Tag: Merckx

The bicycle was introduced in the 19th century in Europe by German Inventor Karl von Drais. He is credited with developing the first bicycle. He introduced it to the people in Paris in 1818. It is supposed to originate from the human-powered vehicle called Draisines. Drais invented a walking machine that would help him get around the royal gardens faster. It was known by many names, including the “velocipede,” “dandy horse,” “hobby-horse,” “draisine” and “running machine. It had no pedals and its frame was a wooden beam. It had two same-size in-line wheels with the front one steerable and mounted in a frame which was straddled. In 1839, Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a Scottish blacksmith, allegedly completed construction of a pedal driven…

As someone who has a bookshelf groaning with volumes dedicated to a certain now-non-Tour de France-winning Texan and even three autobiographies of Mark Cavendish, it has always seemed odd to me that books dedicated to the Greatest Cyclist of the 20th Century, according to the UCI, are fairly scarce in English, or pretty much any other language. There is an old joke that the only famous Belgians anyone can name are Hercule Poirot and Tintin and both are fictitious. However, not only has Belgium produced celebrated cyclists (and, of course, many notable people in other fields) but it has given us the best one of all: douard Louis Joseph, Baron Merckx. Merckx 525 is a particularly good book published by…