Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/37

 original dandy-horse, is perhaps the oldest cyclist now alive. It was driven by cranks upon the hind wheel, actuated by pedals, bent levers, and connecting rods. With its great flopping back wheel and its small, sensitive steerer, the machine might have been more handy, but it was a sound machine in its safety principle, and well built. Its stable companion was the Challenge tricycle, almost identical in design, except that two steering wheels were used, turned by Blood's patent gear. This was the first tricycle made with wire wheels and rubber tyres. More than one inventor has built a bi-tricycle, a machine combining the faults of the two- and three-wheeler, with the advantages of neither.

In 1880 a very novel bicycle—or dicycle, as some called it—was invented. This was the Otto, wherein two large wheels were placed side by side, both driven by cranks through endless metal bands. The rider sat above the centre of gravity, and his chief business in life was to guard his nose and the back of his head from the assault of the roadway. Steering was done by either hand, the driving band being loosened upon the inner side, whereupon the outer (driven) wheel turned upon the inner one. The Otto was a pretty invention, but it never succeeded as a machine for pace.

One more American invention, and we have done. It is Schaffer's monocycle, and looks a terrible thing. The victim is entirely caged up inside the wheel, and what means of escape he could avail himself of in case of collision or bolting nobody but the inventor could tell us, and he doesn't. A large flap of the wheel and spokes, it seems, was to be removable to enable the victim to be inserted. It is a charming thing, and with all its index letters (which seem to have been sprinkled in from a pepper-box) has quite a learned and scientific appearance; notwithstanding which, there is no record of its use upon the high-road. So that the high-road is a less dangerous place than it might be, after all.

With the highly finished machine of the present day our business does not lie.