to have been independent enough to ride out in the moonlight alone and attend Club meetings at pubs. Many of her entries record meetings with ‘GHS’ and other men. 94. Jinya Huang, ‘Queen of the Road: Bicycling, Femininity, and the Lady Cyclist’, Cycle History, 2007, 17: 69–76. 95. See Wolff, ‘The Invisible Flaneuse’, pp. 37–46. 96. See E. M. Forster, A Passage to India, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1989), where the plot hinges on Aziz’s bicycle getting a flat tyre; and Iris Murdoch, The Red and the Green, where the bicycle moves characters around, is used in an insurrection and acts as the sign of a visitor. 97. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 23. 98. Scotford Lawrence, ‘The Bicycle in Art and the Problem of Representation of the Moving Image’, Cycle History, 2000, 10: 117.

NOTES, PP. 97–107

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99. The ‘first film’ of the Lumière brothers, Leaving the Lumière Factory, was one of a series of ‘actualities’. It is available on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=JGugm8Dzmuc [last accessed on 18 December 2014]. 100. Later depicted in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, 1927 and Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, 1936, for example. 101. Jack Rennert, 100 Years of Bicycle Posters. New York: Harper and Row, 1973, p. 3. The poster reproduced here appears on p. 62. 102. Matt Seaton, On your Bike: The Complete Guide to Cycling. London: Black Dog, 2006, p. 20. 103. Rennert, 100 Years of Bicycle Posters, p. 4. 104. Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men on the Bummel. Bristol: Arrowsmith, 1900, pp. 225–226. 105. See Paul N. Humble, ‘Duchamp’s Readymades: Art and Anti-art’, British Journal of Aesthetics, 1982, 22(1): 52–64 (58–59). 106. Janet Menzies, ‘Beckett’s Bicycles’, John Piling (ed.) The Journal of Beckett Studies, 6, Autumn 1980, [electronic publication http://www.english.fsu.edu/jobs/ num06/Num6Menzies.htm - accessed 27 December 2012], p. 6. 107. Scientific American LXXX (January–June 1899), p. 292. 108. First published as ‘Le Calmant’, one of four French novellas written in 1946, but not published until 1955. The extract is from Samuel Beckett, Four Novellas, London: John Calder, 1977, p. 62. 109. Ibid. This a postwar text, and the loss of pain in the legs might refer to the injuries caused by the war. In All That Fall, Nagg and Nell lose their legs in the Ardennes in a tandem accident on the road to Sedan. Hamm asks Clov for two wheels, but after the war there are ‘no more bicycle wheels’; see C. J. Ackerley and S. E. Gontarski, The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett. New York: Grove Press, 2004, p. 55. 110. Yoshiki Tajiri, Samuel Beckett and the Prosthetic Body: The Organs and Senses in Modernism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 42. 111. Daniel Katz, ‘“Beckett’s Measure’s” Principles of Pleasure in Molloy and “First Love”’, MFS Modern Fiction Studies, Summer 2003, 49(2): 249 and Ackerley and Gontarski, The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett, p. 498.

3

CROSSINGS: THE DIFFUSION OF BICYCLE CULTURE ACROSS ASIA AND AFRICA

1. For a summary of different positions on technology transfer in non-western societies, see David Arnold and Erich DeWald, ‘Cycles of Empowerment? The Bicycle and Everyday Technology in Colonial India and Vietnam’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2011, 53(4): 971–2. 2. See also Hunt, who in A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization and Mobility in the Congo refers to bicycles in colonial and postcolonial contexts as emblems of modernity, agents of social and material mobility and bearers of postcolonial nostalgia (cited in Arnold and DeWald, ‘Cycles of Empowerment?’, p. 973 (n. 10)). 3. On the question of resistance to modernity as a ‘foreign’ import, see Harry Harootunian, History’s Disquiet: Modernity, Cultural Practice, and the Question of Everyday Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 65.

172

NOTES, PP. 107–112

4. Frank Dikotter, Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, p. 3. 5. See for example, the advertising strategies used by western firms in Africa in the 1930s in Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. 6. Emily Hahn, The Soong Sisters. London: Robert Hale, 1942, p. 12. 7. Ibid. 8. During the Boxer Rebellion of 1898–1901, the Empress Dowager declared war on foreigners, with Christian missionaries becoming a main target. This precipitated a strong multinational response, the defeat of the Imperial Army and eventually the demise of her dynasty. 9. ‘Faltering’ because western-style modernisation was first resisted, then nationalised, then ‘re-invented’ under communism, then finally embraced by Deng Xiaoping under the ‘Four Modernizations’. 10. Amir Moghaddaas Eesfehani, ‘The Bicycle’s Long Way to China’, Cycle History, 2003, 13: 94–5. 11. Hahn, The Soong Sisters, p. 15. 12. While hostility in the Middle East was expected, it seems that Fraser was surprised by the frequency and ferocity of attacks in China. They were armed, and on several occasions Fraser had to raise his revolver to protect them from stonethrowing mobs (John Foster Fraser, Round the World on a Wheel [1899]. London: Methuen, 1907). 13. For further background on China at this time, see Frances Wood’s account of life in the treaty ports in No Dogs and Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China 1843–1943. 14. Christian missionaries were other western users of the bicycle in the 1890s, accentuating the idea of the bicycle as a foreign intervention (Edward J. M. Rhoades, ‘Cycles of Cathay: A History of the Bicycle in China’, Transfers, 2012, 2(2): 97). 15. Or, put another way, it highlighted the neo-colonial situation in which coastal China was occupied by foreigners controlling the country’s trade. 16. Fraser, Round the World on a Wheel, pp. 412–13. 17. Tian-shi-zhai Pictorial, vol. 1, no. 8, cited in Tao Xu, ‘A History of the Bicycle and Chinese Cyclists, 1868–1949’ [Chinese], Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review, E-Journal No. 3, June 2012, http://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/ e-journal/issue-3 [accessed 27 November 2012]. English translation of excerpts by Sabrina Tao, Yunzhu, Beijing Language and Culture University, p. 5. English translation by Sabrina Tao, Yunzhu. 18. Eesfehani, ‘The Bicycle’s Long Way to China’, pp. 97–8. 19. Xu, ‘A History of the Bicycle and Chinese Cyclists’, p. 21. English translation by Sabrina Tao, Yunzhu. 20. Hahn, The Soong Sisters, p. 26. 21. Dikotter, Exotic Commodities, p. 86. 22. Eesfehani, ‘The Bicycle’s Long Way to China’, p. 98. 23. Xu, ‘A History of the Bicycle and Chinese Cyclists’, p. 22. English translation by Sabrina Tao, Yunzhu.

