9781422285183

Frenchmen Pierre Michaux and Pierre Lallement, who added a mechanical crank drive with pedals on an enlarged front wheel (the velocipede) in the early 1860s. Following this innovation, it was only a matter of time before another genius discovered a way of making it less strenuous for the rider… It was Michaux & Co who paved the way, with their steam velocipede in 1867, when Ernest Michaux (Pierre’s son) added a small steam engine to power the vehicle. Lallement, meanwhile, claimed he had come up with the idea in 1863 and filed for the US patent in 1866. Numerous inventors tried their hand at perfecting the steam- powered bicycle (a term that replaced velocipede from about 1868 onward), with two producing machines in 1868. American Sylvester H. Roper’s innovation was to install a coal-fired boiler to power his twin-cylinder steam engine, while Frenchman Louis-Guillaume Perreaux’s offering was a single- cylinder engine fitted to a Michaux frame fueled by an alcohol burner under the saddle, which he patented the following year. The major change in the 19 th -

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 ABOVE:  The patent for the velocipede dated 1866.  RIGHT:  The steam velocipede at The Art of the Motorcycle exhibition, New York, 1999.