Earliest Bicycle

Sachyriel

Banned
So, I was wondering, just out of bi-curiousness (;)) what is the earliest one could reasonable expect the bicycle to be invented, and later, the earliest it could be widely adopted in the known world?

I'm not anywhere near an engineer, so the answer needs to be fairly straightforward.
 
So, I was wondering, just out of bi-curiousness (;)) what is the earliest one could reasonable expect the bicycle to be invented, and later, the earliest it could be widely adopted in the known world?

I'm not anywhere near an engineer, so the answer needs to be fairly straightforward.
A lot depends on how crude the bike can be. At the crudest level, with a wooden frame and the person propelling the thing by pushing with their legs like with a scooter rather than with peddles, then I don't see any reason something like that couldn't go back to Roman times. It wouldn't be a practical way to get around because it would be heavy, slow and extremely bone-jarring, but it would sort of work.

A practical bike? I pushed the date back roughly a decade in a scenario called "The Confederate Highwheeler Dragoons". It's on this site somewhere, as well as in my AH Newsletters. I felt comfortable with going back that far, but I think another twenty years would have been pushing it.
 
So, I was wondering, just out of bi-curiousness (;)) what is the earliest one could reasonable expect the bicycle to be invented, and later, the earliest it could be widely adopted in the known world?

I'm not anywhere near an engineer, so the answer needs to be fairly straightforward.
Some sort of 2 wheeled thing as a toy, very early.

A useful conveyance that becomes popular? not much earlier. For a bicycle to be useful, you have to have pretty decent metallurgy for the bearings and races. Bikes were actually pretty high tech in their time.
 
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