John Constable, inventor of the modern safety bicycle?

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Location
London
Was in the National Gallery the other day fighting my way through cruising folks taking phone pics of the paintings (told one guy who I hadn't noticed who primly asked me to move that he should go and look at the paintings online) .

Admiring constable's Salisbury Cathedral and Leadenhall from the River Avon:

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/...-cathedral-and-leadenhall-from-the-river-avon

something caught my eye and I looked more closely.




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Someone out for a nice spin.

Painted 1820.

Safety bicycle reckoned, until now I think, to be the 1880s.

I rest my case.

Enlarged online image, not one I took I stress:

If you click on the link above and use the national gallery's enlargement tool (bottom right of the page) you can find it just above the end of the word cathedral.
 

All uphill

Still rolling along
Location
Somerset
And that is definitely a food delivery container on his/her back!
 
OP
OP
Blue Hills
Location
London
 
OP
OP
Blue Hills
Location
London
Look closer you’ll see it matches designs that were around in the 1820s.
sorry - you've lost me - the thing you showed a pic of is not a safety bicycle - a safety bicycle is basically the things we all pedal around on - even, with minor refinements TDF folk - they and we don't pedal around on anything like the object you posted.
 

Globalti

Legendary Member
There's a thread here.... at the height of my mountain biking mania I was riding my Specialized Rockhopper through Salisbury cathedral close bunny-hopping the speed humps near Ted Heath's house and got a rollicking from a peevish-looking gentleman in a black cassock. Was I the first or the second?
 
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