THE HOBBY-HORSE 65 



noticed. The Hobby Horse and McAdam, the man 

 who first preached the modern gospel of good roads, 

 were contemporary. 



I have said the beginnings of the bicycle were 

 quaint, and I think no one will be concerned to dispute 

 this alleged quaintness of the Hobby Horse, which 

 had a certain strictly limited popularity from 1819 to 

 1830. I do not think any one ever rode from London 

 to Brighton on one of these machines ; and, when 

 you come to consider the build and the limitations of 

 them, and then think of the hills on the way, it is 

 quite impossible that any one should so ride. It was 

 perhaps within the limits of human endurance to ride 

 a Hobby Horse along the levels, to walk it up the 

 rises, and then to madly descend the hills, and so 

 reach Brighton, very sore ; but records do not tell us 

 of such a stern pioneer. The Hobby Horse, it should 

 be said, was an affair of two wooden wheels with 

 iron tyres. A heavy timber frame connected these 

 wheels, and on it the courageous rider straddled, 

 his feet touching the ground. The Hobby Horse 

 had no pedals, and the rider propelled his hundredweight 

 or so of iron and timber by running in this straddling 

 position and thus obtaining a momentum which only 

 on the down grade would carry him any distance. 



Thus, although the Hobby Horse was a favourite 

 with the " bucks " of George the Fourth's time, they 

 exercised upon it in strictly limited doses, and it was 

 not until it had experienced a new birth and was born 

 again as the " velocipede ' of the '60's, that to ride 

 fifty miles upon an ancestor of the present safety 

 bicycle, and survive, was possible.* 



The front-driving velocipede — the well-known 

 ' boneshaker ' — was invented bv one Pierre Lai lenient, 

 in Paris, in 1865-6, and exhibited at the Paris 

 Exhibition of 1867. It was to the modern pneumatic- 

 tyred " safety " what the roads of 1865 are to those 



* Kirkpatrick Macmillan, in 1839-40, invented a dwarf, rear- 

 driving machine of the " safety " type, and was fined at Glasgow 

 for " furiously riding." He made and sold several, but they attained 

 nothing more than local and temporary success. 



