Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Penny-Farthings

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why penny-farthings are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Get tickets to see us LIVE at the London Podcast Festival THIS SUNDAY: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/comedy/secretly-incredibly-fascinating/

If you're hearing this when this drops, we're doing a live episode in London on Sunday. Sunday, 8th September at the London Podcast Festival. It's me and Katie together in London with special guest Robin Ince, a totally unique episode of the show. Come on out. Penny Farthings. Known for the big bicycle wheel in front. Famous for the small bicycle wheel in the back.

Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Penny Farthing bicycles are secretly incredibly fascinating. ["Penny Farthing Bicycles Theme"] Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode of Podcasts all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt. I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden.

Katie. Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of Penny Farthings? It's a silly bike. It's a very silly bike. Silly big wheel. I did see one in person. I just actually, before we started recording,

I sent Alex a photo of this. When I was in London visiting, there was a man, a gentleman riding a Penny Farthing. I don't know why. I don't know what his deal was. He was just some guy. It didn't seem like it was a bit, but there he was. He was just riding the penny farthing. And I just don't understand it, right? I love biking. I have a bike. I can't fathom being on a bike like that because I'm already afraid of tipping over and that would be so high up to tip over on my bicycle. Like I hit a bad cobblestone

and I go, Kathunkara and I fall over from that height. I don't know if I'm making it out alive. Yeah. A lot of people didn't. I don't have stats, but it was definitely a thing. Yeah, people died on me. Yeah, it seems like it would be dangerous. Now I have like a bike that's over a decade old. It's just like a not cool and retro.

It's not like super pretty, but it has a suspension system that protects my butt and that is so important. Like I remember kind of being like jealous like, oh everyone has these cool retro bikes and they're really pretty and they come in these pastel colors, blah blah blah. But I get on my bike and like, man this is a smooth ride for my butt. So I am very much in favor of bicycles that protect the butt and I don't believe a penny farthing would do that. You basically have all the things that are bad about a horse being high up, possibly tipping over and dying, your butt's not protected without being able to feed it apples.

Wow. You tapped into the actual experience of these. I've got a link in Atlas Obscura article where they interviewed many people who are riding these in the modern day. One of them describes being on top of it as like a cross between riding a horse and being up in a helicopter. Sounds terrible. Which sounds horrible.

Sounds terrible. I'm afraid of both horses and helicopters. I'm not afraid of horses like just chilling out next to a horse, saying hi to a horse. I'm a little worried about getting up on them things because they're big and they have, you know, volition. Like, I don't want my vehicle to have its own ideas of what we should be doing. I have ridden horses and it's really nice. I also sort of prefer to just feed them an apple in The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild. You know? That's cool.

It's a good time. Then there's little pink sparkles. It's good. I do love the horses in Legend of Zelda because I can't break my neck playing that game. I guess unless I'm up on a penny farthing playing Legend of Zelda and I tip over and then also break my neck. That could happen.

That's why they designed the Nintendo Switch. People were on penny farthings and they couldn't game. And so really solved that. Don't game in penny farthing. It could cost you and others your lives. Yeah. And shout out to Joel Samataro on the Discord for this amazing suggestion. I think folks know a penny farthing is the, in my head, old tiny bicycle before researching, and they are old, but it's one with a giant front wheel and a small back wheel that a Victorian man is perched on. That's the name for this thing you've

definitely seen in culture. Handlebars and then a handlebar mustache and then like handlebar eyebrows. It's just sort of layers and layers of handlebars. Each brow has a top hat somehow. Oh, geez. This is too much. Somehow, man. Yeah. I mainly know them from Trader Joe's product art. Trader Joe's loves a Victorian illustration. They have a Victorian, and it's a Victorian saying something that a Victorian definitely wouldn't say, like, these Baja Blast pretzels are great. Man, dude, love these Oreos, but they're not Oreos.

They're Trader Joe's. You just riffed a Trader Joe's X Taco Bell crossover, and I think that would capture America's heart so powerfully. Yeah. Oh my gosh. We would be... If I went into marketing, I would destroy the world. It's such a good idea.

It's like that scene in Lord of the Rings with like gladrile, but for me it's like marketing. But no, I will diminish into the podcasting. You've done Middle-Earth of Kindness. Now, on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week that's in a segment called Numbers Babe. Well numbers babe you'll have to stat the stats just to stats the feeling. Is that Leonard Skitter? Uh, Chappellrone. But you know, very similar.

And that name was submitted by Frankie Juniper Nyam. Thank you, Frankie. And we have a new name for this every week. Please make a Missilean Wagon as best as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpod at gmail.com. And the first number is at most 15 years. At most 15 years or so. That's the amount of time the penny- farthing bicycle was popular in real life.

Really? Yeah. It's kind of a brief era. I mean, is that long? That's longer than the Confederacy. I love the Confederacy as a measuring stick of trends. Yeah. Because it was so short and deserves to be dunked on eternally for all time. Yeah, yeah. Penny Farthing, the dumbest bike you could imagine. Not as dumb as the Confederacy. Yeah, the Penny Farthing, the dates are a little vague, but we'll talk about why this started and why it ended. People developed the key elements of a Penny Farthing bike design in the second half of the 1870s,

and people started developing a better way to do it in the second half of the 1880s. So my sources, some of them said this was about 1875 to 1885. Some said more like 1880 to 1890. But either way, it's at most 15 years, more like 10 years for this being the popular bicycle. It was really fast. So was this like the first bicycle? Was this the first design for a two-wheel bicycle? Which I guess is the definition of a bicycle.

