In 1790, Comte Mede de Sivrac of France constructed a new device—wooden wheels held together by a wooden rod. He called it a celerifere. Then, in 1818, Baron von Drais introduced a much-improved two-wheeled vehicle to an audience in Paris.
The apparatus sported two in-line wheels but no pedals. The rider of the “hobby horse” pushed with both feet and steered the front wheel with both hands. What the vehicle lacked in efficiency, it made up for in public attention. By 1870, the famous high wheel bicycle came along. It was also the first bike with a metal body and pedals that were directly attached to the front wheel.
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Thomas Stevens had reached Boston from San Francisco on a bike in 1884, as chronicled in his diary Around the World on a Bicycle—Volume 1. From San Francisco to Teheran. The following year, John Kemp Starley designed the safety bike, which used a chain with a sprocket to enable the rider to push on the pedals in an upward manner and ride the bike from the back wheel, the basic model we still see on the streets today.