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Home > Bicycle: The History
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Bicycle: The History
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By David V. Herlihy
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 (19 Reviews)
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Publisher:
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Yale University Press
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Published:
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December 31, 1969 |
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Binding:
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Paperback
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Pages:
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480
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This lively and lavishly illustrated book tells the extraordinary history of the bicycle, an invention that precipitated nothing short of a social revolution. Recounting a story replete with disputed patents, brilliant inventions, and missed opportunities, David Herlihy shows us why the bicycle captured the public?s imagination and the myriad ways it has reshaped our world.
“A comprehensive genealogy of the two-wheeled savior of mass transit. . . . Herlihy takes what could have been just another history book and makes it a story worth telling your friends about.?—Publishers Weekly
"Fun and informative."—Baltimore Sun
“Immensely absorbing.?—Edward Koren, New York Times Book Review
"Lovingly written and beautifully illustrated."—David Schoonmaker, American Scientist
“A delight.?—Robert Messenger, Wall Street Journal
“Herlihy has traced the bicycle?s family tree with a thoroughness reminiscent of Laura Hillenbrand and her thoroughbred, Seabiscuit. . . . Bicycle is a good read for all and a must for the cyclist?s home library.?—Joe Simnacher, Dallas Morning News
"[One of] the best cycling-related books I've seen in the past decade."—Joe Lindsey, Mountain Bike
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Customer Reviews:
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 Hours and hours of entertainment value, October 25, 2005
By buzs (ny, ny)
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This is virtually an encyclopedia of bicycle history with an extraordinary collection of photographs, drawings, catalog covers, and lots more illustrative material from the early history of the bicycle forward to today. The visuals alone in this beautiful book are more than enough reason to buy it. The writing is also to savor time and time again with great sidebars on a variety of fascincating and amusing subjects and a very informative recounting of the 200-year history of self-propelled transporation. No bicyclist could possibly be disappointed in acquiring this marvelous volume.
26 of 26 people found the above review helpful.
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The Best in Bicycle History, March 4, 2005
By WP Fleming (Santa Fe, NM)
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This richly illustrated and carefully researched book belongs in the library of all serious cyclists.
David Herlihy deserves high praise for his definitive work which so well illuminates our magnificient bicycling heritage.
It reads easily. I had great difficulty putting it down even for a break.
WP Fleming
Santa Fe Bikes & Gallery
www.sfbikes.com
16 of 16 people found the above review helpful.
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The Beautiful Invention, January 26, 2008
By Author of The Story of the Tour .. (Cherokee Village, AR, USA)
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In the second half of the 19th Century several machines engaged and excited the world's finest inventive minds. Among them were the sewing machine, the locomotive and the gun. But the machine that drew the most attention was the bicycle. In January and February of 1869, as the first craze for the early primitive bicycles hit the United States, the American patent office received about one hundred applications for improvements to the crank-driven two-wheeler. By March, over 100 more were either sent or announced.
Why? The bicycle was that deeply yearned-for device that would satisfy the centuries-old desire for cheap personal transportation.
David Herlihy's wonderful book tells the story of the invention and development of the bicycle from the first dreams set down on paper centuries ago to the present high-tech carbon fiber lightweight. While he covers the entire history of the bicycle, his main emphasis is on the nineteenth century, from 1817 when Karl von Drais made a two-wheeled hobby horse that would facilitate walking, to the bust of the great 1890's bicycle boom.
Along the way Herlihy ponders a couple of interesting questions. What, exactly is a bicycle and who invented it? That inquiry led him to conclude that Pierre Lallement, a Frenchman, is our hero. For the forty years after Drais built his "Draisine", the greatest mechanical minds searched for an efficient way propel the machine, but to no avail. It was Lallement who had the brilliant insight to attach pedaled cranks to the front wheel and turn them with his legs. And thus, the bicycle was born.
This early bicycle, or "Velocipede", was a far cry from the chain-driven modern bicycle that appeared in the late 1880's. Numerous technical improvements were needed, such as ball bearings, a cheap, reliable roller chain, high-quality steel tubing, and the tensioned wire wheel (called "spider wheels" at the time of their invention) before the "horse that eats no oats" could be realized.
