You know about The Year Without a Summer, when the 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora caused crops to fail around the world in 1816. People couldn't afford to feed their beasts of burden, and that threw a damper into transportation, which relied on horses. But necessity is the mother of invention, and a young German named Karl von Drais invented a machine to make walking faster and easier. His device that he called the laufmaschine (running machine) consisted of two wheels connected by a frame with a saddle. The rider pushed off the ground with his feet, and propelled himself further and faster than was possible by just walking. Von Drais patented his invention in France as the vélocipède. In England, the invention was called a draisine, or a hobby-horse. It wasn't long before other engineers found a way to propel the running machine without running, leading to the modern concept of a bicycle. But without a volcanic explosion, we might never have have had them. Read about the laufmaschine at Amusing Planet. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: Wilhelm Siegrist)
