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Cycling

Read more about the article Donald Friedman, overland cyclist and bad soldier
One of Donald Friedman's postcards. As a soldier he was a great cyclist.

Donald Friedman, overland cyclist and bad soldier

He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force twice during The Great War, under different names, and was drummed out both times, actually earning a seven-year sentence for desertion. Postwar he turned to "overland cycling", chasing money to exploit a gold deposit he claimed he'd found near Darwin. He was found dead on a lonely outback road in 1938. The postcard proclaims the cyclist pictured to be Donald Friedman, an "original Anzac" and a member of the 9th Battalion. This transcontinental traveller funded his journeying through the sale of such cards, and by appealing, in newspaper interviews,…

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Read more about the article Velocipedia: some ancestors of the bicycle

Velocipedia: some ancestors of the bicycle

It was 1868, and the pages of the monthly publication The English Mechanic were about to be deluged with correspondence from inventors keen to create a perfect personal transport machine. The rise of the middle classes, the spread of technical education and the increase in literacy created a large pool of would-be inventors who shared their ideas – good, bad and indifferent – in cheap specialized journals and through “mechanics’ institutes”. An 1869 issue of The English Mechanic, featuring a velocipede. Author's collection. Up until then, horses and horse-drawn vehicles had been the main form of…

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Read more about the article On ya bike! A gallery of bicycle pictures

On ya bike! A gallery of bicycle pictures

Bicycles are a common motif in many collections of old photos. In the 1800s "velocipedes" were an exciting innovation, with inventors of all stripes applying their fertile brains to create a self-powered, non-polluting alternative to the horse for personal transport. After many strange experiments, the conventional bicycle emerged in, more or less, the form we know it today. Here are some examples of early ideas from inventive correspondents to 1860s issues of the magazine The English Mechanic and Mirror of Science (scanned from my collection). Many strange experiments with velocipedes. During the first half of the…

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