Without getting bogged down in the minutia of the technology, yet filled with detail, Herlihy follows the avid inventors, excited cyclists and greedy businessmen as they sought to make and own ever better bikes.
There is a surprising nugget of information on every page. The differential gear, which allows a drive shaft to distribute the automobile's force to the rear wheels so that in a turn the inside wheel can rotate more slowly than the faster moving outside wheel, was invented for the tricycle.
The bicycle wrought profound social consequences. At times, fully one-third of the bicycle buyers in the nineteenth century were women as they used the bicycle as a tool of freedom and emancipation. Roads were improved at the urging of cyclists and thus the way for automobiles was made easier.
Lavishly illustrated, Bicycle took Herlihy fifteen years to complete. He is contemplating a sequel, taking up the story where he left off at the turn of the century. He had better not make us wait another fifteen years.
-Bill McGann, Author of The Story of the Tour de France
8 of 8 people found the above review helpful.
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a crank invention, March 20, 2007
By Larry Cosentino (Lansing MI USA)
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They're impractical toys of the rich. The technology is flawed. People will never put up with their limitations. It's too difficult and expensive to get them repaired. Young dandies and showoffs only want to be seen riding them. Ten years from now, people will wonder why we wasted our time on them.
Anyone who has been reading the Detroit newspapers for the last 10 years or so has seen all these arguments used repeatedly against hybrid cars, fuel cell technology and any number of non-fossil-fuel vehicle prototypes. (Only substitute "movie stars" for "dandies.")
Yet the arguments cited above come from the mid-19th century, and their target is a simple tool the whole world now takes for granted: the bicycle.
The peculiarly gleeful, small-minded scorn unique to Luddites of any era is vividly brought to life in "The Bicycle," David V. Herlihy's wonderful illustrated history.
In hindsight, it seems there could be no simpler or more obvious invention. Yet Herlihy demonstrates that the bicycle went through a very long and complicated struggle to get where it is today.
For decades, the velocipede was little more than a glorified scooter, an "aid to walking" powered by kicking the ground. Herlihy picks his way through the variants that come and go, including the 1814 "draisine" of German inventor Karl von Drais, and it's a maddening story indeed. One poor entrepreneur after another goes boom and bust as people latch on to the fad and then tire of it. "Chain the goddamn wheel to a crank!" you want to scream, but history is a cruel one-way mirror. All the reader can do is look on helplessly as the bicycle-haters get their way for more than half a century -- until 1867, when the pedal-driven crank finally closed the circle and set the bicycle rolling on a globe-girdling adventure still in progress.
The reader may have noted that no name was credited above with this crucial breakthrough, and that's another bumpy side to the bicycle's history. Herlihy sifts patiently -- but not too patiently -- through a tangled chain of conflicting claims and patents that make it extremely difficult to pick out the Henry Fords or Wright Brotherses of velocipede-dom.
The heart of the drama, though, is provided by the unceasing, and very entertaining, press wars over the alleged dangers and benefits of bicycling, which Herlihy quotes generously.
As bicycles increase in popularity, cities pass ordinances banning them from sidewalks, yahoos gather round solitary riders and throw stones, pundits decry the decline of civilization. "Velocity is the fashionable mania of the present day," clucks a London newspaper in the early 1800s. "We walk with a Velocipede, are whirled around in a light Post Coach, or run into Fortune in five minutes by a successful speculation." Another newspaper worries that bicycles will make it easier for burglars to glide away from the long arm of the law, perhaps forgetting that if bicycles are outlawed, only outlaws will have bicycles.
Volatile 19th-century sexual politics were badly chewed up in the bicycle's gears, with heated exchanges over whether bicycling was a fit pastime for ladies, and if so, what the well-turned ankle should wear. In 1895, Ethel Dumont of Victoria, British Columbia rode onto the streets in bloomers, provoking a huge sensation (the press called her a new "Lady Godiva") and the threat of a court summons. Women who simply liked to bike became caught up in the polarized atmosphere in which female bicycling was often seen as an aggressive badge of emancipation.
Of course, voices were also raised in the bicycle's defense. Herlihy quotes a letter to the editor in a York, England newspaper in the early 1820s: "We hope in the course of the summer to see [velocipedes] scuddling about in all directions, to the great discomfiture of indigestion, bad spirits, paleness, leanness and corpulency." Now these arguments have returned as well, to be used against a sprawling, obese, car-driven world the bicycle may outlive.
