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HISTORY OF THE MODERN BICYCLE |
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The bicycle was not invented by any one person. Rather, it is an outgrowth of ideas and inventions dating to the late 18th century. Some people claim the bicycle’s history goes back even further, citing certain drawings by Leonardo da Vinci of a two-wheeled vehicle. 
Leonardo da Vinci drew plans for a two-wheeled vehicle some five hundred years ago. This wooden model, based on those plans, was constructed for a museum. 
Modern bicycles, such as the touring and mountain bicycles pictured here, evolved from 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century predecessors. The development of the draisine in 1816, with its steering bar in front, marked an important improvement on earlier designs. Pedal-powered bicycles emerged in the 1860s, and by the 1890s bicycles were being built with equal-sized front and rear wheels, a centered crank connected to the wheels by a chain linkage, and inflatable tires and coaster brakes. |
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