Bicycles. Introduction

If you didn’t have a bicycle as a child,
and now you have a Bentley, then anyway:
“In your childhood, YOU DID NOT HAVE A BIKE!”


So it was, but then I wanted a bicycle, but now I do not want Bentley, that is, nothing has changed over the years!

As I once said, in the process of searching for materials other information comes across. Sometimes the frequency of this hit exceeds a certain threshold and the desire to put it all on paper is formed. So it was with fountains, now it’s bicycles. It’s better to say this: devices with wheels driven by the muscular strength of a person and related items him. Moreover, the objects are sometimes taken away very far from the subject. You will see for yourself.

I understand and accept skeptical smirks: “This is Russia, man: everything is being pushed here!”

Oddly enough, the most military product, driven by man, namely machine guns on wheeled machines, I miss, because the plans have a separate publication on this subject.

At first I thought of presenting material in the form of such a historical and instructive narrative. Like this:

“The bicycle has a long history and this is without taking into account the project of da Vinci, whose authenticity is questioned

 The official history of the bicycle began in 1817 after the German professor Karl von Dres created and patented the first two-wheeled scooter, which was called the “running machine”

Around the years 1839-1840, the blacksmith Kirkpatrick Macmillan from the Scottish village improved the “trolley” by adding pedals and a saddle to it. The pedals pushed the rear wheel, with which they were connected by metal rods through connecting rods.

In 1863, a young French master in prams Pierre Lalman went to Paris, where he made his first model with a pedal drive. And already in 1864, he, together with the Olivier brothers and in collaboration with the coach engineer Pierre Michaud, began the mass production of his invention.

They begin to make frames of metal, not of wood. In 1867, inventor Cowper offers a successful design of a metal wheel with spokes.

And in 1878, the English inventor Lawson introduced a chain drive into the design of the bicycle. In 1888, Scot John Boyd Dunlop invented rubber inflatable tires. In 1898, invented pedal brakes. The first folding bike was made in 1878, and the aluminum one in the 1890s.

And here the military (as they usually have), find combat use of new technologies. The first mention of the combat use of a scooter (bicycle) dates back to 1870: during the Franco-Prussian war, one of the messengers of the French troops managed to slip out of Paris besieged by the Prussians, with a report, on a scooter (bicycle).

The armed forces of other states also take the “iron horse” into service: 1878 – Italy; 1884 – Hungary; 1886 – Germany; 1888 – Belgium …

Prince B. Potemkin, in 1887, published his book “Bicycle and its use in military affairs.” In imperial Russia, the first regular bicycle military units were created in 1897, when the first separate scooter team was deployed. In this year, the first part equipped with bicycles took part in the maneuvers of the Russian army near Bialystok. The unusual infantrymen liked Tsar Nicholas II, and he signed a decree on the arming of the army of the “Dux Boevoy” bicycle, which was subsequently produced at the Dux Imperial Aircraft Building Plant in Moscow.

And further in the same vein

But already in the process of writing this introduction, I realized that the materials in the network are a dime a dozen and whoever wants it, he himself will find everything without me. Therefore, I did not write such a preface. But in the process of laying out the material, I will periodically share information.

PS. Sorry for my english. This is a Google translation, verified by the Yandex translator, in my literary adaptation.

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