NOTES, PP. 112–119

173

24. From Picture Daily, column ‘Shanghai Inside’, cited in Xu, ‘A History of the Bicycle and Chinese Cyclists’, p. 23. English translation by Sabrina Tao, Yunzhu. 25. See also John Lust, Chinese Popular Prints. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996, for reference to a poster of 1910 showing a young woman with bound feet and traditional dress riding a highly stylised bicycle (print no. 15). 26. Eesfehani, ‘The Bicycle’s Long Way to China’, p. 96. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., pp. 96–7. 29. A ‘cropper’, literally as well as figuratively, as this was the name given to a fall (also a ‘header’) over the front wheel of the Ordinary – a frequent occurrence among riders and a major driver in developing the safety bicycle (see Chapter 1). 30. Eesfehani, ‘The Bicycle’s Long Way to China’, p. 97. 31. Kees van Dijk, ‘Pedal Power in Southeast Asia’, in Jan van der Putten and Mary Kilcline Cody (eds), Lost Times and Untold Tales from the Malay World. Singapore: National University of Singapore Press, 2009, p. 271. 32. Dijk, ‘Pedal Power in Southeast Asia’, p. 279. 33. Xu, ‘A History of the Bicycle and Chinese Cyclists’, p. 4. English translation by Sabrina Tao, Yunzhu. 34. Ibid. 35. Those unable to afford a rickshaw might ride in a specially constructed wheelbarrow with up to seven other passengers. These were commonly used in the 19th century and continued until the 1950s (Eesfehani, ‘The Bicycle’s Long Way to China’). Like the rickshaw, the wheelbarrow later took advantage of the technology of the bicycle wheel; it was a transitional invention through the 1920s and 1930s. A refinement of the horse-drawn cart, it had a central wheel so that if the weight were to be evenly distributed, it could be pushed or pulled rather than lifted. Relying on cheap labour, the wheelbarrow was regressive, and not a modern invention as such. 36. Joan Judge, Print and Politics: Shibao and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996, p. 35. 37. Dikotter, Exotic Commodities, p. 86. 38. Ibid. 39. Figures for wages in Chengdu are not available, but in Beijing workers would have earned no more than two to three dollars a day. The median family income in Beijing in 1918 was $90 to $109 a year (Tien-P’ui Meng and Sydney Gamble, ‘Prices, Wages and the Standard of Living in Peking 1900–1924’, supplement to Chinese Social and Political Science Review, July, 1926. Peking: Peking Express Press, pp. 60–2, 100–101). 40. C. E. Darwent, Shanghai: A Handbook for Travellers and Residents, 1920, cited in Rhoades, ‘Cycles of Cathay’, p. 99. However, by 1929, the number of bicycles in Greater Shanghai was almost 38,000, double the number of motor cars and trucks (Rhoades, ‘Cycles of Cathay’, p. 100). 41. Jermyn Chi-Hung Lynn, The Social Life of the Chinese in Peking. Peking: China Booksellers, 1928, p. 86. It is unlikely that these bicycles belonged to ordinary Chinese; this is the only reference to bicycles, suggesting that bicycling was not yet a common feature of social life.

174

NOTES, PP. 119–126

42. Evidence (or lack of it) can be found in Guangyi Xu, Old Suzhou: An Album of Century-Old Photos. Jiangsu People’s Publishing House. 43. Shiro Yagami, ‘Japanese Bicycle Imports and Exports’, Cycle History, 2001, 11: 111–17. Another contender for the first Chinese-made bicycle was the ‘Feiren (Flyer)’ which was assembled by the Tongchang Company in Shanghai from locally made frames and forks, but used imported wire-spoked wheels and ball bearings (Rhoades, ‘Cycles of Cathay’, p. 103). 44. For an analysis of the bicycle’s role in the PRC’s planned economy, see Xun-Hai Zhang, Enterprise Reforms in a Centrally Planned Economy. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1992. 45. Rhoades, ‘Cycles of Cathay’, p. 108. 46. Yukio Outsu, ‘History of the Ordinary in Japan’, Cycle History, 2001, 11: 39. 47. Tsuneyoshi Takeuchi, The Formation of the Japanese Bicycle Industry (Japanese Experience of the UNU Human and Social Development Programme series 39) (United Nations University (UNU)), 1981, p. 1. 48. Ross S. Petty, ‘The Rise of the Asia Bicycle Business’, Cycle History, 2001, 11: 191. 49. Andrew Millward, Factors Contributing to the Sustained Success of the UK Cycle Industry 1870–1939, pp. 139–40. 50. Takeuchi, The Formation of the Japanese Bicycle Industry, p. 47. 51. Ibid., p. 46. 52. Compare with the ideological rebranding of bicycles in China which had been proudly stamped ‘Made in Coventry’ until anti-imperialist sentiment in the 1930s led to them being advertised as ‘national products’; see Rhoades, ‘Cycles of Cathay’, p. 103. 53. Takeuchi, The Formation of the Japanese Bicycle Industry, pp. 5–6. 54. Ibid., p. 5. 55. Ibid., p. 12. 56. Cited in Ibid., p. 10. 57. Japan Punch was set up by Charles Wirgman, a British journalist for the Illustrated London News. He published the satirical magazine between 1862 and 1887; its several cartoons containing ancient bicycles and tricycles suggest the bicycle was firmly lodged in the cultural imaginary of the foreign residents of Yokohama. 58. Fraser, Round the World on a Wheel, p. 451. 59. Yiding Zeng, The Representation of Modern Women in ‘Yuefenpai’ in 1920s and 1930s Shanghai. Lund: University of Lund, Sweden (MA Dissertation), 2010, p. 41. 60. Ellen Johnson Laing, Selling Happiness: Calendar Posters and Visual Culture in Early Twentieth-Century Shanghai. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 2004, pp. 219–22. 61. For examples of such adverts, see Frances Wood, No Dogs and Not Many Chinese: Treaty Port Life in China 1843–1943. London: John Murray, 1998. 62. Author unknown, The China Mail, Hong Kong, 5 January, 1893, 49(9336): 2. 63. Lady Cyclist, March 1896, p. 8. 64. Arnold and DeWald, ‘Cycles of Empowerment?’, p. 972. 65. Millward, Factors Contributing to the Sustained Success of the UK Cycle Industry 1870–1939, p. 139.

