Eugène Meyer was a French mechanic credited with making important contributions to the development of the

bicycle A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. Bic ...

. He received a French patent for

wire wheel Wire wheels, wire-spoked wheels, tension-spoked wheels, or "suspension" wheels are wheels whose rims connect to their hubs by wire spokes. Although these wires are generally stiffer than a typical wire rope, they function mechanically the sam ...

s in 1868 and is now believed to be the person primarily responsible for making the

penny-farthing The penny-farthing, also known as a high wheel, high wheeler or ordinary, is an early type of bicycle. It was popular in the 1870s and 1880s, with its large front wheel providing high speeds (owing to its travelling a large distance for every r ...

feasible and widely known.

Biography

Meyer was born in

Alsace Alsace (, ; ; Low Alemannic German/ gsw-FR, Elsàss ; german: Elsass ; la, Alsatia) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2020, it had ...

and lived in Paris. He raced his own bicycles in order to promote them and placed 10th in the 1869 Paris-Rouen race. James Moore rode a Meyer high wheeler at the Midland Counties Championship in

Wolverhampton Wolverhampton () is a city, metropolitan borough and administrative centre in the West Midlands, England. The population size has increased by 5.7%, from around 249,500 in 2011 to 263,700 in 2021. People from the city are called "Wulfrunian ...

in August 1870, and thereby introduced the design to England. Meyer died in Brunoy en Essonne at the age of 63.

References

External links

Review of ''Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History'' with great image of "Eugène Meyer’s 1869 bicycle with tension spoking" "Courtesy of Keizo Kobayashi via MIT Press"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Meyer, Eugene People from Alsace 19th-century French inventors Cycle designers Year of birth missing Year of death missing