Why did we wait so long for the bicycle?

Wagons with four solid wheels were heavy and slow and, lacking steering, could only make gentle turns, which limited their usefulness. Two-wheeled vehicles, or carts, which had emerged by 3000 B.C.E., were more maneuverable and could make much tighter turns, particularly if the wheels could turn independently, rather than being fixed at the ends of

in April 1866 a French newspaper, Le Journal de l’Ain, unambiguously described a vélocipède bicycle (i.e., a two-wheeled velocipede) with pedals on its front wheel. Various people claimed to have pioneered this arrangement, chief among them two Frenchmen, Pierre Lallement and Pierre Michaux, and the fight over patent rights went on for decades. But

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