Were there other designs before this? Because this seems wild to just be your shooting your first shot is like, what about a huge wheel and then a really little one? Great question. Yeah, it was a middle step. There were bikes before this and bikes after this and basically all of them had the same size wheels. This was a really brief blip in how we built bikes and designed them. I see. So previous bike designs did not have the wheel dimorphism.

Yes. Before researching, I always thought, oh, this is a Victorian bike. And the Victorian era was a lot longer than these bikes. The Victorian era, her reign was 1837 to 1901. 1837 to 1901. This penny-farthing era we're going to be talking about, basically 1875 to 1890 is like the maximum range of this bike. maximum range of the spike. For the Victorian period, I guess it seems like mostly defined by the brain of Queen Victoria, but did these social expectations last longer than that or did they pretty quickly start ripping off those extra bodices and coverlets and spats and so on. I don't actually know what all those clothes are called, but you know, the layers. I feel like the answer is all of the above

because it's such a long time and trends move relatively quickly, especially because so much mass communication gets going in that era. Like we did that telephone polls episode recently, that whole thing happened inside of her era. So yeah, some of it lasted beyond or before and some didn't. And this is one of those relatively micro trends, the penny farthing.

The penny farthing did not have staying power. Although yeah, I did see one in modern day London, which is baffling to me. It really captured the imagination. Yeah, like people still ride these, but it's a throwback for sure. Nobody's like, I had the latest bike. They're like, I'm celebrating the 1880s. Yeah. Saying people plural is generous. We know of one person who rides this.

Yeah, I found stories about a few more, but they're definitely the Nevernudes from Arrested Development to some extent. There are dozens of us shouting at a crowd. Which is a great way to describe the Victorian period, Nevernudes. That's right. Another fun thing about Penny Farthings and their timeline is their name, because the name is from after people rode these. They were not called Penny Farthings when they were popular. I see. So the name is basically once the trend was over. Yeah. We'll talk in a sec about the whole timeline of bicycles, but in the early bicycling era, there were a bunch of

names such as Vellocipede. Vellocipede was huge. It means swift foot in Latin and kind of French. I like that one. I wish we'd kept that one. It's still pretty good. Yeah. It is pretty good. And then as people develop those machines, they tried different amounts of wheels. And we still have tricycles to this day. We don't really have quad cycles where it's four, but the word bicycle gets coined as a word for two wheels riding machines. Like that was, it was describing specifically this as two

wheels, which is not the norm, you know? Yeah. I guess it is counterintuitive that a bicycle would work, right? Because it's unstable. But then there's the whole, hey, if you keep going, you got that torque that keeps you upright. So it is not super intuitive. So it doesn't surprise me too much that it didn't catch on until much later. Yeah, exactly. And I guess shout out to it's like kind of a fact, but kind of an internet myth that we don't know how bicycles work. We understand that they stay up, but there's

like an internet claim that we don't understand the physics and never will. It's not really true. Those are always so frustrating. I like the one that was in Bee Movie that was like, we don't understand how bees fly because their bodies are too fat or something. That's not even remotely true. We know exactly how bees fly. In fact, we know how bumblebees fly and they're fatter than bees. Bees are not particularly fat. Bumblebees are, and yet we still know how they fly, how their wings create these little

vortices of air that produces lift. It's just made up stuff. So it's like, oh, we don't even know how bicycles work. No, we do. That's been solved by physics. Yeah. And so people developed this new kind of bicycle with a giant front wheel and then that became the most popular style of two-wheeled machine that was just called the bicycle.

Like people didn't update the name because it's still a two-wheeled machine. Right. In a way that's distinct from the other amounts of wheels. How long did we have bicycles before the penny farthing version? We only started having them around the 1810s. So it is newer technology than maybe people would think, but we started getting the penny farthing about 50 to 60 years into that timeline. But the first version was just like a normal bicycle, like two same size wheels and it worked okay? Yeah, the first versions, for a reason we'll talk about in a sec, had same size wheels.

Okay. The Penny Farthing came and went as a trend in what's otherwise very familiar to us. It's two wheel bicycle, ones in front, ones in back, they're the same size. Like that was how it started and how it is now. That's so strange. That reminds me, that makes me think of like versions of animals in evolution where you have a pretty, you know, it kind of makes sense,

like elephant trunks developing or shark mouths and everything kind of makes sense. And then you just get this one kind of shark that has like a buzz saw for a mouth and that only lasts for a while in evolutionary history and it goes away, it's like, why, what were you guys doing? Cause like the rest of them were kind of

had things figured out or like, like the elephant that, you know, trunk that was developing and one of them just made a big sort of shovel out of their trunk and it's like, guys, I don't know if you got the memo, but we're, we're going in sort of a more practical direction with this stuff. And it's the same thing with this bike where it's like,

okay, normal bike, we're starting to get bikes and then just wild, impractical loopy bike that just does not seem, it doesn't seem like it was solving any problem that the bicycle had, unless I'm wrong. It kind of seems like the Cybertruck, you know, like where it's like, it's not really solving any problems that trucks had. It's just kind of making the truck worse. It's just kind of making the bicycle more bad. But what was like, what was the thinking behind it?

We'll need to talk about the whole evolution of bicycles to explain why, but it was a good idea for what it is. I had that specific Cybertruck thought, but the penny farthing is if the Cybertruck was better in terms of speed and power. If a Cybertruck could somehow go 200 miles per hour in a good way, you know, like it's like a bullet train and gets us places faster. That is the one thing about the cyber truck that is, you know, quote unquote good is that it is very fast.

