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The Story of the Bicycle
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The first bicycles were very different from ours. In 1817, a German man called Karl von Drais made a wooden machine with two wheels. It had no pedals. The rider sat on it and pushed the ground with his feet.
Later, in the 1860s, French makers added pedals to the front wheel. These bikes were hard to ride and not comfortable, so people called them "bone shakers".
In the 1880s, an English maker built the "safety bicycle". It had two wheels of the same size and a chain, like modern bikes. It was safer and easier to ride. Soon, millions of people used bicycles to go to work. Today there are more than a billion bicycles in the world.
1. What did the first bicycle not have?
2. Why did people call the later bikes "bone shakers"?
3. What was new about the safety bicycle?
4. What did many people do with bicycles?
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