Bike blog Previous Blog home 19th century cyclists paved the way for modern motorists' roa

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

Angelfishsolo

A Velocipedian
One of the very first motor cars to be made was a pedal tricycle with and engine fitted to it. These were developed into early motor cars of the type made by Daimler.

Around the same time (and slightly before) people were putting steam engines on to horse drawn vehicles.

So we are talking about parallel evolution then. That is interesting.
 

davefb

Guru
So we are talking about parallel evolution then. That is interesting.

its about yer power innit..

the early 'cars' with internal combustion would have been low powered, so needed light frames... so were from trikes.. which tbh is something forgotten, mass 'car' ownership was preceded by mass 'trike' ownership ( stuff like morgan 3 wheelers)...

but slow moving steam engine stuff was powerful but slow speed.

which is back to, its the cyclists who wanted smooth roads first, because they would have been flying along , but steam powered stuff was trundling about..

i think its also a fallacy to think most people had horses+carts,, very few would have had the room for a horse, but a bike was affordable by the lower middle classes....
 

Angelfishsolo

A Velocipedian
its about yer power innit..

the early 'cars' with internal combustion would have been low powered, so needed light frames... so were from trikes.. which tbh is something forgotten, mass 'car' ownership was preceded by mass 'trike' ownership ( stuff like morgan 3 wheelers)...

but slow moving steam engine stuff was powerful but slow speed.

which is back to, its the cyclists who wanted smooth roads first, because they would have been flying along , but steam powered stuff was trundling about..

i think its also a fallacy to think most people had horses+carts,, very few would have had the room for a horse, but a bike was affordable by the lower middle classes....

I agree more people would have had bikes than horse and carts and that the flat roads were made because of cyclists. The parallel development route is interesting indeed.
 

davefb

Guru
An extremely good point and therein is the problem with the article. We all evolved from single cell organisms and yet it is also true to say we evolved from Apes and also from Neanderthal man.

hehe but we didnt! apes and homo sapiens evolved from a common ancestor... ( and it was on QI tonight as well :smile: )

though they're not sure about neanderthals ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal , at least not sure how to name them . we didnt evolve FROM them .. again, there was a common ancestor...


the bit about 3wheelers is really interesting though, because we just don't seem to remember them really. but supposedly there were loads of different types and makers a lot of whom then went to make cars...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclecar
 

rowan 46

Über Member
Location
birmingham
hehe but we didnt! apes and homo sapiens evolved from a common ancestor... ( and it was on QI tonight as well :smile: )

though they're not sure about neanderthals ;) http://en.wikipedia....iki/Neanderthal , at least not sure how to name them . we didnt evolve FROM them .. again, there was a common ancestor...


the bit about 3wheelers is really interesting though, because we just don't seem to remember them really. but supposedly there were loads of different types and makers a lot of whom then went to make cars...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclecar
indeed neanderthal were contemporary with early homo sapien and seem to have bred with them

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/neanderthals-bred-with-early-humans-1965622.html
 
Top Bottom