I've always loved bikes. When I was 18 I seemed to forget this but luckily I remembered in my mid 20s. In that time it seems that bikes have changed immensely.
But bikes are bikes and they really haven't changed that much at all. What fascinates me is that they represent a massively diverse segment of our lives and histories. To children they are toys, to Victorians they were interesting new modes of transport, to Edwardians they were industry, to Elizabethans they were tools of the police, the midwife, the butcher and the working class man.
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| Bianchi folding bike from early 1900s |
This picture made me smile. Nowadays we have bikes that have automatic gear systems, internal hub gears and bikes that fold in half. But STOP! Look at this, people have had these ideas for a hundred years and the basic structure of the bike hasn't changed. The bike was just a good, solid invention that has been tinkered with and improved through the development of new materials. What a fantastic thing it is, The Bike.
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