NOTES, PP. 126–134

175

66. Japanese bikes were less than half the price of British bikes, and were sold by unscrupulous dealers in India as re-badged British bikes in 1919 (Millward, Factors Contributing to the Sustained Success of the UK Cycle Industry, p. 150). The quality of the Japanese bicycles was not as good, but on price they dominated the market in the Dutch East Indies (p. 166). 67. Arnold and DeWald, ‘Cycles of Empowerment?’, p. 974. 68. By 1950, postcolonial India had stifled the British trade through a combination of higher import tariffs and local subsidies. Raleigh set up a factory in West Bengal to circumvent the restrictions and help India meet its massive productive target of half a million bicycles a year (Arnold and DeWald, ‘Cycles of Empowerment?’, p. 976). 69. The Times of India, 14 December, 1869, p. 2. Accessed in ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Times of India (1838–2003). In the edition of 18 December, 1869, a notice claims, in response to an advert for the ‘first bicycle race’ in India at Allahabad, that the first race was actually held a month earlier in Bombay. 70. Fraser, Round the World on a Wheel, p. 255. 71. Dijk, ‘Pedal Power in Southeast Asia’, p. 279. 72. Ibid., pp. 279–80. 73. Millward, Factors Contributing to the Sustained Success of the UK Cycle Industry, p. 230. 74. Ibid., p. 205. 75. Arnold and DeWald, ‘Cycles of Empowerment?’, p. 986. 76. Ibid., p. 981; Leonard Woolf, An Autobiography (1880–1911), Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980, p. 233. 77. Dijk, ‘Pedal Power in Southeast Asia’, pp. 269–73. 78. John Roselli, ‘The Self-Image of Effeteness: Physical Education and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal,’ Past and Present, 1980, 86: 121–48 (cited in Arnold and DeWald, ‘Cycles of Empowerment?’, p. 983). 79. See references to Vietnamese literature on the subject of gender in Arnold and DeWald, ‘Cycles of Empowerment?’, p. 988. 80. In Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the white man arrives on his ‘iron horse’ – the man was killed and his bicycle tied to a sacred tree, an event which would have deadly repercussions. 81. Rex Uzo Ugorji and Nnennaya Achinivu, ‘The Significance of Bicycles in a Nigerian Village’, The Journal of Social Psychology, 1977, 102(2): 241–46. 82. Francis Kkwaf Kwao, ‘Research Report on Bicycle Transportation in Northern Ghana’, in Robert Boivin and Jean-François Provonost (eds), The Bicycle: Global Perspectives, 1992, pp. 69–70. 83. See also Godwin O. J. Okeaduh, ‘Bicycle for Agriculture and Environment in Africa’, in Boivin and Provonost, The Bicycle: Global Perspectives, pp. 86–86. 84. Nancy Rose Hunt, A Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization and Mobility in the Congo. Durham: Duke University Press, 1999, p. 13. 85. Ibid., p. 17. 86. Ibid., pp. 138–40. 87. Ibid., pp. 175–76. 88. Ugorji and Achinivu, ‘The Significance of Bicycles in a Nigerian Village’, p. 243. 89. Ibid., p. 244.

176

NOTES, PP. 134–143

90. Ibid., pp. 244–45. 91. Ibid., p. 243. 92. Kwame Anthony Appiah, ‘Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?’, Critical Inquiry, Winter, 1991, 17(2): 335–57 and Nirvana Tanoukhi, ‘The Scale of World Literature’, New Literary History, 2008, 39(3–4): 599–617. 93. James Baldwin, Perspectives: Angles on African Art (exhibition catalogue). New York: Center for African Art, 1987, p. 125. 94. Appiah, ‘Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?, p. 346. 95. [author unknown], Perspectives: Angles on African Art, p. 23. 96. Its commercial value assured by no less a figure than David Rockefeller, a cocurator of the New York exhibition (Appiah, ‘Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?’, p. 336). 97. Tanoukhi, ‘The Scale of World Literature’, p. 562. 98. Appiah, ‘Is the Post- in Postmodernism the Post- in Postcolonial?’, p. 257. 99. Although a direct connection has been made between the Chinese wheelbarrow and the Draisine (Hans-Erhard Lessing, ‘What Led to the Invention of the Early Bicycle’, Cycle History, 2001, 11: 28–36). On the question of diffusionism and Eurocentricism, see also Iain A. Boal, ‘Towards a World History of Cycling’, Cycle History, 2001, 11: 16–17. 100. Takeuchi, The Formation of the Japanese Bicycle Industry, p. 36. 101. See Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. 102. During the Malabar Rebellion of 1921, policemen on bicycles were ‘fatally vulnerable’ (Arnold and DeWald, ‘Cycles of Empowerment?’, p. 989). 103. Stree Shakti Sanghatana, ‘We Were Making History’: Life Stories of Women in the Telegana’s People’s Struggle. New Delhi: Kali for Women, 1989, p. 106, 181–97 (cited in Arnold and DeWald, ‘Cycles of Empowerment?, p. 994 (n. 107)). 104. See Patrick Chen, ‘The Bicycle in War: Vietnam 1945–1975’, in Cycle History, 2002, 12: 76–81. 105. The rickshaw was not accepted in the Philippines or Indonesia and the Chinese consul in the Philippines put a veto on Chinese runners (Dijk, ‘Pedal Power in Southeast Asia’, p. 274).

4

TRENDS AND TRAJECTORIES: THE GLOBAL FUTURE OF THE BICYCLE

1. See chart for ‘World Bicycle Production, 1950–2007’ in Worldwatch Institute (2008), Vital Signs 2007–2008. New York: W. W. Norton. 2. Walter Hook, ‘From Best Practice to Paradigm Change’, in Sustainable Transport. New York: ITDP, Winter, 2010, 22, p. 5. 3. Glen Norcliffe, ‘Out for a Spin: The Flaneur on Wheels’, Cycle History, 1998, 8: 245. 4. William J. Mitchell, ‘Bicycle Socialism’ in World’s Greatest Architect: Making Meaning, and Network Culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 94. 5. Since 2010, Guangzhou has had a bike rental scheme of 5,000 bikes, which is integrated with Asia’s highest capacity BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) scheme serving 800,000 passengers every day (Hook, Sustainable Transport, p. 4).

