A young boy from my unicycleclub is writing a report about unicycling and the history.
Does any one have informations about who invented the unicycle or where it was invented and when?
Help will be much appreciated.
Yeah the wiki sums it up pretty well, essentially there are some educated guesses as to how and when, but I’m afraid no-one knows who or where.
The history portion of that Wikipedia entry seems very strong on the bicycle part but a little weak on the unicycle part. It fails to mention why penny-farthing bikes wanted to go up on their front wheels. Because the rider sits so nearly above the front axle, sudden deceleration or small, sudden bumps could be enough to lift that rear wheel off the ground, often resulting in what was then called a “header.” This was because the wide handlebars on the penny-farthings were not designed for passing over, or under, or around, so the rider tended to get hooked on them and go down on his head.
If you managed to pedal hard enough, in time, you’d get a brief one-wheeled ride before your back wheel would return to the ground. Daring riders must have experimented with this concept, and learned to keep the rear wheel off the ground while staying balanced.
The earliest unicycles were probably penny-farthing bikes with the frame and rear wheel removed. That means they had wide handlebars and no seats. Those came later.
Sebastian Hoher’s book “Unicycling from beginner to expert” has a nice section on the history of unicycling. It is available in German and English although I think the English version is well out of print. Depending on where you live your local library may have a copy or you might be able to get it through an interloan system.
There are a few history related and general info related links in the links section of the site.
There isn’t a lot of authoritative unicycling history information on the Internet. At least from what I’ve been able to find.
Thank you all for the info.
I´m sure he can use some of it.
Didn’t Al Gore invent the unicycle? Or was that something else he invented…??
Keld