the.com/bicycle
the most efficient machine ever built, secretly a quiet revolution on two wheels
means A human-powered vehicle with two wheels in line, a frame, pedals, and handlebars, propelled by the rider pushing the pedals.
from From the French 'bicycle,' built from Latin 'bi-' (two) bolted onto Greek 'kyklos' (circle, wheel) — a tidy little Greco-Latin hybrid coined in the 19th century as the machine itself took shape. That same 'kyklos' rolls through 'cycle,' 'cyclone,' and 'encyclopedia.' Earlier riders straddled the 'velocipede' (Latin 'swift-foot'), but 'bicycle' won the race and never looked back.
- energy efficiency
- converts roughly 90% of effort into motion
- women's freedom
- Susan B. Anthony credited it with emancipation
- slow invention
- steerable pedal version arrived after the steam engine
- car ancestor
- Wright brothers ran a bicycle shop
- global fleet
- over a billion exist worldwide, outnumbering cars
tour de france — annual 3,500 km cycling race through france since 1903
penny-farthing — victorian-era bicycle with huge front wheel, popular 1870s-1880s
fixie — fixed-gear bicycle with single speed, widespread in urban cycling since 2000s