It's one of the most simple machines that most people use, yet incredible amounts of engineering

go into their design.

They're used by billions of people around the world, and it's one of the only forms of transportation

available to children.

They can make humans incredibly efficient, and their development was in many ways

surprising. I am of course talking about bicycles. Learn more about the history of bicycles

and how the modern version came to be on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. There was a story that Steve Jobs frequently shared about the bicycle.

A March 1973 article written in Scientific American

looked at how efficient different animal species were

when it came to transportation.

It analyzed how much energy it took animals

to transport one gram of mass a distance of one kilometer.

The most efficient animals were not surprisingly soaring birds

like the condor or the albatross.

Humans were sort of in the middle.

They were somewhat efficient, but not as good as a horse or maybe a salmon.

Humans used on average 0.75 calories to transport 1 gram, 1 kilometer.

However, the researcher, S.S. Wilson, decided to add an extra data point.

He added how efficient humans were on a bicycle. It turns out that a human on a

bicycle was five times as efficient as one walking. Not only that, but it was more

efficient than any other animal. So the bicycle is a really big deal in that it makes

human transportation extremely efficient. The invention of the bicycle doesn't go back

...