Yeah, we needn't get into that, I suppose. I honestly assumed it's just not fast because it's so boxy. It is actually very fast. It can, yes, it is very fast. Is it fast? Oh, okay, cool. It's just any of its many sort of autopilot slash visibility features that have giant flaws run into issues, it would be a bad time for everyone involved. Wow. Yeah, no, no. I need to update the metaphor.

The Penny Farthing is the Cybertruck. In Minecraft, I mean, so that I don't get sued. I'm talking about the cyber truck in Minecraft. The Penny Farthing just is the cyber trick, but without enriching one specific guy who's trying to misinform people about the 2024 election. If the Penny Farthing was not controlled by one nut and was made by a lot of different companies, that's it. I see. There wasn't like a Baron von Velocipede that was profiting off of big penny farthings.

We're like about to talk about a Baron in the next part. Anyway, great. I don't have access to these notes, people. Alex keeps them secret from me. Yeah. Let's do all the name stuff and then all the evolution of bicycles. The penny farthing, what we call it now, it was just called the bicycle pretty much throughout its popularity because it's two wheels and that's still an accurate name. And then it got replaced by a new version of a bicycle with two same size wheels. And for that reason and many other reasons, it was a lot safer. And so then what we think of as the penny farting with the giant wheel, they kept calling a bicycle for a while and they called its

replacement the safety bicycle. And those were the two different names. Oh, wow. So it's like, here's the bicycle that you won't die while riding. That's an interesting kind of distinction. Right. And it took a long time for what we think of as the Penny Farthing to not be default anymore. Its next name was the Ordinary Bicycle. It was still default, but that was versus a safety bicycle. And then a few people started calling it the high wheel was another name because that is a distinction from the safety bicycle is that its wheel is so big. That does make it sound kind of fancy though, like the high wheel, getting on my high wheel.

I think that if someone's like, well, here's an airplane, an ordinary airplane. Now here's the safety airplane. I'm going to start asking questions about the ordinary airplane because that would freak me out. Like, wait, so this is the safe airplane, but then that's the ordinary airplane? What do you mean? Yeah. Okay.

Great question. The public asked that question. They were like, hmm, I'd like to live. Wait, excuse me? Yeah, Okay. Great question. The public asked that question. They were like, hmm, I'd like to live. Wait, excuse me? Yeah, yeah. There's a safe version? And then the name Penny Farthing comes from a specific few decades. It got coined because it's after these bicycles are totally out of fashion as transportation,

but before Britain decimalized its coins and its currency. Decimalized. I know what that means, but it's a funky word. Yeah, it's a weird word for you have like the pound and then it breaks down into 100 of something. Like a dollar breaks down into 100 cents. And it turns out they only did that in our next number here, 1971. Whoa, that seems relatively recently. Very recent. Yeah, I think in the US we just assume it's been not the old timey coins for a long time, but I'm sure British people know they decimalized on February 15th of 1971. Decimalization day.

Yeah. And there was media about this because 2021 was the 50th anniversary. The British pounds switched on that date to just break down into 100 pence and the times I've been to Britain, that was how it worked. And also the Republic of Ireland did this because their currency was the Irish pound with a value pegged to British pounds and with the same weird coins. So they decimalized the same day. Before it was just 100 pence per pound, a British pound split into 20 shillings and then each shilling subdivided into 12 pence, also known as pennies. So one

pound was equal to 240 pennies. I completely, Alex, I lost track. As soon as you started to say the pence was split into this many units, I- I don't like it. I left and my brain just started imagining fancy ladies on a bicycle with very disproportionate wheels. Everyone should do that. Listeners don't need to really track any of this, but the point is that the penny was a weirder coin then and then that also subdivided into further

smaller coins. Oh no. For bicycle purposes, all you need to know is one penny split into two hay pennies. They still had what I think of as medieval coins, hay pennies in 1971. Is that like short for, that's short for half penny or something or? Yes.

Yeah, it's like an archaic contraction of a half penny. And then the half penny split in a half as well. So one hay penny split into two farthings. Ah, here we are, the farthing. Great. Right. Okay. So a farthing is a quarter of a penny. Yeah. I'm so lost. Good thing I don't have to function in Victorian society. For many reasons, this would be a problem for me.

Yeah, or like Queen Elizabeth II's Britain. Like this was so recent. Like a lot of listeners were alive. This was recent. Yeah. Kids are going to, well, kids, people are going to talk about the US system of measurement imperial like this at some point once we finally cave and join metric with the rest of polite society. And we'll be being interviewed by local news in like our eighties complaining about it. Yeah. Like, I wish no, that you know it's tight. so I grew up in, it's British somehow, you know. Which is, which is how we will sound for

some reason, we'll all attain British accents despite being Americans. We did a, we did a podcast on the metric system, right, or Imperial. Imperial, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, go listen. It's, it's great And so, yeah, they have all sorts of systems like that for money until recently. And one thing that helped is a lot of the bigger coins were bigger than a lot of the smaller coins. The values sort of match the sizes. That makes it easier to track. So you mentioned there's a penny and then a coin worth a quarter of that called a farthing.

And after these bikes were out of fashion and the word bicycle meant two wheels, same size, people looked for, how do I refer to that archaic bicycle? And they used what were the current British coins and created the name penny farthing. And now those coins are also archaic. And so the whole thing feels extra archaic. And so the whole thing feels extra archaic. But why the coins? Because I understand that they created that name. What's the connection to it?

