Ocio y tiempo libre

In 1812, during the Napoleonic Wars, Europe and New England experienced the first of five bad harvests. The passing armies had raided Germany’s grain stores, and as a result that country suffered particularly badly from the soaring price of corn and oats. In October of 1813, only ten days after Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig, the 28-year-old Baron Karl von Drais, a state-employed forester and former forestry teacher, applied to the Grand Duke of Baden for a “privilege” on a four-wheeled human-powered wagon. (During the short Badenian revolution of 1849, the Baron preferred to be called simply Citizen Karl Drais.) In Baden, which had no patent law at the time, a “privilege” granted the right to become the only seller of an item within the Grand Duchy. Drais, a civil servant not allowed to do any side business, was refused the

“privilege.” In any case, the experts who were called upon (Tulla 1813) doubted the novelty of the idea, citing the garden phaeton at Schwetzingen.

Drais’s Fahrmaschinen

Drais may have seen the servant-powered garden phaeton at Schwetzingen or may have en-countered it while studying technology at the University of Heidelberg (Lessing 2003a, 122).

In an article that appeared three years later in Neues Magazin, he criticized its deficiencies:

“There have been earlier attempts to self-propel a carriage via some machinery. But that ma-chinery was ponderous in surmounting friction, complicated, and therefore never suitable for any noticeably practical use.” He also referred to the bleak situation that prevailed at the time:

“In wartime, when horses and their fodder often become scarce, a small fleet of such wagons at each corps could be important, especially for dispatches over short distances and for car-rying the wounded.” (translated from Drais 1816)

No pictures of Drais’s two Fahrmaschinen (driving machines) exist, but Drais left written descriptions (Lessing 2003a, 117). Fahrmaschine 1, intended to carry as many as five people, had a treadmill fastened to a shaft between its rear wheels. The driver sat, facing backward, on a suspended saddle, and operated the treadmill with his feet. Fahrmaschine 2 had a forged crankshaft between the rear wheels that allowed the driver to be seated facing forward while treading the crankshaft. Fahrmaschine 2 attained a speed of 4 miles per hour. “On arriving at steep hills, or a very bad road,” Drais wrote, “one takes on a horse as an extra team member—

just as wagoners do—by letting down the steering rods . . . to become shafts within which to harness the horse.”

Figure 1.4 Five-year averages of wheat price (Playfair 1822). The true peak occurred in 1817. Drais’s inventions follow the first and the worst crop failures, respectively.

Encouraged by the acclaim of Tsar Alexander I, for whom he had demonstrated Fahrmas-chine 1 in Karlsruhe while the Tsar was visiting there, Drais took FahrmasFahrmas-chine 2 to Vienna in 1814 to demonstrate it during the Congress. The princes who had assembled in Vienna for the purpose of dividing up Europe seem to have shown no interest in Drais’s Fahrmaschine, despite the increased price of oats.

“Difficulties not yet overcome by the inventor,” Drais acknowledged in a handwritten note,

“include becoming very tired on bad roads and in the mountains.” Of course, the treadmill could be made larger for better leverage, but treading the largest possible treadmill would be the same as simply treading on the ground. Having arrived at that depressing conclusion, it seems, Drais decided to try direct propulsion in his next invention: a two-wheeler.

The “year without a summer,” and a breakthrough

The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, a volcano east of Bali, was called “the last big subsis-tence crisis of humanity” by the American historian John Post (1977). Volcanic ash reached the Northern Hemisphere in 1816, the “year without a summer.” Snowstorms and continual thun-derstorms destroyed harvests both in Europe and in New England. There were widespread shortages of food, especially among the lower classes, and corn hastily bought in the Nether-lands or in Russia couldn’t be distributed from Mannheim’s Rhine harbor into the interior be-cause there were no horses left—those that hadn’t been slaughtered had starved. Thus, there was a need for a horseless means of transport (Lessing 2001). We have no statement from Drais on this, but we have circumstantial evidence from his inventions after conspicuous crop failures (see figure 1.4) and from newspaper voices of the period (translated in Hamer 2005).

Two wheels replace four hooves

The earliest mention of public use of Drais’s two-wheeler, initially also called a Fahrmaschine but later called a Laufmaschine (“running machine”), dates to June 12, 1817 (see Drais 1817a)—

not to July, as some period newspapers asserted. In the literature, the year is often reported as 1816, but that appears to be a misinterpretation of Drais’s delayed article on his four-wheeled Fahrmaschine 2 (Drais 1816).

By June of 1817, Drais had been living in the city of Mannheim for six years. His first spin on the two-wheeled Laufmaschine was taken on the best road in the Grand Duchy: the road that went toward the Elector’s summer residence at Schwetzingen. Halfway to Schwetzingen, Drais turned around and rode back home. He traveled 8 miles in slightly less than an hour.

