Why the bicycle’s future looks bright – BBC News
One autumn day in 1865, two men sat in a tavern in Ansonia, Connecticut, calming their nerves with a few stiff drinks.
They had been riding a wagon down a nearby hill when they heard a blood-curdling scream from behind them. What appeared to be the devil himself - with the head of a man and the body of some unknown creature - was flying down the hill towards them, skimming low over the ground.
They whipped their horses and fled, while the devil plunged off the road and into a flooded ditch.
Imagine their fear when the devil himself then came over to introduce himself: the dark-haired Frenchman was bleeding and soaking wet. His name was Pierre Lallement.
The young mechanic had been in the United States for a few months, and had brought with him from France a machine of his own devising - a pedal-cranked, two wheeled construction he called a "velocipede". We would call it a bicycle.
