Social change can occur through war or revolution. It can come from the genius of inventors tinkering in a garage or from people peacefully crossing a bridge. And it can come, entirely unexpectedly, on two wheels. That is the story of the safety bicycle, a device that, no less an authority than Susan B. Anthony boasted, “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”
The first popular bicycle dated to the 1860s. Known as the velocipede, the pennyfarthing, or the “boneshaker,”1 it had one huge and one small wheel; it was heavy, unsafe, undignified, and perilous to mount. Women found the temptation to climb aboard easy to resist.
The safety bicycle, which debuted in 1885,2 solved all those problems; its wheels were the same size, making the bike much more stable. The chain-gear drive made it easier to pedal. And the development and improvement of the pneumatic tire made for a smoother, faster ride.3 The final innovation was the “drop frame,” which made it possible for women in skirts to hop on with grace and modesty. By the mid-1890s the bike was recognizably modern4—and women took to it with verve.
At a time when it was an entirely settled matter that the middle-class woman’s place was in the home, the bicycle allowed them to expand their geographic boundaries. Many chaperones could not keep up with their charges, and it became possible, even acceptable, for young couples to go cycling together. Even with the drop frame, riding in ankle-length skirts and corsets was problematic, and this dovetailed with the “dress reform” movement, which called for less constricting attire. Many women switched to comfortable footwear, shook off their bustles and corsets, and adopted (slightly) shorter, divided skirts.
There was pushback against all this freedom. One female physician warned that cycling could lead to everything from gout to tuberculosis to epilepsy and cancer.5 A more general concern was that straddling the bike saddle could damage the “feminine organs of matrimonial necessity,” as one European put it.6 Another worry, difficult to put into print, was that women would experience new feelings and, in a sense, become debauched by the bike. Clergymen despaired that girls and women were skipping church in favor of riding into the countryside. With males. Unescorted. Where would it all end? “Bicycling by young women,” charged the Women’s Rescue League, “has helped more than any medium to swell the ranks of reckless girls, who finally drift into the army of outcast women.”7 They were willing to risk it.
So the first important consequence of the bicycle for women was that, in an astonishingly short time, it became conventional wisdom that exercise was good for them, and would help to “rid them of vapors and nerves.”8 The British Medical Journal concluded: “There is no reason whatever why any sound woman should not ride either a bicycle or a tricycle.” No racing though, and not during menstruation or for at least three months after giving birth. Still, this was progress. The idea that exercise would not undermine women’s femininity or make them unfit mothers was revolutionary.9
In 1890 there were about 150,000 Americans riding bikes; by 1896, there were four million.10 Perhaps a third were women. Just as quickly as it started, however, the bicycle craze crashed. By 1902 production was down to 250,000 a year.11 The novelty had worn off, and manufacturers who had proven so innovative a decade before had lost their creative spark.
But the influence of the bicycle did not end with the death of the craze. For one thing, the bicycle literally paved the way for the car, as the shocking condition of American roads became all too obvious. Bicyclists pushed, successfully, for improvements, in the form of smoother surfaces, better lighting, and increased signage.12 This was critical to making roads fit for cars.
In addition, bike manufacturers were in the vanguard in the use of the assembly line, the development of precision manufacturing, and the standardization of components.13 Henry Ford was a former bicycle mechanic; so were several of the pioneers of aviation, including the Wright brothers. The early automobile and aviation industries borrowed copiously from the bicycle, including the use of pneumatic tires, differential gears, ball bearings, and chain and shaft drives. The Wrights rode a specially fitted bicycle through a wind tunnel to test lift and drag.14
The safety bicycle pictured on the previous page was owned by Frances Willard—largely forgotten now, but famous and influential in her day. A temperance reformer who was also active in the suffrage, public health, and labor movements, Willard was the first woman to be featured in the Statuary Hall in the US Capitol.15 In 1892, at age 53, depressed and grieving after the death of her mother, she decided to learn to ride a bike. She adored it, and wrote a short book in 1895 that is still in print, A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride a Bicycle.
The book suffers from a surfeit of earnestness, with too much deep meaning ascribed to a two-wheeler. But Willard’s delight in Gladys, the name she gave to her metal steed, is endearing. Gladys, she wrote, was “as full of kinks as the most spirited mare that sweeps the course.” However overwrought her extended essay, Willard appears to be entirely sincere: “I found a whole philosophy of life in the wooing and winning of my bicycle.”16 Her last words to her readers ring with the fervor of the convert: “Moral: Go thou and do likewise.”17