The bicycle: the most honest machine humans ever made

Among all the machines humans have devised, there is one almost perfect one — and we long ago stopped noticing it. It needs no fuel, poisons no air, heals the one who uses it, and levels the poor with the rich. It is the bicycle — and it is underrated precisely because it is too simple.

A machine that makes no one stronger than they are

A car gives you the power of an engine: the weak behind the wheel become faster than the strong. The bicycle is more honest — it only multiplies what you put in yourself. As much effort as you invest, that far you go; it cannot be cheated. Herein lies its modest nobility: it does not replace the human but reveals them. A machine that makes you not stronger but freer is a rare thing.

How two wheels changed society

The history of the bicycle is a quiet history of freedom. When it grew cheap, a worker could for the first time live somewhere other than beside the factory; a peasant could reach the town; and a woman could set off, on her own, without an escort or permission, wherever she wished. Historians rightly say the bicycle did more for equality than many a speech: it gave ordinary people what had been a privilege — the freedom to move. It is not always a law that liberates; sometimes it is a simple invention available to all.

“Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”
— H. G. Wells

My opinion: we are used to calling ever more complex, expensive, and powerful things “progress.” But the bicycle reminds us of another measure: the best solution is often the simplest, cheapest, and most humane. In a city choking on cars, the one turning the pedals looks not backward but wise. Sometimes a step forward is to get onto something invented a century and a half ago and finally understand how perfect it is.

Cover: “Woman with a Bicycle,” 1890s (public domain), duotone by Shanraq.