The sizes. Oh, the size. So because the penny is bigger and the farthing is smaller or something? Yeah, the penny is the big wheel. pennies were about 31 millimeters diameter and then farthings were about 20 millimeters and much smaller. They could have picked other bigger smaller coins. If the US had named this, it would be like a quarter dime or something. Right. Okay.

All right. That makes some amount of sense. Yeah, the name makes sense. Alex, that makes some amount of sense. Yeah, that name makes sense. Yeah. Alex, that makes some amount of sense. That makes some amount of... I'm quitting this. I'm quitting this show. Pence, actually. Britain.

I'm quitting this show. Don't quit our live shows on Sunday in London. Oh gosh. Oh no. This Sunday. I'll be there. Alex told me I'm not allowed to do my really bad British accent until after London so that we won't get kicked out of the country or not be allowed to enter. Alex also told me that in a mirror. I really want to do it, but I can't. It's a bad idea. So, yeah, so the name is after the bicycles. Penny Farthing is from then. And now we can get into the whole timeline of these bicycles and why they exist, which

is a mega takeaway number one. The Penny Farthing bicycle was shockingly dangerous and surprisingly practical. The dangerous part is not shocking to me, just looking at it. It's like even more dangerous than I thought. We don't have death figures, but you could really, really, really easily die on these. And then also they use them for still a good reason. Could it like bisect a person just like as they're riding? Like, what do you mean more dangerous?

Cause like, or more than you would expect. Cause like, I just imagine, the danger I imagine is there's a person on a very tall bike and they fall over and they die cause they fall from a great height on a thing that is moving. Yeah, it's like that and less safe than you'd think. Okay. It's already dangerous, but more dangerous than the previous bicycles.

For 15 years, they're like, well, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? Yeah. And key sources here include a reference text called Bicycle Design and Illustrated History from MIT Press, co-written by author Tony Hadland and physics professor Hans Erhard Lessing, and also using museum resources from the Smithsonian and the London Science Museum, and an NPR interview with Will Quinn, professor of finance at Queen's University, Belfast. That's from The Indicator by Planet Money, Patty Hirsch and Stacey Vanek-Smith. I was just in Belfast. That's from the indicator by Planet Money, Patty Hirsch and Stacy Vanick Smith.

I was just in Belfast. You were? Yeah, we haven't talked about that. I knew you were going. Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. Were they still building the Titanic or are they done? Did they finish? I got, buddy. I'm so excited to write it. I'll talk to you. Listen, buddy, I'll talk to you about it after the show. Just prepare yourself. I did go to the Titanic. I did go to the Titanic Museum, actually. One of the best museums I've ever been to. Very, very good.

Yeah. And so there was an era of bicycles before the penny farthing, but it's not very long and it's credited to a European Baron who started it. Right? Real Baron. Okay. We're in Baron territory. Yeah. And he was a Baron in the Duchy of Baden, which was a German speaking pre-unification of Germany place. No giggling at the Germans.

Hey now. Hey now. No, Alex. Giggle away. They're silly. I'm giggling at the fact that it's a dutchie named Bottom. Oh, Baden. B-A-D-E-N. Oh, I thought you said Bottom. Sorry, my mind is in the gutter. If I was in Victorian periods,

I wouldn't do well because I'm always thinking about bottoms. I mean, the dutchie of Bottom would be the best-selling Victorian eratica series. It would be. You've returned and here are the bottoms. It would be. Yes. Lady Peaches of the Duchy of Badham. So Baden, okay, the Duchy of Baden.

We've got a baron from the Duchy of Baden. And what's he doing? What's he up to? What's his thing? His name is Karl von Dreis. And Karl von Dreis in the 1810s developed what he called the Fahrmaschinen. The German translates to something like driving machine or walking machine. And there were basically two main versions. One was a four-wheeled cart with

a set of pedals in it, so a human could sit in the cart and propel the cart by pedaling. And then the other version had two wheels. It's often retroactively called the walking bicycle. Hmm. Why is it called a walking bicycle? I love this weird machine because it's even more of a weird throwback than the Penny Farthing. It's some of the exact things we know from bicycles, like basically the same frame and handles and basically the same two wheels, one front, one back, but like no other machine parts.

Whoa. There's no pedals, there's no chains, there's no gears. The wheels are wood, there's no rubber, there's no tire. And you power it by just resting your middle on the frame and pushing forward on the ground with your feet. Like almost like a skateboarder getting started, but all the time. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. It's just like a sawhorse you're resting on with wheels, you know? I see.

I see. So there's two... How many wheels are there? Two? Four? Just two. I'm excited to link pictures because it is the shape of what I think is a bicycle, almost exactly.

But it's almost not a machine. It's just wheels on a frame. And that's it. I'm trying to imagine like going, doing this on one of these without immediately falling down. And I can't. Yeah, it almost helps that your feet are touching the ground kind of all the time if you want to. So are you just like scoot, stop, scoot, stop? How does that even? It apparently works better than I would think, because like Hadland and Lessing's book, they cite accounts from the time.

Apparently you could move pretty fast on this. People reached speeds of eight miles per hour, which is much faster than walking. Like it's actually... True. If you don't have cars and stuff, it's like, whoa, amazing. And also, Dries was an expert at riding his invention. He could glide a full 60 feet or more than 18 meters before touching the ground again. He would build up ahead of speed and then just coast and balance for a long time.

Okay. So what is he? Okay. Hang on. So, okay. What I'm looking at is like a wooden frame and two wheels and a guy with like, I must say, a very well-toned butt. Sort of like... ...straddling it, but I still... So he's like walking...

