Father of the pedal

Tom Wells (LRB, 26 May) repatriates pedal fathering to France in the person of Pierre Lallement, patent filing around 1862. However moving one’s Draisine through pedals on the front wheel goes back another 18 years, according to Gerh. Minke’s Fietsen door de Eeuwen. A certain Mr Milius from Themar in Sachsen-Meiningen constructed steel pedals for the front wheel of his draisine in 1845, and was followed 8 years later and, independently, by Phillip Moritz Fischer, a mechanic from Schweinfurt. But the commercial breakthrough came when Michaux began making velocipedes incorporating this innovation, along with other significant design improvements, a couple of years after Fischer. Michaux Velocipedes spread throughout France as a result of showings at the Great Paris Exhibition of 1855. Minke leaves Lallement out of the story, instead credits the firm Meyer who, using designs of Andre Guilmet, was first to let backwheel-driven bikes using cranks, pedals and chains onto the streets of Paris in 1868. Minke’s history of bicycles through the centuries appeared one hundred years later. Notwithstanding the achievements of earlier tinkerers, he crowns the blacksmith turned bicycle entrepreneur Michaux as, pace Wells/Herlihy, father of the pedal.

Stephen Horn

Canberra

18 June 2022