NOTES, PP. 143–147

177

6. Worldwatch Institute, ‘Bicycle Production Reaches 130 Million Units’, 2012, http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5462 (accessed 5 January 2013). 7. http://copenhagenize.eu/index/ (accessed 5 January 2013). 8. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/greenchina/2011-07/15/content_12913872.htm (accessed 5 January 2013). 9. James McGurn, On Your Bicycle: An Illustrated History of Cycling. London: John Murray, 1987, p. 183. 10. Source – Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2007–2008, New York: W. W. Norton, 2008. The figure includes e-bikes. 11. For example, in the city of Morogoro, in East Africa, 33% of all trips made by males are by bicycle, while for women the figure is 2% (walking accounts for 83% of trips by women) (Theo Rwebangira, ‘Cycling in African Cities: Status and Prospects’, World Transport Policy and Practice, 2001, 7(2): 7–10). Other African cities where trips made by bicycle are significant include Tanzania, Eldoret, Kenya and Ougadougou, Burkina Faso, which has 10–23% modality (Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2007–2008). 12. Bicycle Retailer and Industry News (1 July 2012) ‘Annual Statistics’, 21(11): 14. 13. Ibid., p. 22. 14. J. Matthew Roney, ‘Bicycles Pedalling Into the Spotlight’, Earth Policy Institute, 2008. 15. http://chinaautoweb.com/2012/07/chinese-auto-ownership-rose-to-114-million/ (accessed 19 December 2012). 16. Daniel Caruthers, ‘Fallbrook’s Al Nordin Foresees China Boom’, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, 2010, 19(9): 23. 17. Daniel Caruthers, ‘China Slowly Becoming a Larger Market for High-End Bicycles’, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, 2010, 19(9): 22. 18. The phenomenal success of the e-bike is not all good news for the environment. Apart from leading to a rise in road traffic accidents, which has caused it to be banned in many cities in China and the West, it consumes electricity (in China predominantly produced from coal) and the lead–acid batteries are often not recycled. 19. Georgia Kral, ‘A Crackdown on Electric Bicycles Coming from Two Directions’, Metrofocus, 2012, http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/2012/07/a-crackdownon-electric-bicycles-coming-from-two-directions/ (accessed 5 January 2013). 20. Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2007–2008. 21. For an account of the Flying Pigeon in China today, see Dan Koeppel, ‘The Flight of the Pigeon’, Bicycling magazine online, 2009, http://www.bicycling. com/news/featured-stories/flight-pigeon (accessed 6 January 2012). 22. Marcia D. Lowe, The Bicycle: Vehicle for a Small Planet. Washington, DC: Worldwatch Institute, Worldwatch Paper 90, 1989, pp. 10–11. 23. Cited in Gary Gardner, ‘Power to the Pedals’, World Watch Magazine, Worldwatch Institute, 2010, 23(4), http://www.worldwatch.org/node/6456 (accessed January 18 2015). 24. Lowe, The Bicycle: Vehicle for a Small Planet, pp. 6–7. 25. Children in the US and elsewhere are walking and bicycling to school far less than they used to for safety and other reasons. Not only does this have an immediate impact on their health and well-being, it has an impact on their socialisation, and removes a traditional connection between childhood and

178

26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

38.

NOTES, PP. 147–155

bicycling, reducing the likelihood of them using the bicycle as an adult (J. Harry Wray, Pedal Power: The Quiet Rise of the Bicycle in American Public Life. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, pp. 208–209. Jason Norman, ‘Giant’s King Liu Tours China by Bike to Fuel Passion for Cycling’, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, 2009, 18(9): 31. Robert Lamb (in collaboration with Friends of the Earth), Promising the Earth. Abingdon: Routledge, 1996, p. 95. The politicisation of social space in this context has its origins in Guy Debord’s Situationist movement, a leftist reaction to a capitalist-dominated and mediasaturated culture, as described in Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholdson Smith, New York: Zone Books, 1995 [1967]. Wray, Pedal Power, p. 140. Lowe, The Bicycle: Vehicle for a Small Planet, p. 7. http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/community/rides/breast_cancer_awareness_ride (accessed 8 January 2012). Fred Strebeigh, ‘The Wheels of Freedom: Bicycles in China’, Bicycling, April 1991, http://www.strebeigh.com/china-bikes.html (accessed 6 January 2012). http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2010/08/06/what-to-wear-when-cycling (accessed 4 January 2012). http://copenhagencyclechic.com/ (accessed 4 January 2012). http://www.pashley.co.uk (accessed 4 January 2012). For an excellent illustrated account of the history and culture of the fixed-gear bicycle, see Anthony Edwards and Max Leonard, Fixed: Global Fixed-Gear Bike Culture. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2009. Julie Glassberg has captured the exploits of the ‘Black Label Bike Club’ in some startling images of this self-confessed ‘outlaw bicycle club.’ The club was created in 1992 by Jacob Houle and Per Hanson in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has chapters nationwide. They have introduced a DIY tall bike culture and organise jousting competitions, among other destructive alternative events. See Robin LeBlanc, Bicycle Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife. Berkley: University of California Press, 1999.

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ICHC CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS Cycle History 7: Proceedings of the 7th International Cycle History Conference, Rob van der Plas (ed.). San Francisco: Van der Plas Publications, 1997. Cycle History 8: Proceedings of the 8th International Cycle History Conference Nicholas Oddy and Rob van der Plas (eds). San Francisco: Van der Plas Publications, 1998. Cycle History 9: Proceedings of the 9th International Cycle History Conference. Glen Norcliffe and Rob van der Plas (eds). San Francisco: Van der Plas Publications, 1999. Cycle History 10: Proceedings of the 10th International Cycling History Conference, HansErhard Lessing and Andrew Ritchie (eds). San Francisco: Van der Plas Publications, 2000. Cycle History 11: Proceedings of the 11th International Cycle History Conference, Iain Boal and Andrew Ritchie (eds). San Fransisco: Van der Plas Publications, 2001. Cycle History 12: Proceedings of the 12th International Cycling History Conference, Andrew Ritchie and Rob van der Plas (eds). San Fransisco: Van der Plas Publications, 2002.

