What if bicycles were invented centuries earlier?

[Workable Goblin]

It's already been mentioned earlier, nevertheless it's an important point: the roads matter. A mud path is hell to go through on bike - and even more so on tricycle and yet more so if the thing you're riding is a lot heavier than modern bikes. Paved roads are better - but never try to ride a bike without modern air-filled wheels on cobbled stone!

That said, I can see a wider usage in dryer and hotter countries where any dust road is good for bicycles.

So...Africa, maybe? Perhaps in some of the outlying tsetse regions, where horses aren't going to live long anyways, so they aren't really an alternative?

 

[M79]

How about India, Egypt/Eastern Roman Empire, the Levantine, or Persia?

 

[amphibulous]

Crude tricycles might find a use with military messenger services, especially in areas that have trouble with horses being shot/fired at.

Tricycles as crude as the one described? No. It's faster to run. Without steel spokes you have to have wooden wheels. This means wheels have to be pretty damn small, which greatly increases hysteresis energy losses - which are already huge without air-filled rubber tyres.

Plus, again - ROADS!

 

[amphibulous]

That said, I can see a wider usage in dryer and hotter countries where any dust road is good for bicycles.

In practice these roads will have considerable rutting from horse drawn carts. You really don't want to think about what riding on such roads is like without air filled tyres - I've done it on a modern cyclocross bike with and its *demanding* to say the least; if I was touring on such roads I'd swap the crosser for a suspension fork mtn bike.

As for the control problems you'd have with wooden direct drive wheels - well, fortunately exhaustion would probably stop you riding far enough to injure yourself.