On the ground floor you will find the Draisines or "hobbyhorses", built by the German inventor of the bicycle, Baron Karl von Drais, in 1817. Bicycles built by his imitators, contemporaries and successors, including the Scot Kirkpatrick MacMillan and the Frenchmen Michaux senior and junior, are also on display. Here VELORAMA shows you how wooden hobbyhorses developed into the first steel cycles with pedals mounted on the front axle. The cycles built in the period from 1817 to around 1861 look very strange. It was a good forty years before anyone dared replace the hobbyhorse - which was propelled by pushing against the ground with your feet - with a fixed-drive two-wheeler. At first it was feared that this would not be stable enough. All the attempts that were made by various inventors can be seen here: tricycles and quadricycles, cycles with treadles and handles, hand-propelled and foot-propelled vehicles. A couple of unique 145-year-old specimen were recently added to our collection.
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