186

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Cycle History 17: Proceedings of the 17th International Cycle History Conference, Glen Norcliffe (ed.). San Francisco: Van der Plas Publications, 2007. Cycle History 20: Proceedings of the 20th International Cycle History Conference Gary W. Sanderson (ed.). England: John Pinkerton Memorial Publishing Fund, 2010. Cycle History 21: Proceedings of the 21st International Cycle History Conference, Andrew Ritchie (ed.). Cheltenham, England: Cycling History (Publishing) Ltd., 2011.

INDEX

accessories, 5, 7, 59–60, 63, 152–3 advertising, 6–7, 10–11, 33, 35, 58–9, 77, 161 n64, 174 n52 bicycle posters, 11, 26, 54, 58, 63, 66, 95–9, 159 n33 in China, 123–5 in colonial Africa, 172 n5 ‘Cycles Gladiator’ poster, 97–8 see also marketing American Star bicycle, 19, 164 n110 Anthony, Susan B., 166 n1 anti-modern sentiment, 75, 79, 86, 108 resistance to modernity, 171 n3 Appiah, Kwame, 135–6; see also ‘Man with a Bicycle’ attire, see clothing Ariel bicycle, 18, 24, 39–40, 47–8 cost, 160 n56 see also Ordinary bicycle automobility, 69 rival to bicycle mobility, 77–8, 82, 145, 148, 155; see also motor car Baldwin, James, 135, 137, 176 n93 see also ‘Man with a Bicycle’ Baudelaire, Charles, 77, 86, 168 n37 ‘The Painter of Modern Life’, 169 n70 see also flaneur Baudrillard, Jean The System of Objects, 44–5, 52–3, 58–9, 61, 77–8

beauty of machine, 40, 58, 65, 165 n131; see also fetish object of bicyclist, 80, 96; see also health and exercise; Seymour, Ann Beckett, Samuel, 71, 102–3, The Calmative, 102–3 ‘Sanies I’, 103 Beerbohm, Max ‘Fashion and her Bicycle’, 68–70 see also fashion Benjamin, Walter, 168 n37 Beijing, 2, 4, 109, 112, 119, 143, 173 n39 Tiananmen Square, see politics, bicycle protests bicycle advocacy, 142, 150, 152 London Cycling Campaign, 149 see also politics; critical bicycling bicycle booms, 1, 3, 62, 154 ‘bicycle craze’ (safety boom 1890s), 11, 34–5, 44, 68–70 global (20/21st century), 8, 141 in colonies, 125–6 of 1970s/80s, 64, 143–4 bicycle cads, 65, 82, 89, 159 n32; see also speed, scorchers bicycle chic, 6, 7, 152–3 bicycle clubs 14, 41, 73–4, 129 Black Label Bike Club, 178 n37 Bombay, 126 Calcutta, 127

187

188

INDEX

bicycle clubs—continued Clarion Cycling Club, 74, 148 Japan, 121 League of American Wheelmen (LAW) masculinism in, 88–9, Singapore, 127 Solidarity (The Workers’ Cycling Federation), 74, 148 for women, 84, 90, 96 see also cycle touring clubs bicycle components bearings, 16, 18, 21, 24, 42, 47, 50, 123, 162 n83 chains, 19–21, 23, 42, 44, 48, 50, 51, 163 n101 gears, 18, 19–23, 40, 46, 48–51, 158 n20 see also fixed-gear bicycles frames, 17–18, 29, 60–1, 64, 134, 157–8 n9 steel tubing, 4, 18, 21, 47 tyres fat, 62, 64–5 pneumatic, 21, 50–1, 157–8 n9 solid rubber, 17, 40 wheels, 13–29, 51–2, 62–4, 122, 138 rubber clad, 47 size of, 40–2, 47–8, 64 suspension, 40, 47, 158 n14, 162 n81 ‘Tangent’ system, 18, 47, 50 wire spokes 17–18, 21, 23, 38, 40, 47, 50 wooden, 16, 17, 28, 47, 162 n81, 163 n94, 163 n100 bicycle industry, 9–11, 29, 60, 72, 141 China, 4, 65, 118–9 , 141, 145 decline of, 44, 60 England, 34–5, 39, 41, 126–7, 152 France, 17, 28–31, 38, 46, 157 n9, 160 n42 Germany, 60 Japan, 108, 120–121 US, 10, 72 bicycle lanes/paths, 78–80, 146, 168 n40 bicycle (bike) messenger, 65, 148, 153 bicycle modality (% of trips), 142–5, 177 n11

bicycle posters, see advertising bicycle production, 3, 8–10, 13, 29, 32–5, 38, 41, 46, 72, 119–20, 126–7, 165 n148 factory system, 33–4, 73, 97, 162 n78 mass production, 13, 17–18, 21–2, 35, 47, 60, 72 over-production, 60–1 global trends, 141–6, 176 n1, 177 n6 see also bicycle industry bicycle repairs, 60, 81, 120, 130–1, 163 n94 Bicycle Thieves, The (dir. Vittorio De Sica), 44, 162 n86 Bicyclette, the, 19, 45, 48, 164 n110 see also Lawson, H. J. Bicycling magazine, 177 n21 Bijker, Wiebe, 41–4; see also SCOT bike-share/rental schemes, 1, 4, 8, 121, 141, 143, 176 n5 BMX, 3, 61–2, 153 Boal, Iain, 82, 176 n99 Boccioni, Umberto Dynamism of a Cyclist, 100 Boneshaker, see velocipede, French pedal-driven Boys, Vernon, Sir Charles, 46, 159–60 n39 Brompton bicycle, 62 capitalism, industrial, 73–4, 82, 86, 123 as factor in bicycle development, 12, 34–5, 38–9, 43, 162 n78 chain drives, see bicycle components, chains China, 4, 8, 35, 65, 81, 105–25, 130–1, 138, 141–7, 150–2, 172 n12, 172 n14, 174 n52 Boxer Rebellion, 108–10, 172 n8 Chinese Illustrated News, 115 Opium Wars, 108–9, 117 People’s Republic of (PRC), 4, 107, 119, 174 n44 Picture Daily, 112–3, 173 n24 Qing Dynasty, 108, 110, 112 resistance to bicycles, 105, 107, 110, 117

