We’ve been making heavy use of Georgia Historic Newspapers to put together articles about the history of Cobb County and close by areas.
This morning I sat at my desk and decided to do a search on the words “bicycle” and “velocipede” to see what I could find out about how the local press covered the rise of the bicycle in the late 19th and early 20th Century.
The earliest reference was to the velocipede, the early version of the bicycle that usually had the pedals directly connected to the front axle. Velocipedes ranged from similarity to modern bicycles, to bizarre contraptions.
The article about velocipedes was a reprint in an 1868 issue of the Atlanta Intelligencer originally published in the Baltimore Gazette. It was a account of the mania for velocipedes in Paris. You can find the article at this link.
I ran across one gem from the October 20, 1881 Marietta Journal (one of the earlier names of what became the current Marietta Daily Journal).
It boasted about the acceptance of bicycles in Marietta compared to Atlanta.
“Out people are catching the bicycle fever,” the Atlanta Photograph wrote. The Marietta Journal responded “Behind again. Marietta has had it all summer. Our boys are the best riders in the country.”
One of the most interesting articles was from a 19th Century Atlanta newspaper called The Sunny South.
In its August 31, 1895 edition a question/answer column had the following item:
A Subscriber, Charleston, S. C., asks: “Has the bicycle come to stay?”
Answer: To all appearances, yes.
The sales of wheels this year are estimated at half a million, and the whole number in use at one million. The bicycle is the result and successor of the velocipede of 25 years ago. When it was shown that men could ride with ease upon two wheels, the world was astonished at the long postponement of the discovery.
The bike with a low and…
Read the full article here
