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Production of the Rover Safety Bicycle
- When
- 1885
- Where
- Coventry
In 1885, John Kemp Starley produced the Rover Safety Bicycle in Coventry, featuring two equal-sized wheels and a chain drive.
Starley developed the bicycle as a safer alternative to the penny-farthing. The design was heavier than penny-farthings but lighter and cheaper than tricycles. It was the first commercially successful safety bicycle, marking a shift from front-drive mechanisms to chain rear-drives.
Sources
- John Kemp Starley Wikipedia, revision of 2026-04-15
- Coventry Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-15
- Safety bicycle Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-07
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.