INDEX

women in, 112–4, 123–5; see also women see also separate entries for Shanghai; Beijing Clarion Cycling Club, see bicycle clubs class issues, 1–3, 5–7, 22–6, 49, 54, 61, 67, 69–71, 81–4, 106, 109, 118, 121,127, 130, 139–41, 145–6, 163 n105 middle-class, 30, 35, 42, 62–4, 92–5 upper-class, 26, 51, 67–9, 125 working/lower-class, 44, 67, 91, 118, 121, 126, 128, 138 Clayton, Nick, 44, 158 n14, 158 n19, 162 n90 clothing (attire), 59, 61, 84, 92, 99, 130, 158; see also fashion Columbia bicycles, 120, 162–3 n 94 colonialism, 105, 126, 131–5 colonies and ex-colonies, 27, 49, 105–7, 126, 138–9 Africa Belgian Congo, 132–3, 171 n2 Nigeria, 133–7 Northern Ghana, 131 Asia Malaysia (British Malaya), 127, 129, 145 Chinese treaty ports, 106, 110, 119; see also Shanghai; Wood, Frances Hong Kong, 125, 152; see also separate entry India, 106, 126, 127, 129–30, 142 Bengal, 129–30 Indonesia (Dutch East Indies), 127, 129 Java, 127 Macassar, 128 Myanmar (Burma), 4, 81, 127, 130 Singapore, 116, 126, 127 Sri Lanka, 129 Vietnam, 130, 139 Bermuda, 125 import of bicycles into, 126 commuting, 1–3, 25, 34, 62–3, 65, 83, 116, 131, 142–3, 147–8, 152, 154, 166 n8

189

consumerism, see fashion cost (price) of bicycles, 22, 30–1, 35, 126, 145–6, 161 n64, 175 n66 as limiting factor, 14, 24, 27, 30, 115, 118, 121, 133, 157 n3 hire purchase, 118, 126, 158–9 n22; see also wages, average Coventry (UK), 14, 18, 21, 39, 46–7, 53, 157–8 n9, 163 n104, 170 n93, 174 n52; see also bicycle industry, England Coventry bicycles, see Ordinary bicycle Coventry tricycles, see tricycles critical bicycling, 148–51 Critical Mass, 148–50 see also politics Cubism, 72, 100; see also modernism cycle paths/routes Coney Island Cycle Path, 80 Pasadena Cycleway, 80, 82 Ripley Road (UK), 34, 73, 161 n63 see also bicycle lanes cycle rickshaws, 61, 114, 117, 119, 127–8, 138, 140, 173 n35, 176 n105 see also utility bicycles cycle touring clubs, 49, 71, 80, 96, 170 n93 Cyclists’ Touring Club (CTC), 80, 161 n63, 163 n106, (formerly The Bicycle Touring Club), 49, 163 n105 Cycling magazine, 163 n109 Cyclist magazine, 126 ‘Daisy Bell’ (song), 68, 89 Dalzell, Gavin, 46, 56–7, 157 n5 dandies, see Draisine Dandy Horse, see Draisine decline in cycling, 30, 39, 51, 60–1, 95, 121, 126, 145; see also scrapping old bicycles design, 3, 4, 7–8, 10, 14–18, 21–4, 40–7, 51–3, 57–8, 60–3, 152 Dijk, Kees van ‘Pedal Power in Southeast Asia’, 116, 127, 176 n 105 Dikotter, Frank, 118

190

INDEX

discarding bicycles, see scrapping old bicycles domestication of bicycling, 7, 42, 52, 67, 70–1, 73, 75, 84, 88–95; see also women Drais, Karl von, 10, 13, 16, 23–4, 28, 53, 55, 159 n23 Draisine (Draisienne, hobby-horse), 10, 13, 15–16, 22–4, 27, 30, 54, 69, 80, 108 dandies associated with, 26 demise of, 23–8, 39 ‘nothing of its day’ jibe, 25, 159 n29, 159 n32 improvements to, see also Johnson, Denis substitute for horse, 23, 159 n23 Duchamp, Marcel Bicycle Wheel, 101–2 Dunlop, John Boyd, 157–8 n9 Dunlop Rubber Factory (Japan), 120 Dutch East Indies, see Indonesia dynamic systems theory, 48 e-bikes (electric bicycles), 3, 8, 141, 143, 145–6 Edinburgh Magazine, 25 Escott, T. H. Social Transformations, 73, 90 Eesfehani, Amir ‘The Bicycle’s Long Way to China’, 110, 115–6, 173 n35 emerging markets, 141–2, 145 English Mechanic magazine, 157 n6, 161 n71 environmental issues, 4, 7, 56, 64, 82–3, 142, 146–8, 150, 153–4, 164 n123, 169 n59, 177 n18 Worldwatch Institute, 150, 177 n6, 177 n11 exercise, see health and exercise Facile bicycle, 19, 48, 50, 164 n110 factory system, see bicycle production fashion, 1–8, 13–14, 24–5, 28, 30–4, 68–9, 95, 109 , 112, 124–7, 133, 141, 143, 153–4, 159 n29

consumerism, 3, 35, 42–3, 100, 124, 144, 152 among ‘new women’, 31, 68 refashioning, 59–66 retro, 1–4, 63, 152, 154 feminism/feminisation, 37, 75, 88, 91, 97; see also women fetish object, 57–9, 64 First World War, 53, 71, 86, 88 fixed-gear bicycles (fixies), 1, 4, 61–2, 65, 153–4 178 n36 flaneur, 77, 167 n28, 168 n37 Flying Pigeon, 65, 120, 146, 177 n21 Ford, Ford Madox The Soul of London, 76–7, 86 Forster, E. M., 76, 167 n35, 170 n96 Foucault, Michel heterotopia, 75 Fraser, John Foster in China, 81, 109–10, 172 n12 in India, 127 in Japan, 121–3 frames, see under bicycle components Franco-Prussian War, 31, 33, 158 n19 futurists/futurism, 24–5, 44, 62, 67, 79, 85, 88, 98, 100, 103, 127; see also modernism Glasgow Museum of Transport, 157 n5 Goncharova, Natalia The Cyclist (painting), 100 Hahn, Emily The Soong Sisters, 108, 112 Harmond, Richard Progress and Flight, 84, 86 Harvey, David The Condition of Postmodernity, 71–2, 97 Headrick, Daniel The Tools of Empire, 138 health and exercise, 35, 37–8, 42, 64, 67, 69, 74, 80, 88, 92–3, 112, 114, 133, 146–7, 150, 177 n25; see also beauty; recreational cycling Heath, William satirising ‘Dandy-horse’, 26