Herlihy's text is exhaustive but far from exhausting, and he avoids flights of poetic abstraction his subject could easily provoke. But the best thing about "Bicycle" its hundreds of fascinating illustrations, all in color on heavy enamel paper that makes the book weigh twice as much as its unassuming size indicates.
There are plenty of period diagrams and photos of bicycle variants over the years, including crazy curiosities with more and less than two wheels, but most of the illustrations trace the evolving public attitude toward bicycles.
At first, it's not a pretty tableau. Even after the crank and chain made bicycling more logical and less outlandish to watch, editorial cartoonists were merciless in their depiction of riders, who are seen running over, into and through each other in every imaginable configuration. Huge Victorian ladies are perched ridiculously on tiny wheels, mutton-chopped gentleman sprawl on the ground next to wounded trees. Later, lovely Art Nouveau posters and advertisements show a world not only reconciled, but in love with the bicycle's sublime form and function.
8 of 11 people found the above review helpful.
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Page 300 - Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel Tests, April 24, 2006
By Arthur L. Currence (Dayton, OH, USA)
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Herlihy, David V. Bicycle, The History
This is a most excellent history of the bicycle. However, the exageration or mistake on page 300 does reflect poorly on the research involved in preparing such a work. There are number of published works that will verify the comments regarding the actual work of the Wright Brothers.
Page 300, The Safety Era
In the section describing the work of Wilbur and Orville Wright, specifically the paragraph beginning "Starting in 1899 ..." About mid-paragraph is a description that reads as if the Wright Brothers rode a bicycle through a wind tunnel. Besides the obvious issue of wind tunnel size for such a test, this is not what occurred. The Wrights tested airfoils on a specially modified bicycle with a wheel mounted perpendicular to the front wheel, to which airfoils were mounted. They simply rode along the streets of West Dayton to test the airfoils. Lacking laboratory control or a proper method of measure, the Wrights stopped this testing to build a small wind tunnel in which to test airfoils. This testing was accomplished on the second floor of The Wright Cycle Company at 1127 West Third Street, Dayton OH, under strict scientific procedures and careful measurement. From this data the Wrights devised a co-efficient of drag used to build their 1902 and subsequent gliders and aeroplanes.
The exaggeration of their testing a bicycle IN a wind tunnel is much like the exaggerated and inaccurate reports of their flight of December 17, 1903. The brothers worked hard to correct these mistakes. The author would be wise to correct this mistake in future publications as such an exaggeration does reflect poorly on information that is less well documented than the work of the Wright Brothers.
Replicas of the bicycle set up for the experiment and of the wind tunnel are located at Carillon Historical Park, Dayton, OH, USA. The bicycle is an actual Wright Van Cleve manufactured by the brothers. The building is now located at Greenfield Village (Ford Museum) near Dearborn, Michigan, USA.
Arthur Currence, Park Ranger, Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park, Dayton OH, USA.
5 of 11 people found the above review helpful.
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The Social History of the Bicycle, November 4, 2008
By Galvanized Yankee (Boston, MA)
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A very interesting read, but not for those interested in the evolution of the mechanics. The book is mostly about how bicycles ("the poor man's horse") changed American and European society, to be later superseded by the internal combustion engine. What I found most interesting are the historic conflicts within the cycling community. Real men rode big wheels, free wheelers were lazy. Weirdly, these carry over to today's cyclists.
Major technological changes (such as penny racer, to safety bike, and fixed to free wheel) the book glosses over changes in brakes, gearing and such.
An excellent book, for social history, not much for hardware.
--Tom
4 of 4 people found the above review helpful.
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A wonderful ride, December 8, 2007
By Opinions issued from T.. (Santa Ana, CA United States)
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This is a thorough encyclopedia of bicycle history with a stunning collection of photographs, drawings, catalog covers, and so much more giving the reader an informative tour of the early history of the bicycle forward to today.
The images alone in this beautiful book are reason enough to buy it, but the writing is also a joy to spend time with.
4 of 4 people found the above review helpful.
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Informative and fun, in style and of some heft, March 5, 2010
By teacher (Alabama)
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I really liked this book the first time I read it, and find it enjoyable the second time around. It is substantial in weight on clay paper to support numerous color images. I like the writer's style. I thought he fairly covered the impact on women and their roles, despite one reviewers minimizing of it.
