Save our Wealth, Cycle to Your Health! A Bicycle Trip to Target 1.5º Centigrade

1.5º centigrade — to maintain the average temperature rise within the limits of 1.5º above the pre-industrial era temperature is the target world nations agreed upon at the Paris summit in 2015.

- J. PRASANT

Two nations that lead in this direction through individual mobility choices of their citizens are the Netherlands and Denmark in terms of percentage of urban trips, whereas China and Japan lead in terms of total trips. It is said to be a smart urban policy for developing countries like India and China, where much of the infrastructure is yet to be developed, to build cities for cycling that would lead to cleaner air and safer streets (The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, New York).

Bicycle history 

Though there are conjectures and stories tracing the initial ideation of the bicycle to Leonardo Da Vinci or his followers, recorded history finds a patented machine that can truly be claimed to be a forerunner of the present-day bicycle in the Laufmaschine (running machine) of 1817, patented in 1818. It was designed by Baron Karl von Drais, a civil servant of Baden in Germany, after whom it was also called Draisine. It is assumed that in England the starvation death of horses due to crop failure in 1816 prompted him to find a mobility substitute for horses. It had a wooden structure and iron wheels and moved by foot-pushing. By 1819, it had become the craze of London with a more ergonomic design. In 1853, Philip Moritz Fischer of Schweinfurt, Bavaria, introduced a pedal to his bicycle. However, it was Pierre Lallemont who holds a patent for the first pedalled bicycle in 1863 in the U.S. The late 1860s saw the addition of solid-rubber tyres, which gradually changed its status as ‘boneshaker’. Further adaptations and mass production in England and New England led to the bicycle becoming a popular machine, but still affordable only to the upper class. The other major developments on the bicycle were the introduction of a rear wheel chain drive in the 1880s and pneumatic tyres (John Dunlop) in 1888.