Lallement's machine.
Beck's machine.
shaker—that clamorous, rattling, wobbling two-wheeled truck which astonished world in the sixties. Pierre Lallement, a French mechanic, is considered to be the inventor of this, and, indeed, until the discovery of Dalzell's machine, was given the credit of inventing the balanced and crank-driven bicycle altogether. Lallement was in the employ of M. Michaux, who made three-wheeled velocipedes and perambulators in Paris. Somewhere before 1864 the design of the boneshaker sprang into being in the brain of the ingenious Lallement, and the concrete result in solid wood and iron is familiar to most of us. There is another claim to having invented and ridden the cranked bicycle about this time on behalf of an Englishman named Phillips, but the evidence is weaker than that supporting the pretension of Lallement, of whose first dozen machines two were bought by residents in Ireland. Lallement was able to take out a patent for some part of his machine in America, and his drawing then presented we reproduce. The pedals, it will be seen, are weighted, to keep them right side up. One of these machines was shown at the Paris Exhibition of 1865, and in 1869 their use was taught at Spencer's Gymnasium, in Goswell-road, London, Charles Dickens being for a short time one of Spencer's pupils. English makers at once sprang up, and Beck, Stanley, Parfrey, Keen, and the Coventry Machinists' Company were some of the first. The machine made by Beck in 1870, which we illustrate, was greatly improved, and considered at the time to represent the high-water mark of cycular invention. It was one of the first two or three bicycles fitted with india-rubber tyres, had an improved brake (worked by a string) and leg rest, and weighed—what do you think? One hundred and fifty pounds!
Gleason's machine.
Harking back a little, however, we find a delightful invention in America, 1868. To describe it would be an impossibility, wherefore we reproduce the inventor, Gleason's, drawing. Here is an independent cyclist who carries with him not only his machine, but the road to ride on. Here is Mr. Gleason's own description:—
"The object of this invention is to obtain locomotion by the direct application of the weight of the operator. An endless track, composed of the hinged parts C, C, C, as shown, loosely close each of the two wheels on a side, and are kept