As some critics note, it is Euro-America centric and limited in time covered. A more comprehensive work would be daunting in size and probably need several covers. It would be great to see a second supplement that looks at other continents but who is multi-lingual enough and so motivated to accurately gather the data? clearly not the critics....
3 of 3 people found the above review helpful.
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 Give this one a miss, September 10, 2008
By Donald E. Greenberg (New Delhi, India)
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Most of the book is a very detailed, often repetitive, history of the bicycle from the foot-propelled "velocipede" days until the thirties. It is quite light on the many developments since the seventies, which have led to the bikes that we are riding today. The twentieth century section is especially repetitive, as it tells essentially the same story through "utilitarian", "recreational", and "competitive" cycling section. None of these three sections are satisfying, they merely hint and suggest at the most obvious bits of common knowledge. Some of the illustrations are quite good, but nothing like what I expected from some of the other reviews, and rarely are these illustrations satisfyingly integrated into the narrative. First, I tried to read this book through with no success, it was just too dry. I then tried just picking it up and dipping in, but there really was not much of substance. Quickly the book was banished from my bedside table. Koren's NY Times Book review blurb "immensely absorbing -- always entertaining" is astonishing -- couldn't be further from the mark, in my view.
3 of 9 people found the above review helpful.
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 Redundant, March 14, 2006
By Martha J. Pelletier
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The book was interesting but the information was much too redundant. I would have enjoyed more information about the development of the drive chain and advancements made sense the 1900's and less information about the marketing of the bicycle during it's development
3 of 13 people found the above review helpful.
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A Treasure, March 8, 2007
By J. P. Hamilton (Taiwan)
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This is a beautiful book, one that I am proud to have in my library. Many will treasure it for the historical photos and illustrations alone, but in addition I actually read the book straight through from cover to cover over the course of several days, learning a great deal about the mechanical and social history of the bicycle. Strange to say, I first spotted the book in a stylish Taiwan bike shop that had it on a shelf for the edification of visiting customers. Since it was not for sale and there was no way I could do anything but browse through it in the shop, I had Amazon ship it to me in America to read there. It was well worth waiting for. One tell tale of quality: the book was utterly free of typos. A single criticism: the author could have ventured a little further into social history. For example, I waited in vain for mention of Shaw and Tolstoy as early cycling enthusiasts. Of course Mr. Herlihy couldn't cover everything, but he sticks pretty close to the development of the bicycle and the bicycle industry. Thus, my five stars assumes that the reader already loves bicycles, or is an artist, antiquarian, collector or other specialist prepared to readily appreciate a book like this.
2 of 2 people found the above review helpful.
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Great photos of the different bikes, June 7, 2009
By photographer
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Bought as a gift for my Dad, the quality of photographs are really nice. Didn't get a chance to read it, not sure if my father has yet.
1 of 2 people found the above review helpful.
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Great early history of the bicycle, June 29, 2011
By Jackal (New Hampshire)
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The author writes with great passion about the history of the bicycle. The book also has lots of great pictures. The book continues up until current times, but the focus of is the early history of the bicycle (ie up until 1930/1940 or so). I would say the book is very strong in the early history, but the sections on the last couple of decades are just awful. Suddenly the author doesn't seem to be interested any more. Gears, breaking systems, mountain bikes - these things are not mentioned. But I think BMX is mentioned. Shows that the author has been asleep during the last 20-30 years!
I bought the book because I'm a student of innovation and because I like bicycling. The book gives a good description of the bicycles history but not expect any quantitative data. The book is not at all useful to understand the evolution of the bicycles during the last 50/60 years. All together still a four star book
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Comprehensive early history, Really liked it, but seemed like abrupt ending., January 9, 2011
By T. B. (New England)
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Be prepared. This was what I was looking for.. a very detailed but readable history of bicycles. Understandably I guess I was hoping it would go on in the same amount of detail through more recent history. But as the number of brands and associated stories exploded once basic designs had been settled, it is very understanding that it did not stay as detailed at the end. A good read.
