High-Wheel Bicycle

Overview

The high-wheel bicycle, called the penny-farthing or simply the ordinary, was the dominant cycle of the late 1870s and early 1880s. Its defining feature is the enormous front driving wheel, 48 to 60 inches across, paired with a small trailing rear wheel of 16 to 20 inches. The contrast in wheel sizes gave the machine its nickname, after the large British penny set beside the tiny farthing coin.

The whole machine is mechanical. There are no gears, no chain, and nothing electrical. The rider sits high on a sprung leather saddle almost directly above the front axle, steers through a pivoting head bearing, and stops with a single spoon brake pressed onto the front tyre. The entire structure hangs from one curved backbone that arcs over the big wheel and tapers back to the little one.

How it works

Drive is direct. The cranks are keyed straight onto the front axle, so one turn of the pedals is exactly one turn of the wheel. There is no freewheel: when the wheel turns, the cranks turn, and the rider must keep his feet moving or lift them onto footrests when coasting downhill.

Because there is no gearing, the only way to raise top speed is to enlarge the wheel. A 54 inch wheel rolls about 170 inches per revolution, so at a comfortable 80 to 90 crank revolutions per minute the rider covers 12 to 15 mph. Manufacturers therefore fitted the largest wheel a customer's leg length allowed, sizing the machine to the rider's inseam so the foot could reach the bottom of the crank throw. The crank arms were slotted so the 5 to 6 inch throw could be shifted to suit the rider.

The front hub runs on adjustable ball bearings set between threaded cones, with oil seals to keep grit out of the race. This was an advance over the plain bushes of the earlier boneshaker and let the great wheel spin with little friction.

The driving wheel

The front wheel is the heart of the machine and a fine piece of wheelbuilding. A crescent-section wrought-iron rim is laced to the hub flanges by 60 to 72 steel wire spokes, each tensioned by a brass nipple threaded into the rim. Early ordinaries used radial lacing; later builders adopted tangent spoking, which feeds drive and braking loads into the spokes more evenly.

The tyre is a single endless ring of solid india-rubber, roughly 7/8 to 1-1/8 inch thick, cemented and wired into the rim channel. Solid rubber gave grip and a softer ride than the iron-shod boneshaker, though it transmitted every cobble straight up the fork to the saddle. Pneumatic tyres did not arrive until 1888, by which time the safety bicycle had begun to displace the ordinary.

Frame and steering

The backbone is a single tapered tube, hollow wrought iron on early machines and weldless steel on later ones. It runs from the fork crown over the top of the big wheel and down to the slim rear fork that carries the trailing wheel. The front fork blades straddle the driving wheel and hold its axle bearings.

Steering is through the head bearing, a cup-and-cone race at the top of the forks. The rider turns the handlebar, which rotates the stem and swings the whole front assembly. Because the rider's mass sits so high and so far forward, the ordinary steers quickly and is sensitive at the bar, demanding a light touch.

Braking and safety

The sole brake is the spoon, a curved steel shoe that the hand lever and pull rod press down onto the crown of the front tyre. It scrubs speed by friction on the rubber. The arrangement is weak by modern standards and useless in the wet.

The ordinary was a dangerous machine. With the rider perched high over the axle, any sudden check to the front wheel, a pothole, a stone, or hard braking, could pitch him forward over the bars in a fall riders called a header. Mounting was its own skill: the cyclist scooted with one foot on the low step peg, then swung up to the saddle as the machine rolled.

Materials and finish

The machine is built almost entirely of iron and steel. Frame and rims are wrought iron; the hubs, cranks, and axles are forged steel; spokes are drawn steel wire. The finish combined a stoved black japan enamel on the frame ironwork with bright nickel plating on the hubs, cranks, and bars, often set off with a hand-lined gold coach stripe. Grips were turned from horn or boxwood, the saddle from vegetable-tanned hide.

Riding and history

The high-wheeler was a sporting and gentleman's machine, costing more than a labourer earned in months. Clubs spread across Britain and the United States through the 1880s, and racing on the ordinary set early cycling records. Its reign was short. The chain-driven safety bicycle of the mid-1880s, with two equal wheels and a low saddle, gave the same speed through gearing without the height or the header, and the pneumatic tyre of 1888 sealed the change. By 1892 the ordinary had passed into history, though surviving examples remain prized by collectors and ridden by enthusiasts today.