Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/30



O speak of the wonderful strides made in cycle construction within twenty years or so, to compare the modern racing, air-tyred, ball-bearing, tubular racing safety with the boneshaker of 1868, or the hobby-horse of 1820; to rhapsodise upon the heights to which the mechanism of the cycle has now been carried, to speculate upon its future development—these things are common-places. Let us, while touching lightly upon the descent of the modern cycle in a direct line, chiefly amuse ourselves by contemplating the various extinct species—those developments of the original germ which have somehow taken the wrong turning in the course of evolution, have then stopped, and, as rare fossils, are now only looked at as rarities and curiosities.

The records of the Patent Offices, both here and in America, contain drawings of many hundreds of these quaint articles, many—perhaps most—of which probably never grew beyond existence on paper. Also, there were gathered together last year, by the Stanley Bicycle Club, a quaint collection of actual existing fossils—masses of machinery actually constructed and now forgotten. Of members of this collection, now dispersed, and never to come together again, we shall reproduce a number of photographs; also we shall reproduce many of the outline drawings buried in the Patent Office, with all their garnishment of indicator letters and figures, whether we allude to those wonderful signs or not.

When the idea first took form of enabling a man to travel by his own leg power, assisted by wheels, none can say; nor is it known who first attempted to put the notion into practice. Certain it is that, in 1761, a description of a machine to travel without horses appeared in The Universal Magazine; and since this machine—invented by one Ovenden—is alluded to as "the best that has hitherto been invented," it is pretty obvious that Mr. Ovenden had his predecessors in this particular department of design, though of them we know little. Here is Mr. Ovenden's machine.

The unfortunate footman (whose overworked legs are mercifully hidden from sight in a sort of tank), supporting himself by a strap, was expected to drive that immense wooden carriage and its contents "with ease" six miles an hour, and with "a peculiar exertion " (quite so) nine or ten miles an hour. The owner of the equipage, meantime, gaily steered with a pair of reins. We hear nothing further of Mr. Ovenden and his machine. Can he have fallen a victim to a secret assassination committee of footmen?

In 1804 a genius of the name of Bolton turned up in America, and invented another quaint engine. We reproduce his own drawing from the patent specification, indicator letters and all, so that his representatives may not accuse us of doing his work an injustice. We can justly admire the foresight of the inventor in representing the unhappy operator in rolled-up shirt-