It has been speculated that Drais reduced his four-wheeled Fahrmaschine to the two-wheeled Laufmaschine in order to accommodate it to the narrow forest paths on which the machine was to be used (Dunham 1956, 4). In fact, the only testimony by Drais on how he arrived at the two-wheeler principle can be found in a brief notice he submitted to the weekly Badwochenblatt: “The main idea of the invention has been taken from ice skating.” (translated from Drais 1817a) Later, Drais published several articles on the invention (Drais 1817b,c). His three-page description (1817c) included two plates and was available from booksellers. (For an English translation, see Lessing 1991.) Using brief reports they read in newspapers, or using the engraving that Drais generously mailed to people who expressed interest, craftsmen in many places built their own versions of the Laufmaschine (or Draisine, as the press began to call it).

(The railway draisine got its name because the earliest one was a two-wheeler made to travel Figure 1.5 Reconstructions of Drais’s Fahrmaschine 1 and Fahrmaschine 2 (Lessing 2003a).

on a single rail.) Dresden became a center of draisine production; at least five tradesmen in that city pirated Drais’s invention.

With the help of his father, a learned jurist, Drais again applied for a “privilege,” this time on exclusive use of the machines. (A license badge was nailed to the draisine’s tiller—see figure 1.7.) He obtained a ten-year “privilege” in 1818 thanks to the Grand Duchess Stepha-nie Napoleon. That same year, he obtained a French brevet (patent) for five years; he also obtained a patent of some sort in Prussia. In Bavaria, in Austria, and in the city of Frankfurt, Drais’s applications were declined to protect local pirate builders.

The design of draisines

Draisines were, in many ways, similar to present-day bicycles. Their wooden wheels, held together with iron hoops, were equal in size, each about 27 inches or 675 millimeters in diam-eter. One early draisine, now preserved at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, weighed only 45 pounds; it was made of well-seasoned ash wood. However, the ergonomic characteristics of a draisine differed considerably from those of a present-day bicycle. Balancing was easily mastered only by young people used to skating on ice; indeed, riding a draisine was described as “skating on the road.” The difficulty of balancing ruled out the use of indirect propulsion by means of cranks as in Fahrmaschine 2. To make it easier for the rider to put his feet on the ground, the seat was lower than that of a modern bicycle. Having a draisine made to measure by a local cartwright required getting one’s inseam measured. Resting one’s elbows on the upholstered balancing board relieved strain on the crotch. The tiller, which carried the license badge, was directed with the fingers. Brass bushings around the axles reduced friction and could be oiled through a radial bore in the hub.

The steering mechanism, intended to be self-righting, made use of the caster effect. The front axle trailed six inches behind the vertical pivot, and curved sliding billets were used to keep the front bogie from wedging with the perch. Two letters from users reveal that white soap was used to lubricate the sliding billets (Lessing 2003a, 257). The tiller could be tilted forward and used to pull the draisine uphill.

In a magazine article, Drais—who had studied physics at Heidelberg—correctly described the methods of regaining balance and turning:

If one . . . has inadvertently lost balance, one can help oneself by using the feet or by steering. Specifically, one steers a bit towards the direction to which the point of gravity of the whole tips over. And if one wants to make a turn, one should move the point of gravity to the inner side immediately before, and shortly after, steering thereto. (translated from Drais 1820)

Figure 1.6 Karl Drais circa 1820 (H.-E. Lessing) and a Laufmaschine (Drais 1817c). Scale is in feet.

Figure 1.7 An isometric drawing of a draisine with options added (Lessing 2012).

Figure 1.8 An adjustable draisine of 1817 (Lessing 2003a).

The first bit of advice can be summarized as “steering into the undesired fall” (Meijaard et al.

2011). It utilizes centrifugal force to tilt the rider and the machine upright again. The advice on turning reminds us that in order to turn left on a single-track two-wheeler one must briefly steer to the right. Drais speaks of leaning to the left, but with the hands on the tiller that is tantamount to steering to the right.

It is a modern misconception that riding a draisine was just like walking while sitting, and that all a rider could do was coast downhill. (See, e.g., Herlihy 2004, 24.) Speeds of 8 miles per hour and more could be sustained with occasional rapid thrusts of the legs. Reporters were surprised that Drais could roll 60 feet or more without touching the ground.

To foil pirate builders, Drais positioned the cord-operated brake so that the rider’s leg would conceal it. Period carriages had no such brakes; they were stopped by the draft animals alone, or, when going downhill, by a skid shoe.

In 1817 Drais offered a range of Laufmaschinen, including a tandem and several “ladies’

draisines” (some with three wheels, some with four). A ladies’ model had a comfortable seat between the front wheels. Drais maintained that a female passenger could “sit deeply enough not to get sick” (1817c).

Figure 1.9 A period method of braking a carriage (Ginzrot 1830).

Figure 1.10 Drais’s range of draisines (Lessing 2003a).