Bike craze


In the 1890’s, with the appearance of the “safety bicycle” with its identical size wheels, chain-driven rear wheel and pneumatic tires, the bike, for the very first time, ceased to be a caprice of young aristocratic sportsmen, and became an everyday transport tool and – with the development of railroads – even a kind of a one-man branch-line for commuters. On the first bicycle craze it brought along we have much more vintage photos than on the paleocycles. The about sixty ones below are but a selection which could be easily continued, and we will continue it indeed when new ones will pop up and if our readers will help us as well.







And once we seem to have a kind of Lwów weeks here at Río Wang, let us see, as a bonus, some bike photos from Lemberg in the 1890’s, from proidysvit’s blog.






2 comentarios:

Effe dijo...

as usual, outstanding photo sets (the Sapa's one as well).
You are a photo (and story) hunter, kind of an eye in the sky of internet :-)

Studiolum dijo...

Tante grazie… To tell the truth, I often hesitate whether to publish a good story – either in words or in pictures – told originally by someone else. I do not want to make Río Wang a redistribution portal, and it’s not easy to maintain the balance. I have to renounce so many good materials. But from time to time, if the story is such as if it could have been originally told by myself too, I yield to the temptation and I retell it, always in my own way.

Back in the university, in the first semester of history, we were asked to tell our opinion on the purpose of history. My, only half-joking, answer was: “to tell good stories to people”. I still think it so.