It's All About the Bike by Robert Penn Page B

Journal of Velocipeding, Athletics, and Aerostatics,
carried a report by John Mayall, later a great advocate for cycling:
    I shall never forget our astonishment at the sight of Mr. Turner whirling himself round the room, sitting on a bar above a pair of wheels in a line that ought, as we innocently supposed, to fall down immediately . . . I turned to Mr. Spencer and exclaimed, ‘by Jove, Charley, there’s a balance!’
    Later the same year, an article in the periodical
Scientific American
breathlessly concluded: ‘That a velocipede should maintain an upright position is one of the most surprising feats of practical mechanics.’
    In April 1869, the Pearsall brothers opened their ‘Grand Velocipede Academy or Gymnaclidium’ on Broadway, New York. Hundreds of influential citizens attended to try out the new craze. The famous acrobatic brothers, the Hanlons, also opened a school. Some ‘velocinasiums’ advertised women-only classes, and hired female instructors. Books of riding instructions were published. Entrepreneurs quickly spread the craze for riding ‘academies’ or ‘rinks’ across the country: by late spring, Boston had twenty schools, most major cities had at least a dozen and every small town had one.
    In 1869 an American journalist summed up the reasons these schools were so popular:
    Velocipedes are pretty things to look upon as they whirl along so swiftly and gracefully, operated by some practiced hand. But did you ever try to ride one? It seems an easy thing to sit on the little carpeted seat, put your feet upon the treadles, and astonish everybody by your speed; butjust try it! And don’t invite your lady friends to witness that first performance either. You mount the machine with a great deal of dignity and confidence, you see that all is clear, you undertake to place your feet in the proper position, and – the trouble begins. Your first half hour is spent [deciding] which shall be uppermost, yourself or the machine, and the machine exhibits an amount of skill and perseverance that astonishes you.
    When the velocipede evolved into the ‘high-wheeler’ or ‘ordinary’ in 1870 (the nickname ‘penny-farthing’ was only used later), having an instructor was highly advisable. The pedals were still attached to the front wheel, inhibiting the steering, the rider was seated high over the front wheel and there was now a long, long way to fall. Again, a plethora of riding schools sprang up, usually associated with a bicycle manufacturer. When Columbia Bicycles relocated its headquarters in Connecticut, the à
la mode
offices featured, on the fifth floor, ‘the most complete riding school in existence’.
    In 1884, at the age of 48, Mark Twain said, ‘I confessed to age by mounting spectacles for the first time, and in the same hour, I renewed my youth, to outward appearance, by mounting a bicycle for the first time. The spectacles stayed on.’ Twain’s essay,
Taming the Bicycle,
on learning to ride a high-wheeler with a hired instructor or ‘Expert’, illustrates well the perils of the machine:
    He [the Expert] said that the dismounting was perhaps the hardest thing to learn, and so we would leave that to the last. But he was in error there. He found, to his surprise and joy, that all that he needed to do was to get me on to the machine and stand out of the way; I could get off, myself. Although I was wholly inexperienced, I dismounted in the best time on record. He was on that side, shoving up the machine;we all came down with a crash, he at the bottom, I next, and the machine on top.
    After several further attempts – ‘the result as before . . . you don’t get down as you would from a horse, you get down as you would from a house afire’ — Twain did finally mount the machine:
    We got up a handsome speed, and presently traversed a brick, and I went out over the top of the tiller and landed,