Today, most people believe tricycles are for toddlers or old people. But as the first “bike boom” took shape during the late 1880s, some saw “trikes” as a viable alternative to high-wheelers, a.k.a., “penny farthings”.
The bikes most commonly associated with that period had front wheels much larger in diameter than the rear. Cranks were attached to the front axle. The bikes were therefore “direct drive,” which meant that the gearing was determined by the size of the front wheel. A larger wheel meant a higher gear and potentially more speed. (I can only imagine pedaling them uphill!) Racers and riders who simply wanted to go fast (or “prove” their manhood) often rode perched over front wheels taller than their bodies. And, aside from their inherent instability, “penny-farthings” posed another hazard: A cyclist’s foot could be caught in the wheel.
Variations of the “safety” bicycle—one with wheels of equal diameter and a chain connecting a sprocket on the rear wheel with a chainring on the crank—had been in the works well before that first “bike boom” began and mostly displaced “penny-farthings” by the middle of it. It’s what most of us have been riding ever since.
But around the same time British inventor and industrialist John Starley introduced the first commercially-successful “safety “ bicycle, another inventor on the other side of the Atlantic patented a new kind of human-powered wheeled transportation: the tricycle. It would look more or less familiar to us today: two rear wheels and a somewhat larger front attached to a metal frame. The first version was propelled (and stopped) by the rider’s feet on the ground; a later version had cranks and pedals attached to the front wheel: the drive system of “penny farthings.”
Among Matthew Cherry’s later inventions were a fender (what we might call a bumper) for streetcars. Believe it or not, until he developed it, those transport conveyances lacked anything that could absorb shock from a front or rear impact and were thus frequently damaged.
Anyway, in spite of his accomplishments, little is known about Cherry’s life aside from having been born 5 February 1834 in Washington, DC. (Nobody is sure of when or where he died.) The nation’s capital has long been a racially segregated city: It didn’t outlaw slave auctions in its confines until 16 years after his birth.
That last sentence is a clue to what I’m about to say: Matthew Cherry was Black. It’s hard not to wonder whether that was an impediment to his further developing the tricycle. Had he been able to secure more investment and other support, might he have developed a way to create something like the adult tricycle we see today: one with the drivetrain system nearly all of us ride today, with its capacity for variable gears.
I haven’t ridden a tricycle since I was a toddler. I don’t recall seeing an adult trike here in New York, though some cargo bikes resemble them. Still, I wonder: What if tricycles, and not “safety” bicycles, had displaced high-wheelers?
Certainly bike—or more precisely, trike—design would be different. Transportation and urban planning might also be different. I suspect that one reason why adult tricycles are so rarely seen in New York and other cities is that three-wheelers are more difficult to maneuver in traffic and even in bike lanes. (In fact, some “bike lanes” aren’t wide enough for them.) Would streets and other infrastructure have been designed differently—possibly in less auto-centric ways? And might our cities—and society—be less segregated?
If nothing else, tricycles might not be just for kids and folks in retirement communities.
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