Victorian bicycle

In 1851, American Amelia Bloomer published an article in her newspaper The Lily calling for dress reform. She, and her group of supporters adopted calf-length skirts over full cut ‘Turkish trousers’. The style received some acceptance and lots of ridicule – and although the style never went mainstream, the full-cut trousers became known as ‘bloomers’ and was soon used to describe divided underpants, as well as a costume in wool worn for gymnastic exercise. With a better understanding of the…

Today, the brief day of the the high-wheeler. The University of Houston's College of Engineering presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

The penny-farthing, also known as a high wheel, high wheeler or ordinary, was the first machine to be called a “bicycle”. It was popular in ...

antique bicycle

victorian era bicycle | What's it called?

By the 1890s, the bicycle was creating a social revolution in the United States. Nearly two million bicycles were being manufactured each ye...