=The Influence of the Bicycle on Roads.=--Road construction remained in a lackadaisical state with here and there a spurt, with now and then an intelligent supervisor who appreciated the need of better wagon roads, until the coming of the bicycle. That machine may be considered a descendant of the old celeripede, which consisted of two wheels connected by a horizontal bar on which the rider sat and propelled himself by pushing with his feet alternately on the ground, through the velocipede, which had the front wheel pivoted to the framework for easy steering. The attachment of pedals is credited to a Scotchman, Kirkpatrick Macmillan, about 1840, who applied them to the rear wheel. In 1886 Lallement in the United States and Michaux in France, placed the pedals on the front wheels. The front wheel was gradually increased in diameter until in the ’eighties it sometimes measured as much as 60 inches. The rear wheel decreased as the front increased. The stability of the wheel was not very great; headers were common, and mounting was difficult. To overcome these defects of the “ordinary” there was developed, 1885, the “safety,” approximately the present bicycle, in which the pedals are carried on a separate shaft and the power transmitted by chain and sprocket to the rear wheel. With the invention of the Dunlop[124] pneumatic tire, and consequent overcoming of much of the jolting so objectionable in more solid tires, the adoption of the bicycle as a means of pleasure and business locomotion was extremely rapid. The cycling boom reached its height about 1896 or 1897, by which time a great many large manufactories of bicycles had been established over the country. A frenzy seized upon the people and men and women of all stations were riding wheels; ardent cyclists were found in every city, village, and hamlet. As a result of the cycling craze there were organized numerous “wheel clubs” and finally a national one known as the League of American Wheelmen, organized about 1887. Its object partly social and partly to popularize the new sport of cycling, became a few years later almost wholly a form of propaganda for “better roads.” Newspaper space was freely utilized; many papers making special and regular features of “good roads”; pamphlets were published and distributed broadly, and a magazine was established.[125]