A Penny Farthing Bicycle

On a recent visit to the city of St Albans museum in Hertfordshire I photographed this bicycle, called a penny farthing, although enthusiasts call it an Ordinary.Before the invention of the bikes you see today these machines were invented. Gears were not invented until the safety bicycle so to overcome this problem the size of the large wheel determined the size of the gear, the smaller the wheel the lower the gear, the larger the wheel the higher the gear. Penny farthing named after the currency that was in use in the 19th century.

Answer to the quiz

The answer to the latest quiz is the machine is named a Waywiser,  a device for measuring distances. For road and land surveying, as the wheel goes round the distance is measured in furlongs on a brass dial in front of the handlebars. To read about furlongs, etc, go to Wikipedia and type in  furlongs.