INDEX

Hercules bicycles, 128 Herlihy, David, 158 n12 The Bicycle, 156 n2, 157 n3, 157 n8, 160 n49, 163 n96 high-wheel bicycle, see Ordinary Hillier, George Lacy, 9, 159 n32 Hillman, William, 18, 20, 24, 39, 45, 48, 52; see also Kangaroo bicycle hoaxes, 10–11, 157 n5, 164 n117 Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus, 54 Macmillan, Kirkpatrick, 56; see also separate entry Sivrac, Comte Dédé de and the ‘célérifère’, 54 hobby-horse, see Draisine Hong Kong, 90, 125, 152 Hook, Walter Sustainable Transport, 142, 176 n5 Howland, Edward ‘A Bicycle Era’, 6, 43, Hughes, Joseph Henry, 47 human body, 57, 71, 102; see also prosthetic extension as factor in bicycle design, 51–2, 58 Hunt, Nancy, 132–3 on nurses in Africa, 133 industrial capitalism, see capitalism Japan, 105–11, 119–124, 154–5 Meiji Restoration in, 107, 120–2 Tokyo, 120, 155 Yokohama, 120, 174 n57 Japan Punch magazine, 174 n57 Jerome, Jerome K. Three Men on the Bummel, 11, 98 Johnson, Denis, 16, 24–6, 28, 159 n28, 159 n34 Johnston, James ‘The First Bicycle’, 56–7, 165 n126; see also hoaxes Kangaroo bicycle, 20, 40, 45, 48–50, 164 n 110 Kern, Stephen The Culture of Time and Space, 72, 88, 166 n18

191

kinaesthetics, 53, 58, 70, 97; see also speed ladies’ bicycles, see under women Lady Cyclist magazine, 6, 68, 91, 95, 125 Lallement, Pierre, 10, 13, 17, 28–9, 46, 56, 157 n3, 160 n40 Laufmaschine, see Draisine Lawson, H. J., 19, 45, 48, 164 n110 learning to ride, difficulties of, 31, 67, 92; see also riding schools Leblanc, Robin ‘bicycle citizens’ (Tokyo), 155 Leblanc, Maurice Voici des Ailes, 85 legislation, 80 against bicycling, 27, 79, 81 Lessing, Hans-Erhard, 27, 54, 157 n5, 164, 117 Liu, King, 147 London, 1, 25–7, 49, 73, 149–50 parks, 68 Lowe, Marcia The Bicycle: Vehicle for a Small Planet, 146–7 Lumière brothers, 92, 171 n99 Macassar see under colonies, Asia Macmillan, Kirkpatrick, 11, 46, 56–7, 80; see also hoaxes ‘magic cyclists’ (Africa), 134 ‘Man with a Bicycle’ (sculpture), 135–7 marketing, 7–8, 10, 29, 33, 35, 66, 72, 117, 126 Marks, Patricia Bicycles, Bangs and Bloomers, 91, 94 mass production, see under bicycle production masculinism, 88–9, 91, 129 McCall, Thomas, 46, 56, 57, 157 n5 McGurn, James On Your Bicycle, 143–4 Mechanics’ Magazine, 39, 157 n6, 161 n71 Michaux factory, Paris (Compagnie Parisienne), 17, 28–30, 46, 157 n9, 160 n42; see also bicycle industry, France

192

INDEX

Michaux, Pierre, 27, 38, 53, 158 n21 military use, 88, 108, 138 militarism, 88–9 Millward, Andrew, 160 n 42, 175 n66 on UK cycle industry, 157 n4, 158 n22 missionaries, 129, 132, 172 n14 Meyer, Eugène, 17–19, 38, 47, 158 n14 modernism, 5, 36–7, 70, 72, 78, 85, 96, 100–3; see also separate entries for Cubism; futurists/futursim; postmodernism modernity, cultural, 34–38, 77, 153; see also separate entry for anti-modern sentiment Morton, H. V. Travel in Wartime, 54–5 motor car, 54, 63, 69, 71–2, 77–8, 82, 103, 119, 125–6, 169 n59; see also separate entry for automobility Moulton bicycle, 62–3 mountain bike, 61–2, 64–5, 145 Murdoch, Iris The Red and the Green, 76, 170 n96 National Cycle Show (Crystal Palace), 163 n109 New Women, see under women Norcliffe, Glen The Ride to Modernity, 69 nostalgia, 57–9, 79, 86, 132, 153 O’Brien, Flann, 71 The Third Policeman, 103 Oddy, Nicholas, 63, 167 n28 Olivier, René and Aimé, 28–9 Ordinary bicycle (Penny-farthing, highwheeler), 13–15, 18–24, 37–51, 68–9, 88–9, 94, 109, 114–6, 120, 122, 173 n29 Coventry Model (Spider), 18, 46 see also separate entry for Ariel bicycle Outdoors Movement, the, 88; see also health and exercise Parsons, Tony, 147–8 Pashley bicycles, 3, 152, 154