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He needs an editor, November 22, 2010
By Jason Oconnor (New Mexico)
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I enjoyed the book over all. The pictures and the old facts and history that came with the book were great. But in my opinion their was way to much filler, I skimmed through some things that just went on and on that again in my opinion didn't need to be in the book. It made it a little stagnate to get through.
I am currently reading his other book The Lost Cyclist, so far it's a little better at keeping me involved. Their are still times I feel like I'm reading a text book though. Love riding, glad someone's there to write about it.
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Truly THE history of the bicycle, August 14, 2010
By COWLIB (Wooster, OH USA)
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This lavishly-illustrated and compellingly-written history of the bicycle by a serious historian, published by an academic press, is, at least for now, what its subtitle says it is: THE history of the bicycle.
Unfortunately, the two most critical reviews on Amazon make me wonder whether the reviewers actually read the book at all. Herlihy devotes a great deal of attention to "the bicycle's impact on women in the late nineteenth century," which one reviewer claimed "receives hardly any treatment at all." Herlihy points out that the "safety" bicycle sparked a boom in American and European sales in the 1890s primarily because it appealed to women, as the earlier high-wheeler had not, and that women's fashions, participation in cycling sports, bicycle touring, and relationships with men all began to change as a result. This same reviewer claimed that "the religious aspects of cycling during the heyday of 'muscular Christianity' (1880-1920) are completely neglected." Again, not true (see page 186). Finally, this reviewer claimed that "this book is also geographically biased, concentrating, rather predictably, on Europe and New England." Why "rather predictably"? Perhaps because nineteenth-century bicycles (to which Herlihy devotes three-fourths of his book) were produced almost entirely in Europe and New England! When Herlihy gets to the twentieth century, he deals with the other centers of bicycle popularity and production that emerged.
Another reviewer gave the book only one star, asserting (among other things) that "It is quite light on the many developments since the seventies, which have led to the bikes that we are riding today." But these developments are covered quite well in chapters on recreational cycling and competitive cycling, which deal with both technological and commercial developments. This same reviewer claimed that "rarely are ... illustrations satisfyingly integrated into the narrative." This statement is totally without basis. With the exception of a very few retrospective illustrations in the last chapter, every illustration in the book relates directly to the text on the same or adjoining pages.
My only criticism of this admirable book (which represents a decade of international research) is that it devotes three times as much space the first thirty-five years of the bicycle's history as it does to the next century. Partly, that is because Herlihy is trying to cover ground that has been neglected in earlier histories, and indeed he brings to light much that has lain hidden. But I would like to have learned more about the development of the cycling industry during the twentieth century. Why did none of the leading manufacturers in the 1960s and 1970s survive? Which are the leading bicycle makers today, and how did they become the leaders? How do bicycle sales today compare to those of the past?
Still, no single volume is ever likely to cover everything that every reader wants to know about cycling's history, and this one does it far better and more accessibly than any other to date.
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An Objective Look at the Bicycle, March 13, 2010
By James L. Witherell, Author, Bicycle History
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A good book on good paper with good photos. This book is about the bicycle -- and it isn't. While Herlihy devotes a good amount of time to the evolution of the machine we adore, he spends as much time discussing its many uses and social implications through the years. The focus, though, always comes bake to the bike. As I said in Listmania, David Herihy covers the histroy of the bicycle in much the same way Peter Nye covers the men and women of the sport's earlier years in Hearts of Lions; the amount of reseach that went into this book is obvious, yet it remains very readable, and rarely dry.
If you want a book about bicycle technology, get The Dancing Chain.
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"THE HIstory?" no, American and Western European history, January 19, 2012
By AlonK
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Hello,
The book contains many beautiful photos and the author has done an excellent job of writing about cycling history. To call it "Bicycle: THE History" when only 1 page out of 480 pages mentions (briefly) India and China, two lands with rich bicycle traditions and where a 1/4 of all people on earth live, (of which many are cyclists) is like calling a book "Christianity: THE history" and then forgetting to mention anything but the Catholic church. Hopeful the author will correct this in a future edition.
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 Editor ?, January 10, 2012
By eric
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This is a beautifully illustrated book, but I stopped short when I got to page 10 of the introduction. The caption says that it is a picture of Lance Armstrong entering Paris. It clearly is not, it is a mountain stage. With such an obvious mistake it calls into question the content of the entire book. Sloppy.
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