FIRST BICYCLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 August 1939, Page 6

FIRST BICYCLE

CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS

IM SEPTEMBER

NEW ZEALAND'S 500.000 MACHINES

The direct ancestor of New Zealand s 500 000 bicycles is being commemorated by the Unveiling in September ol a plaque to murk the hundredth anniversary of the invention of the first bicycle to be propelled by pedals. The inventor was Kirkpatrick Macmillan a Scottish blacksmith and he was 29 years old when lie mounted iiis bicycle and rode off to Glasgow io see his’three brothers, one of whom, a former tutor of John Bright's, was Rector at Glasgow High School. “I met a man fleein’ through the air on wheels." cried a shoemaker when lie encountered the first bicycle in action. "and if it wasna’ a man, then it mmi. ha' been the De’il himsel'." The plaque is to be placed on the wall of Kirkpatrick Macmillan's smithy at Courthill in Dumfriesshire. It is estimated by the British Cycle Makers' Union that in the world today there arc 61.000.000 descendants of this first bicycle. Last year Great Britain sent 576.458 abroad, of which total 156.166 were sold to foreign countries, a record figure representing in value £486.306.