Yeah, they called it like a walking machine, and we call it a walking bicycle now. It's like, even though it's shaped a lot like a bicycle, it's not the same mechanical goal quite. Like you're not pedaling anything. The machine's just kind of almost like a cane or something under you. Like it's just lifting.

It's just like a thing you can rest on while you do this thing. Where do your legs go when you want to coast? You just like... You just lift. Like bend your knees and lift like a little baby or something. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. And I'm glad we invented bicycles with the pedals and stuff. And I agree that this machine seems kind of bad. Yeah. And one of the biggest reasons it got invented at all is that it was an emergency measure. What? Excuse me? Yeah, this is, it's so weird.

It's a mini takeaway number two. The spark for the first ever bicycles was an apocalyptic volcanic eruption. Okay. It's that year without a summer volcano that we talked about on the CIF about Frankenstein and other things. Oh yeah. A volcano basically blotted out the sun for the world in like 1815 into 1816. It's called Mount Tambora.

And so there was basically a huge global winter for a while, right? Yeah. And this came on top of bad harvests in Europe in 1812, 13, 14, and 15. Europe locally had bad harvests. And then in 1816, there was a freeze in the middle of summer and there were no crops more or less. And so everybody starts starving, right? They're like, oh, this is tough. Okay. Yeah.

And one thing people said is, hey, I like having horses, but horses also eat. Right. And so what if we could build contraptions that do what horses do, and then I don't have to feed my horse, maybe I even eat my horse, and then I stay alive, you know? Yeah, horses are made out of meat, which is something you do realize

when you have no other food, and you keep feeding your horses apples, and you're like, wait a minute, wait a minute, you. Wait, I'm hungry, hold minute. Wait, I'm hungry. Hold on. Wait, I'm hungry. Okay, I understand. So it was sort of, they were frantically scrambling to replace horses with something that doesn't need to eat delicious apples and something that is not made out of meat. Yeah. And so like von Dreiss has these two ideas specifically to replace the functions of horses. He says, a four-wheeled cart that's powered by a person pedaling inside of it,

you don't need a horse in front of you. Amazing. And then his kind of second idea is, what about a weird two-wheeled frame that kind of replaces riding a horsey from place to place? You know? That was the spark. It was this horrible situation. that kind of replaces riding a horsey from place to place. That was the spark, was this horrible situation. Well, yeah, okay. Now I understand why this would get rushed out because they were really scrambling. So this awkward sort of vehicle kind of makes sense, I guess. It's more or less a horse if you remove two of its legs, turn it into wood, and make it so that you actually do have to still walk.

Yes. Yeah. It's like, I kept thinking of Tom Hanks in Castaway when he talks to a volleyball because that's what he's got. These guys started building sort of horses out of the stuff around them because they were tired and hungry and it was winter in July and they were like, I don't know, man. Yeah. I mean, it's honestly of like, I think about the innovations that I came up with during

the pandemic and they weren't very good either, right? I don't need to actually close this bread bag with a twisty tie. I can just fold it into a ball. Right. Efficiency. Yeah. Efficiency. Weird little meal ideas and stuff. Yeah. Pass it. It's good. I could boil some peanuts. Who's to stop me? Who's to stop me? I hate boiled peanuts so much. Sorry, that just really hit a nerve weirdly. Anyway. Yeah.

He got real serious, folks. It was not joking. Really can't stand them. Yeah. And so people built these machines. Baron von Dreis is like, look at my fa machine that I built, amazing. And people were enthusiastic about them in the emergency context.

And then bicycle development kind of stopped after there were harvests again, because people were like, that's that thing from the volcano time. It's just for them. Obviously, I have horses again now. It was great. Yeah. Right. And so people did not really innovate the engineering of this much for a while. But people also said, what about just for pure fun and entertainment, do we keep doing

human-powered wheeled machines like this? And so people developed three-wheeled or four-wheeled pleasure tricycles, quad cycles, where you sit in a chair and just adventure. A lot of those two-wheeled walking machines, they get called velocipedes. They also get called bone shakers. Bone shakers? Because they're really bumpy rides. There's not air-filled tires and stuff.

Yeah, okay. So cobblestones, because I live in a city that actually still has legit cobblestones, cause I live in a city that actually still has legit cobblestones around. Cobblestones plus a bicycle that does not have suspension is a really bad time for the Tushy. I did go on a stretch of road that did feel like my bones were shaking.

I actually, this was also when I was in Buffalo, I rented a bike and there's not that much in terms also when I was in Buffalo, I rented a bike and there aren't, there's not that much in terms of cobblestones in Buffalo, but there was like one area where there were like decorative cobblestones and my bike had no suspension and I tried to like go on that and it really did feel like all my bones were like jiggling around in my flesh. Not a good feeling. Terrible. Anyways, I love suspension. I love protecting my butt. And air-filled tires come along in like the 1890s, late 1880s, and so these people were also not cushioned by that either.

It was horrible. Yeah, it was a rough time for the butt. And then two other things about these machines were that they were open to female riders because there's not really like gears and mechanical stuff under you. So you could just pile your dress over the middle of the frame and look pretty similar to yourself just walking. So it was like considered fine for ladies to be on them in European society. For the walking bicycle.

