A motorcycle is a two or three-wheeled motor vehicle steered by a handlebar from a saddle-style seat.
Gottlieb Wilhelm Daimler was a German engineer, industrial designer and industrialist born in Schorndorf, in what is now Germany. He was a pioneer of internal-combustion engines and automobile development. He invented the high-speed liquid petroleum-fueled engine.
A velocipede is a human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels. The most common type of velocipede today is the bicycle.
Vehicles that have two wheels and require balancing by the rider date back to the early 19th century. The first means of transport making use of two wheels arranged consecutively, and thus the archetype of the bicycle, was the German draisine dating back to 1817. The term bicycle was coined in France in the 1860s, and the descriptive title "penny farthing", used to describe an "ordinary bicycle", is a 19th-century term.
The Otto engine is a large stationary single-cylinder internal combustion four-stroke engine, designed by the German Nicolaus Otto. It was a low-RPM machine, and only fired every other stroke due to the Otto cycle, also designed by Otto.
A motorcycle engine is an engine that powers a motorcycle. Motorcycle engines are typically two-stroke or four-stroke internal combustion engines, but other engine types, such as Wankels and electric motors, have been used.
A motorized bicycle is a bicycle with an attached motor or engine and transmission used either to power the vehicle unassisted, or to assist with pedalling. Since it sometimes retains both pedals and a discrete connected drive for rider-powered propulsion, the motorized bicycle is in technical terms a true bicycle, albeit a power-assisted one. Typically they are incapable of speeds above 52 km/h (32 mph); however, in recent years larger motors have been built, allowing bikes to reach speeds of upwards of 72 km/h.
This timeline of motorized bicycle history is a summary of the major events in the development and use of motorized bicycles and tricycles, which are defined as pedal cycles with motor assistance but which can be powered by pedals alone.
Pierre Michaux was a blacksmith who furnished parts for the carriage trade in Paris during the 1850s and 1860s. He may have become the inventor of the bicycle when he added pedals to a draisine to form the Michaudine velocipede, the forerunner of the modern bicycle. However, historic sources reveal other possible claimants, such as his son Ernest Michaux and Pierre Lallement.
The history of the motorcycle begins in the second half of the 19th century. Motorcycles are descended from the "safety bicycle," a bicycle with front and rear wheels of the same size and a pedal crank mechanism to drive the rear wheel. Despite some early landmarks in its development, the motorcycle lacks a rigid pedigree that can be traced back to a single idea or machine. Instead, the idea seems to have occurred to numerous engineers and inventors around Europe at around the same time.
The history of steam road vehicles comprises the development of vehicles powered by a steam engine for use on land and independent of rails, whether for conventional road use, such as the steam car and steam waggon, or for agricultural or heavy haulage work, such as the traction engine.
Internal combustion engines date back to between the 10th and 13th centuries, when the first rocket engines were invented in China. Following the first commercial steam engine by Thomas Savery in 1698, various efforts were made during the 18th century to develop equivalent internal combustion engines. In 1791, the English inventor John Barber patented a gas turbine. In 1794, Thomas Mead patented a gas engine. Also in 1794, Robert Street patented an internal-combustion engine, which was also the first to use liquid fuel (petroleum) and built an engine around that time. In 1798, John Stevens designed the first American internal combustion engine. In 1807, French engineers Nicéphore and Claude Niépce ran a prototype internal combustion engine, using controlled dust explosions, the Pyréolophore. This engine powered a boat on the river in France. The same year, the Swiss engineer François Isaac de Rivaz built and patented a hydrogen and oxygen-powered internal-combustion engine. Fitted to a crude four-wheeled wagon, François Isaac de Rivaz first drove it 100 metres in 1813, thus making history as the first car-like vehicle known to have been powered by an internal-combustion engine.
Louis-Guillaume Perreaux was a French inventor and engineer who submitted one of the first patents for a working motorcycle in 1869.
The Roper steam velocipede was a steam-powered velocipede built by inventor Sylvester H. Roper of Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts, United States sometime from 1867 to 1869. It is one of three machines which have been called the first motorcycle, along with the Michaux-Perreaux steam velocipede, also dated 1867–1869, and the 1885 Daimler Reitwagen. Historians disagree over whether the Roper or the Michaux-Perreaux came first. Though the Reitwagen came many years later than the two steam cycles, it is often labeled as the "first motorcycle" because there is doubt by some experts whether a steam cycle should meet the definition of a motorcycle.
Sylvester Howard Roper was an American inventor and a pioneering builder of early automobiles and motorcycles from Boston, Massachusetts. In 1863 he built a steam carriage, one of the earliest automobiles. The Roper steam velocipede of 1867–1869 may have been the first motorcycle, for which he was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2002. He is also the inventor of the shotgun choke and a revolver repeating shotgun.
The Daimler Reitwagen or Einspur was a motor vehicle made by Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach in 1885. It is widely recognized as the first motorcycle. Daimler is often called "the father of the motorcycle" for this invention. Even when the steam powered two-wheelers that preceded the Reitwagen, the Michaux-Perreaux and Roper of 1867–1869, and the 1884 Copeland, are considered motorcycles, it remains nonetheless the first gasoline internal combustion motorcycle, and the forerunner of all vehicles, land, sea and air, that use its overwhelmingly popular engine type.
A twistgrip is a handle that can be twisted to operate a control. It is commonly found as a motorcycle's right handlebar grip to control the throttle, but is sometimes found elsewhere, such as on a bicycle as a gearshift, and in helicopters.
The Copeland steam bicycle was a steam powered, two-wheeled motor vehicle made by Lucius Copeland in 1881 and is sometimes classed as an early motorcycle.
