When the German inventor Nikolaus Otto produced the first four-stroke internal combustion engine in the late nineteenth century, he inspired Gottlieb Daimler (1834-1900) and Willhelm Maybach (1846-1929) to produce an exciting form of transport. The concept was every parent's worst nightmare: to combine a strengthened but still dangerously unstable "bone- crusher" bicycle with a gas engine.
Two-wheeled, powered transport was not itself a novelty. Steam-powered bicycles had been around since 1867, and the Michaux-Perreaux steam bicycle—with its front wheel larger than its back wheel and the steam engine mounted under the saddle—went into production in 1868. But when Daimler and Maybach produced their gas-based version in 1885 they unveiled what was to be recorded by historians as the world's first motorcycle. Maybach drove the prototype from Cannstatt to Unterturkheim, a distance of nearly 2 miles (3 km), reaching a speed of 7.5 miles per hour (12 kph). While modern motorbikes resemble powerful jet engines on wheels, with leather jacket-clad riders confidently astride them, the original two-wheeled motorcycle actually had additional safety wheels protruding from each side of the chassis to provide a stable riding platform. Only in later models, as riders mastered the techniques of controlling fast movement on two wheels, were the stabilizers dispensed with.
Despite its cautious beginnings, the motorcycle has evolved into a highly adaptable road vehicle. In the twenty-first century, the need to minimize carbon footprints will only further increase the popularity of this environmentally efficient invention.