Yeah, yeah. Also people did develop a bicycle where there are pedals and you turn the front axle of just the front wheel. That was kind of the next step of developing this. They said, hey, the pedals are just attached to the front wheel. When you turn the pedals, that turns the wheel. This is a new thing. Right. And so the initial versions had matching same size wheels because it's

from this era where the rider's feet touch the ground or they're just starting to have pedals. And then the last step to create Penny Farthings was making the front wheel a lot bigger. I see. Wait, but no, we skipped a step because so we have the step where we have the pedals. Did Penny Farthings not have gears at all? They did not. And that explains their whole deal. Because like, mini takeaway number three inside this mega takeaway. Penny Farthings have one giant wheel because that was the way to add more power before chains and gears. Oh, okay. Okay. So without like, when you don't have a chain and you're pedaling, how do you pedal the wheel? That may sound like a dumb question,

but I'm trying to think of like, what is happening when you're pedaling. Yeah, right. Like with the benefit of being in the future, we know that chains and gears can move the whole system and it also like multiplies the power of your pedaling. Before that, people just pedals and the rods the pedals are on directly attached to the axle of the wheel. So like you're just turn directly turning the wheel like a hand crank or something. I see that seems hard to do. Yeah. When you're on that system

with no chains and gears, one turn of the pedals only turns the wheel the one time. Right. Because it's just all one object. It's just so there's no like laborious. There's very little mechanical advantage going on. Yeah. And so my my sources describe the big penny farthing wheel that's so funny as having a gearing effect, is the phrase. Right. Because if you only get one wheel turn from one pedal rotation, you can get more power by making the wheel a lot bigger. Yeah. Because you imagine like the center of say a turning wheel, right?

Like the center like turns faster than the outside. So the bigger the wheel, the more you're kind of going to get an advantage in terms of like the the amount of distance that you cover by a single turn of the inner wheel. Exactly. And so that is why this is so brief. People have this idea after less powerful bicycles, but before chains and gears.

And so for that one window of time, this is how we make bicycles faster is the silliest looking design. That's wild because I remember when I was a kid and I would try to draw a bicycle, like a little kid, and you try to draw a bicycle and you're like, wait a minute, where did the, like the pedals, I know kind of go in the middle,

but how do they turn the wheels from them? Cause you know, too young to understand chains yet. So it's like, but how do they turn the wheels from them? Because, you know, too young to understand chains yet. So it's like, well, do I connect the pedals to like the wheels? But that doesn't make any sense. And just the confusion over that. And yeah, just the fact that we did have bicycles without the chains where it's just like, well, we got to make the wheel really big, because otherwise we're not really getting anywhere. Yeah. And they were correct. It's a faster bike. And then they also made it so much more dangerous with the process because the entire shape of bikes changes to the point where they just start making the back wheel a lot smaller. They also add a small step to the back of the frame.

And that picture you sent me, I think the guy has one. You had that little step, so when you start pushing the bicycle, you can get up onto the step, which is almost like the pegs on the back of a bike that a kid wants a second kid on, and then vault yourself straight onto the seat. While it's kind of in motion was how

people started riding this. Penny Farthings just got bigger and bigger as people wanted more power. The London Science Museum says a lot of riders' butts, the seat, were more than 1.5 meters above the ground. That's almost five feet above the ground. That's pretty tall. That's a bone breaker right there. That's pretty tall. That's a bone breaker right there. That's an ankle twister. And like between the height and also your front wheel being like front wheel drive and front wheel brakes, people constantly threw themselves over the front wheel and downward

head first. Oh, good. And let me guess. Like head first. Oh, good. And let me guess. Like head first. They had Victorian era helmets with MIPS system to protect them from concussions, right? Even better, no helmet. And... Ah, okay. Better, yes. And even that made a little logical sense because they didn't have kinds of helmet technology that cushion your head and protect the brain. Apparently professional riders had what I think of as an

old timey American football helmet, like just some leather and rubber to stop scrapes. But if they'd worn a helmet, they still would have messed up their brains. So. That brain is going to go crashing into that skull pretty quickly. Yeah. Yeah. We got the good kinds starting around the 1970s is when inventors came up with it. Yes. And so these helmetless doomed people, this happened so often, there were several nicknames for it. They called it doing a header. They called it doing a cropper. They also called it an imperial crowner, which is the most Victorian name I can imagine. Why? Why an imperial? I get crowner is like the crown of the head. So like similar to a header, but why Imperial? I think it's just because this was such a British bike. They were really popular in France,

Britain, and the US, or the countries that led the way. And Britain used to be an empire. Yeah, yeah, they like to do that. Not anymore, guys. Suck it. Also see you on Sunday. But yeah, cool. Also see you on Sunday. Love you. And yeah, and so the danger was like so obvious. There were also a lot more attempts to mitigate it than we know about. A lot of manufacturers developed a set of handlebars that easily release from the frame.

And they were called anti-cropping handlebars to prevent a cropper. How does that work? We got to explain that because how does the handlebars releasing from the frame prevent you from getting thrown off the frame? Yeah, the idea was you do get thrown off, but if the handlebars stay attached, when your body moves forward, you'll probably move your head downward. Oh, you flip. And flip.

I see, okay. And so the goal was that you would just go flying off of it still upright and not land on your head. Okay, so you crush your legs, not your head. Smart. Good. Honestly, you can crush a leg. Listen, you can crush a leg and unless you're a horse, you might live. Oh, that's a big difference between us and the horses. Yeah. And also riders realize that once the bike was coasting and they didn't need to keep pedaling, then they could lift their legs up and over the handlebars.

