Penny-farthing

The Penny-farthing bicycle, sometimes called the high wheel or the ordinary, was first designed by the Frenchman, Eugène Meyer, in 1869. In England James Starley and others began producing them in volume and they remained popular through the 1870s and ‘80s until largely replaced by the safety bicycle.

These bikes were notoriously dangerous to ride, especially over bumpy surfaces where they had a tendency to throw the rider over the front wheel. There’s a good YouTube video describing how to mount and ride the Penny-farthing here.

This model is an amalgam of several different high wheels. The front wheel has a diameter of 1.33 meters (52.4 “). I imagined finding one after 140 years in an old barn, dirty, moldy and with some rust. After a bit of surface cleaning, it was placed on display in a museum and photographed.

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