Pierre Michaux (Bar le Duc June 25, 1813 - Paris - 1883) was a
blacksmithA blacksmith is a person who creates objects from iron or steel by forging the metal; i.e., by using tools to hammer, bend, and cut. Blacksmiths produce things like wrought iron gates, grills, railings, light fixtures, furniture, sculpture, tools, agricultural implements, decorative and religious...
who furnished parts for the
carriageA carriage is a wheeled vehicle for people, usually horse-drawn; litters and sedan chairs are excluded, these being litters or wheelless vehicles. The carriage is especially designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, though some are also used to transport goods. It may be...
trade in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
during the 1850s and 1860s. He started building bicycles with pedals in the early 1860s. He, or his son
Ernest, may have been the inventor of this machine, by adapting cranks and pedals on the front wheel of a draisine. In 1868 he formed a partnership with the
Olivier brothersThe Olivier brothers, Aimé, René, and Marius, were the first people responsible for recognizing the commercial potential of a new invention : the bicycle....
under his own name,
Michaux et Cie ("Michaux and company"), which was the first company to construct
bicycleA bicycle, also known as a bike, push bike or cycle, is a pedal-driven, human-powered vehicle with two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist or a bicyclist....
s with
pedalsA bicycle pedal is the part of a bicycle that the rider pushes with his or her foot to propel the bicycle. It provides the connection between the cyclist's foot or shoe and the crank allowing the leg to turn the bottom bracket axle...
on a large scale, a machine which was called a
velocipedeVelocipede is an umbrella term for any human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels. The most common type of velocipede today is the bicycle....
at the time, or "Michauline" .
The design was based on the previous model, the only difference being that on the bicycles of the new company the
serpentineSerpentine refers to the curved shape of an object or design which resembles the letter s, a sine wave or a snake; the latter is the derivation of the term.- Examples :...
frameA bicycle frame is the main component of a bicycle, onto which wheels and other components are fitted. The modern and most common frame design for an upright bicycle is based on the safety bicycle, and consists of two triangles, a main triangle and a paired rear triangle...
was made of two pieces of
cast ironCast iron usually refers to grey iron, but also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys, which solidify with a eutectic. The colour of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due to its carbide impurities which...
bolted together, instead of wood, which made it more elegant and enabled mass-production.
Pierre Michaux (Bar le Duc June 25, 1813 - Paris - 1883) was a
blacksmithA blacksmith is a person who creates objects from iron or steel by forging the metal; i.e., by using tools to hammer, bend, and cut. Blacksmiths produce things like wrought iron gates, grills, railings, light fixtures, furniture, sculpture, tools, agricultural implements, decorative and religious...
who furnished parts for the
carriageA carriage is a wheeled vehicle for people, usually horse-drawn; litters and sedan chairs are excluded, these being litters or wheelless vehicles. The carriage is especially designed for private passenger use and for comfort or elegance, though some are also used to transport goods. It may be...
trade in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
during the 1850s and 1860s. He started building bicycles with pedals in the early 1860s. He, or his son
Ernest, may have been the inventor of this machine, by adapting cranks and pedals on the front wheel of a draisine. In 1868 he formed a partnership with the
Olivier brothersThe Olivier brothers, Aimé, René, and Marius, were the first people responsible for recognizing the commercial potential of a new invention : the bicycle....
under his own name,
Michaux et Cie ("Michaux and company"), which was the first company to construct
bicycleA bicycle, also known as a bike, push bike or cycle, is a pedal-driven, human-powered vehicle with two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist or a bicyclist....
s with
pedalsA bicycle pedal is the part of a bicycle that the rider pushes with his or her foot to propel the bicycle. It provides the connection between the cyclist's foot or shoe and the crank allowing the leg to turn the bottom bracket axle...
on a large scale, a machine which was called a
velocipedeVelocipede is an umbrella term for any human-powered land vehicle with one or more wheels. The most common type of velocipede today is the bicycle....
at the time, or "Michauline" .
The design was based on the previous model, the only difference being that on the bicycles of the new company the
serpentineSerpentine refers to the curved shape of an object or design which resembles the letter s, a sine wave or a snake; the latter is the derivation of the term.- Examples :...
frameA bicycle frame is the main component of a bicycle, onto which wheels and other components are fitted. The modern and most common frame design for an upright bicycle is based on the safety bicycle, and consists of two triangles, a main triangle and a paired rear triangle...
was made of two pieces of
cast ironCast iron usually refers to grey iron, but also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys, which solidify with a eutectic. The colour of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due to its carbide impurities which...
bolted together, instead of wood, which made it more elegant and enabled mass-production. In 1865 a blacksmith from
Lyon||-||}Lyon , often Anglicized as Lyons, is a city in east-central France in the region Rhône-Alpes, situated between Paris and Marseille. Its name is pronounced in French and Arpitan, and or in English...
named Gabert designed a variation on the frame which was of a single diagonal piece of
wrought ironthumb|The [[Eiffel tower]] is constructed from [[puddle iron]], a form of wrought ironWrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content, in comparison to steel, and has fibrous inclusions, known as slag. This is what gives it a "grain" resembling wood, which is visible when it is etched...
and was much stronger -- by that time
Pierre LallementPierre Lallement , is considered by some to be the inventor of the bicycle....
had emigrated to America, where he filed the only patent for the pedal bicycle.
It soon became evident that the serpentine cast-iron frames were not sturdy enough, and with competing manufacturers already producing bicycles with the diagonal frame, the Oliviers insisted that Michaux follow suit. The partnership was dissolved in 1869, and Michaux and his company faded into oblivion as the first bicycle craze came to an end in
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
and the USA. Only in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
did the bicycle remain popular, and England was the site of all of the next major improvements to the machine.
Michaux is often given credit for the idea of attaching pedals to the
dandy horseThe dandy horse was invented by Baron Karl von Drais in Mannheim, Germany, patented in January 1818...
, and thus for the invention of the bicycle -- however, bicycle historian David V. Herlihy thinks that it was Lallement who deserves that credit.