And so if they were riding in that position, they would also fly off without going headfirst and crush their legs. There's so many strategies for when you will inevitably fly off of the bike. Like, well, given we will fly off of this terrible machine, let's make it so that we land on our feet and merely crush our ankles versus our very tender and delicate cerebellums. Right, yeah. And the way we solved it was gears and chains for bicycles, which means you no longer need a big front wheel.

You make it the shape we're used to today. One other idea that came along at that same time was to make the back wheel the big wheel and do back wheel drive. And that would have kind of mitigated this too. How does that mitigate things? Cause if you're, if the back wheel is big, don't you still just have the same problem with you? If you break suddenly you just fall down onto the smaller wheel. Yeah. So it's still pretty dangerous, but I'll link the Smithsonian. The H.B. Smith company developed what they called the Star Pony Bicycle,

which was this back wheel idea, but they came up with it in 1885, which is right when gears and chains and safety bicycles also came out. I would have called it a finny parthing. And then you fly off to your death. parthing. And then you fly off to your death. The safety bicycle, which we just think of as our bicycle today, pretty much, it massively increased bicycle sales because people knew how horrible and dangerous these penny farthings were.

And they just bought them because at the same time they really were a faster and more powerful bike. Like, it's like what it turns out the Cybertruck is driving. It's really powerful if you want that. Yeah. And theoretically, in Minecraft, they seem very dangerous. My lawyers agree. The next bike after Penny Farthings, apparently they spiked bike sales so much that in the 1890s there was a bubble of British bicycle company stocks getting way overvalued and

then crashing because people were so excited about a safer bike and not the Penny Farthing. They were like, oh, thank God, we'll die less. I mean, the use of gears seems... I mean, both seem somewhat obvious once you actually start creating gears, but also you have to first understand gears, which seems like a big step. Like what was the gap between us inventing gears and then creating a bike that had gears? It was not a lot of time and because gears existed in machines and stuff, but it seems like it was either manufacturers or people just didn't bother to apply it to bicycles. People thought they're not essential.

It's just for fun. And so why bother making it high tech? But then they did and people were thrilled. They were like, thank God. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, dying less does seem like something important if you're just trying to have a pleasant afternoon.

Exactly. And folks, that's a whole bunch of takeaways and numbers. We are going to take a quick spin around the pleasant afternoon and then come back with Penny Fire Things Changing the World. Folks, as you know, this podcast exists because of direct support from listeners. There's a group of people who are Maximum Fund members at MaximumFun.org slash join, and they make this entire thing something you listen to. If you want to take pride in this podcast existing, if you want to be part of that good

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That's cool, too. Subscribe to TV Chef Fantasy League on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back and we're back with one last takeaway for the main show. Takeaway number four. In a roundabout way, the end of Penny Farthing Bicycles was a boost to women's liberation. Interesting. Okay, let me see if I can guess why, because this seems very out of pocket. So was it that ladies could potentially ride the safety bicycle better than the penny farthing,

given that going up on a penny farthing in all those skirts and bustles and bloomers, et cetera, et cetera, is like a death sentence versus getting on a safety bike in all your skirts and bloomers and garters, et cetera, is not a death sentence. And therefore, women would have more mobility and ability to say, go to the polls or to a job. That's a lot of it. And it also turns out bloomers were a win for women. We think of them as old timey, but they were more easy to ride in if you didn't also have all the

hoop skirts and stuff on top of it. Right. So bloomers were basically like underpants that go under your skirt, but they are pants at least. Yeah, one of the sources here is author Sue Macy, who wrote the book Wheels of Change about all this, and she uses the term bifurcated garments. Bifurcated garments. That's when I'm going to start calling pants. Hey, honey, you seen my bifurcated garments? Right, it's like everything except dresses and kilts, basically, but it's stuff that just doesn't prevent you

from riding a bicycle, and that included bloomers, yeah. Nice, so they would still have the skirt over the bloomers, but at least given that they had the bloomers that allowed leg movement better. Yeah, because this, I said it's a roundabout way because like a lot of standard women's clothing at the end of the 1800s still didn't really allow you to ride a bicycle. But the rise of penny farthings pushed ladies to say, hey, I ought to be able to ride a bicycle and dress how I want to.

Scandalous. And people freaked out, yeah. Looking back at the bicycle history we talked about, if you just boil it down into three eras, you have the walking machine with no parts that does allow a lady in a dress to ride because there's so little to it and you're basically just walking. And then the second thing is penny farthings. The third thing is more or less modern bicycles. When penny farthings come along due to the danger of it

and due to the like scale of it and the moving parts, a lady in ladies clothing of the 1880s can't get on it. And so you have a thing where basically the bicycle has been taken away from women. Yeah. And if you're wondering, well, why didn't ladies just start wearing bike shorts or pants? You know, Victorians is the answer. They could fully end up divorced and homeless and die or something. Committed to an asylum, to an institution. That was a big change.

The previous models of walking machines and velocipeds really did cater to women. There was even a bone shaker designed by a British minister in 1870 that allowed the rider to sit side saddle and both of the pedals were on one side of the wheel. Like, they really did cater to women until Penny Farthings. Yeah. I mean, it was not an era where there would be any concern about like, oh, we're excluding the ladies. Like, that was probably high fives all around for the guys.

Like, all right, chicks can't ride this bike. Sweet. Right. And they it seems like they only didn't exclude women for part of it because they didn't see bicycles as important. Right. They were like oh this is sort of a random pleasure craft like a skateboard or something and so they can have it sure it's a toy. Once something is considered important, they like try to take it away. Like oh, computer programming that used to be for women? No, not anymore. Now we think it's important. And so women say, hey, I miss the bicycle.

