the.com/penny farthing
the Victorian flex that put your face one pothole away from death.
means An early bicycle with one enormous front wheel and a tiny rear one, ridden in the late 19th century before the safety bicycle made it obsolete.
from The name comes from British coins: the large penny set beside the tiny farthing, their sizes mirroring the bike's mismatched wheels. The term is a retrospective nickname, popularised after the design was already fading — in its own day it was usually just called an 'ordinary' bicycle. The farthing itself was a quarter-penny, its name a worn-down form of 'fourthing,' a fourth part.
- name origin
- named after the size gap between two coins
- top speed
- big wheel meant faster pedaling per rotation
- the dismount
- crashes called headers launched riders face-first
- riding height
- saddle sat nearly five feet up
- obsolete fast
- chain-drive safety bicycle killed it by 1890s
ordinary bicycle — high-wheel bicycle with 5-foot front wheel popular 1870s-1890s, ridden by victorian gentlemen
boneshaker — pedal-powered wooden-wheeled precursor from 1860s paris, predecessor to the penny farthing design