This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars.

If you had to guess, when do you think the bicycle was invented?

The basic mechanics of a bike are pretty simple. It's basically a triangle with wheels and a chain drive to propel it forward.

There are no batteries, there's no engines. It seems obvious.

And that's why most people guess that the bike was invented a long

time ago. So sort of curious historical fact about the bicycle is its belated arrival.

This is Jody Rosen and I'm the author of

Two Wheels Good, the history and mystery of the bicycle. The early version of

the bicycle known as the running machine debuted around 1817, which Jody says is weirdly late.

By the time that running machine or Lauf machina comes along,, were 15 years into the era of the steam locomotive.

When the bicycle started to look like the machine that we know today,

it was 1885.

In that same year, 18 1885 Carl Ben's invented his first motorvagan. So the

automotive age is stirring at the same moment that we finally get a perfect bicycle.

It took many centuries for kind of fate and, you know,

trial and error to bring us the machine itself.

So in that sense, I think it's one of those devices

that both feels inevitable and whose history kind of belies that inevitability.

It just feels like, why wasn't there a bicycle that a Pharaoh or like a Roman was pedaling around on.

Doty says the reason the late arrival feels wrong to lots of people is because the bike feels so natural, like something that's always been with us. The thing to my mind that makes the bicycle such a beautiful and unique machine is this fact

that the rider is both the passenger of the machine and the engine.

And that's actually kind of a strange idea

...