patents (bicycles and components), 10–11, 13, 29, 38, 46–7, 59, 157 n3, 158 n14 Patterson, Frank ‘The Seasons’, 86–7 Pennell, Joseph, 59, 162–3 n94 Penny-farthing, see Ordinary pneumatic tyres, see under bicycle components, tyres politics, 75, 79, 81, 124, 147–8, 150 bicycle protests, 148–151, 154; see also critical bicycling Pope, Albert, 38, 157 n3, 163 n94, 163 n100, 168 n48 postmodernism, 3, 4, 53, 65, 75, 135–6, 153–4 prosthetic extension bicycle as, 5, 51–2, 58, 71, 103 Punch magazine, 65, 82, 89–91, 94; see also ‘Japan Punch’ racial issues, 127, 129–30 racing bikes, 3–4, 62, 65, 154, 165 n147 see also sport railways (railroads), 24, 33–4, 57, 77, 80, 108, 123, 138 Raleigh bicycles, 128, 175 n68 recreational cycling, 2–3, 12, 27–8, 32–7, 42, 51, 84, 91, 96, 109, 116, 121, 125–8, 141, 143–5, 148 touring, 14, 34, 62–3, 71, 73, 81, 86, 170 n93 see also health and exercise recumbent, the, 62, 165 n141 riding schools, 24–5, Ritchie, Andrew King of the Road, 157 n6, 157 n7, 160 n47, 163 n104 road bikes, 1, 3, 58–9, 61–2, 64–5, 145 roads (hard-surface), 27, 34, 38–9, 62, 79–82, 133, 161 n61, 168 n48 roadster type, 2, 60–3, 66, 127, 144–6, 152, 154, 165 n148, Rover bicycle, 4, 14, 21, 39, 45, 47–51, 158 n20

INDEX

Royal Society of Arts, 9, 45 safety, as a factor in bicycle design, 42, 52, 63 safety bicycle, 4, 7, 11–12, 14–15, 21–22, 35, 38, 41–5, 48–51, 60, 63, 66–7, 69, 88, 93, 108–9, 116, 120, 125, 158; see also separate entry for Rover bicycle safety boom, see under bicycle booms Saturday Review, 25 Schwinn bicycles, 3, 64 scorchers, see under speed SCOT (social construction of technology), 41–4 Scotland, 11, 56–7, 74 Scottish inventors, 46, 57, 80, 161 n61 Scott, Paul The Jewel in the Crown, 129 scrapping old bicycles, 4, 63, 68–9 in China, 142, 144 Seaton, Matt, 98 second-hand bicycles, 22, 35, 65, 118, 158–9 n22 Second Industrial Revolution, 3, 33 Second World War, 63, 83, 106, 120 sedan chairs, 114, 119 Seymour, Ann Beauty on a Bicycle, 96 Shanghai, 109–119, 125–6, 142, 145, 152, 173 n40 cycle race in 1897, 110–1 poster art (1930s), 123–4; see also advertising, bicycle posters see also China; colonies (treaty ports) Sharp, Archibald Bicycles and Tricycles, 40, 46, 162–3 n94 Singapore, see colonies Sisley, Charles as editor of Lady Cyclist, 91, 95 Smith, Charlotte campaign against women cyclists, 91–2 socialism, 68, 73–5; see also bicycle clubs Marxism, 86, 149

193

social stability bicycle as ‘leveller’, 83–4, 145 sociological gaze, 75–6 speed, 26–7, 30–1, 37, 58–64, 153 in bicycle design, 13–14, 40–3, 52 bicycle/bicyclist as symbol of, 14, 28, 36, 58 , 71, 77–8, 85, 103 cult of, 5–6, 100 pleasures of, 70, 78–9, 85; see also separate entry for kinaesthetics records, 38, 42, 51, 62, 162 n83, 164 n112, 165 n141 scorchers, 82, 89, 148; see also separate entry for bicycle cads sport, 14, 28, 31–3, 35, 37, 74, 88–91, 141 road racing, 30–1, 37, 51, 61, 89, 127 track racing, 5, 7, 14, 17, 20, 42, 47, 61, 110–1, 130, 153, 156 n3, 158 n11 for women, 91, 112 see also separate entry for health and exercise; Tour de France, the status symbol (bicycle as), 62, 70, 121, 128, 141, 145; see also class suspension wheel, see under bicycle components Sutton, William, 14, 21, 39, 49; see also Rover bicycle Starley, James, 18, 24, 39–40, 53, 162 n76; see also Ariel bicycle Starley, J. K. (John Kemp), 4, 14, 21, 39; see also Rover bicycle ‘The Evolution of the Cycle’, 9, 45–53, 158 n14 Stevens, Thomas, 14, 120 Taiwan, 147 Thomas, Edward In Pursuit of Spring, 76, 79, 99 Times of India, The, 127, 175 n69 Tokyo, see under Japan Tour de France, the, 31, touring, see under recreational cycling transport systems integrated mass transit, 4, 142, 150, 176 n5 see also railways

194

INDEX

tricycles, 11, 14, 22, 42, 49–51, 162 n76, 163 n103 Humber Cripper, 50–1 Coventry Machinist’s Salvo, 48–9 Starley’s Coventry Lever, 49 urbanisation/suburbanisation, 25, 34, 38, 161 n62 utility bicycles, 8, 28, 61, 127–8, 130–1, 141, 145; see also cycle rickshaws Vélib rental system (France), 143; see also bike-share/rental schemes velocipede four-wheeled, 11 French, pedal-driven, 11, 13–15, 17, 22–23, 25, 27–32, 36–41, 45–6, 55–57, 108, 114, 157 n3 velocipedomania, 28–9, 32, 38 Vélocipède Illustré, Le, 35–6 wages/salaries determining bicycle usage, 118–9, 158 n22, 159 n34, 173 n39 Warwick, Countess of (Francis Evelyn Greville), 68; see also ‘Daisy Bell’ Weber, Max, 73 Wells, H. G. The Wheels of Chance, 69, 81–2, 84–5 wheels, see bicycle components Wheels: A Bicycle Romance (anon), 94–5

wheelbarrow, Chinese, 117–8, 138, 173 n35 Willard, Frances A Wheel within a Wheel, 92–3 Wolff, Janet ‘The Invisible Flaneuse’, 95 Wood, Frances, 172 n13, 174 n61 Wood, Henry, 9, 12 Woolf, Leonard, 129 women in Africa, 131–4 in Asia, 129–131, 138–9 in China, 111–4 health issues, 80, 90, 92–3, 112, 150 representations of, 36–7, 94–6, 98–9, 113, 123–5 ladies’ bicycles 63, 162 n76 New Woman, the, 31, 68, 84, 89, 91, 95 restrictions on, 130 Wood, Henry, 9, 12 Worldwatch Institute, see under environmental issues Xtraordinary bicycle, 19, 48, 50 Xu, Tao ‘A History of the Bicycle and Chinese Cyclists’, 117 ‘yellow peril’, 123 Yoruba, 135–7