Show The Inventor of the Bicycle The popular belief is that the bicycle is a modern invention when in fact it really dates back to the seventeenth century cen-tury said Dr T C Minor I learned I this one day when I was making some translations from the Journal de Medicine de Paris Ozoram in 1694 in his Mathematical I Mathe-matical and Physical Recreations tells of a carriage as lie calls it in which one I can ride without the use of horses 1 And then he goes on to tell of how a lackey sits at the back makes it run by walking alternately with his two feet by means of two small wheels concealed in a case just between the wheels behind be-hind and attached to the axle of the carriage This was the principle of the velocipede ao much improved since then But the priority of the discovery of the bicycle 1 believe to be established without further argument or dispute It was by a physician Eli Richard a young physician of Rochelle France I who made the first machine after which our modern bicycle patterned He was a medical student in Paris in 1666 and became be-came one of the great physicians of France He died at the age of 61 at Rochelle Ro-chelle in 1706 and there is a street in Rochelle named for him and there is now a movement on foot to erect a bronze statue not to Michaud who his claimed was the discoverer of the bicycle but to the true discoverer Dr Eli Richard Cincinnati TimesStar SJ3 |