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Cropped La Veloce tobacco label. Young lady riding a velocipede, frightened by a horse and streetcar. A velocipede is a human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels. The term velocipede is today mainly used as a collective term for the different forerunners of the monowheel, the unicycle, the bicycle, the dicycle, the tricycle and the quadracycle developed between 1817-80. The earliest usable velocipede was created by the German Karl Drais and called a Laufmaschine (running machine) in 1817. This was the world's first balance bicycle and quickly became popular. It was made entirely of wood and metal. The Michaux company was the first to mass-produce the velocipede. The French design was sometimes called the boneshaker, since it was also made entirely of wood, then later with metal tires. During the 1870s advances in metallurgy led to the development of the first all-metal velocipedes. The pedals were still attached directly to the front wheel, which became larger and larger as makers realized that the larger the wheel, the farther you could travel with one rotation of the pedals. Solid rubber tires and the long spokes of the large front wheel provided a much smoother ride than its predecessor. This type of velocipede was the first one to be called a bicycle.