Like I already lack a lot of rights. This is one of the few ways I've ever had less rights. How do I change that? And so they said, hey, there's this undergarment from the 1850s called the Bloomer that kind of came and went, we're bringing it back because it's bifurcated and it lets me get on a bicycle. And then some other women just put trousers on because you can do that. And there's no reason other than clothes that women couldn't ride penny farthings. Some of them start doing that in a very socially transgressive way that makes everybody mad. Well, you see, the bicycle will cause the

womb to wander right out of the lady. It'll just like, that womb will grow legs and walk right out, right out the butt. That's how it works. And then it walks down to the pub, has a Guinness, and alcohol is good for babies. So that part's good. That's fine. That part's good. A Guinness is a full meal for a toddler. It makes them more powerful. Yeah, yeah. It is funny because I would think, you know, look, I don't want to like, I don't want to get too deep into it because, you know, this is a family friendly podcast and also it's uncomfortable to talk about, but I would think the male anatomy would be, you know, at least, you know, at least the sort of like, well,

let's just say that people's with a set of testes I would assume might struggle more on a bicycle than those without testes. Yeah, I respect bicycles and basically never ride them because I don't like how it feels on my butt in other areas. It's not good. I'd rather just run or walk or drive a car. They do have bike pants that are padded, especially for people with anatomy that may, how can

I phrase this delicately, anatomy that may not be designed for the sort of sturdiness of a bicycle seat. Sure. Yeah, the hardest seat ever created. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Right, yes. So it's wild to me that back in the day, it was like, no, no, you see, for women, actually, it's bad for your lady parts because, well, you see, it's going to give you impure thoughts and turn you into a harlot probably. The thing is, I think they were so buttoned up, they didn't even address the groin. They warned about like headaches and heart palpitations and the silliest claim was a

condition called bicycle face. Bicycle face? Which is basically that your face will get stuck that way from how it was on the bicycle. Stuck what way? What way would it get stuck? Flush skin, pale skin, dark shadows under the eyes, and potentially like the excitement expression. Oh no, a woman looking excited. Everyone's worst nightmare. Terrifying. Terrifying. Yeah, really bad. I like how it's like you may get heart palpitations and women

literally had to go through unmedicated birth at this time. And it's like, well, you may find your heart racing a tad when you're on the bicycle? Yeah, that was the take. And so, great. Cool. And so women said, let me ride a bicycle. It's fun. God. They just like insisted on, let me wear the clothes that allow a human body to do this. And along the way women also traveled on bicycles. They gathered without a man necessarily supervising it, thanks to bicycles. Mass communication was less powerful than it is today. Bicycles let you go and meet up across miles. Many women's rights activists fully described bicycles as

facilitating the entire cause. Susan B. Anthony said, quote, let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world, end quote. There were also women's rights activists who said, quote, woman is riding to suffrage on the bicycle. That's a publication credited to Anthony into Elizabeth Cady Stanton. They got these safety bikes going, especially by the 1890s or so, and in the UK and the US, women's suffrage had to overcome a lot and a lot of violence, but it happened within a few decades. And it's at least partly because of bicycles. And also because we had the penny far than come along and push women to insist

on the right to bicycle. Also bicycles do make you work out your glutes and your hammies and that is very good for crushing the patriarchy under your heels. It really does make sense though, right? Some form of enjoyment or entertainment, if you are being excluded from that for wardrobe mechanical reasons, that's a big deal in terms of your ability to partake in public life. It is. And also, millions of men started commuting to work on penny fire things and then safety

bicycles. So many men got into this that women also said, hey, if everybody can do this, I can do this. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that was a sea change and penny-fire things accidentally helped.

Hey, you know what? It was a terrible design for a bicycle, but maybe not so terrible for society. And in the bonus, we'll talk about people going really fast and far on them. So that's cool. Whoa. Which is definitely something we recommend you try at home, for sure. Right? Right, Alex? Oh no. Oh, no.

Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Mega takeaway number one, the Penny Farthing bicycle was shockingly dangerous and shockingly practical. Mini takeaway number two, the spark for the first ever bicycles was an apocalyptic volcanic eruption. Takeaway number three, Penny farthings have one giant wheel because that makes the bike faster and more powerful. Takeaway number four, in a roundabout way the end of penny farthing bicycles was a boost to women's liberation. And then so many stats and numbers about everything from the

Victorian era to the old British coins that gave us the name Penny Farthing, to the changes in society and the world that made this bike come and go. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the guy who wrote a penny farthing around the world. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show

for a library of more than 17 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include a lot of books, in particular Bicycle Design and Illustrated History, co-written by Toni Hadland and Hans Erhard Lessing from MIT Press. Also the book Wheels of Change, How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom with a Few Flat Tires Along the Way by Sue Macy from National Geographic.

And then lots of digital resources and expertise from NPR, from Professor Will Quinn of Queens University Belfast, from Box.com, from the New York Times, and more. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also, KD taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF

Discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 62 that's about Halloween stores, which I hope fits the beginning of fall in some places in the Northern Hemisphere. Also, the episode gets into

amazing stuff like the role of Halloween parties and parades in gay rights in the United States. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken, Un-Shavin by the Boodos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. And special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra extra special thanks go to our members. Thank you to all our listeners. And I'm thrilled to say that we will be back next week, next Monday with more Secretly

Incredibly Fascinating. I hope some of you will join us on Sunday. So we'll be back soon, we'll be back sooner if you check out that live show. Either way, how about that, and talk to you then. The end.