Bicycle Coloring Page

Early bicycles looked quite different. In 1817 a German baron named Karl von Drais built a two-wheeler with no pedals, and riders pushed along with their feet. Pedals arrived in France in the 1860s, and those bikes rattled so much that people called them boneshakers.

In 1885 an English inventor named John Kemp Starley built the Rover safety bicycle, with two wheels the same size and a chain turning the back wheel, much like a bike today. A few years later an air-filled tire made rides smoother. Bicycles gave ordinary people a cheap way to travel farther than they could walk.