Kirkpatrick Macmillan - Devout External Links

Blacksmith, born near Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway, SW Scotland, UK. In 1837 he built a ‘dandy’ horse - a kind of bicycle on which the rider pushed himself along with his feet. Three years later he had applied the crank to his machine to make the world's first pedal cycle, with wooden frame and iron-tyred wheels. His invention was never patented, and for many years it was credited to one of his imitators, Gavin Dalzell.

Kirkpatrick Macmillan (* 2 September 1812 in Keir, Dumfries and Galloway; † 26 January 1878 in Keir) was a Scottish blacksmith who was given credit for inventing the rear-wheel driven bicycle in a bizarre campaign by a relative, a rich corn trader and tricyclist named James Johnston in the 1890s.

Johnston's articles stated that he completed construction of a pedal driven bicycle of wood in 1839, and that it had iron-rimmed wooden wheels, a steerable 30 inch (760 mm) wheel in the front and a 40 inch (1016 mm) wheel in the rear which was connected to pedals via connecting rods.

While MacMillan certainly existed and rode some velocipede, he certainly didn't ride the velocipedes published by Thomas McCall twenty years later in 1869.

According to bicycle historian David Herlihy, there is no contemporary documentary evidence that a pedal-crank design was applied to a 2-wheeled vehicle; This hoopla in 1990 was one reason for the foundation of the International Cycling-History Conference (ICHC) that assembled in the Glasgow Museum of Transport for the first time in 1990, while a "Macmillan ride" took place in nearby Keir. 24-32

Devout External Links

Kirkpatrick Macmillan on The Scotsman's webpage Kirkpatrick Macmillan on the BBC Biography pages Kirkpatrick Macmillan on the Great Scots webpages Guinness World Record, Earliest Bicycle

Persondata
NAME	MacMillan, Kirkpatrick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Scottish inventor
DATE OF BIRTH	1812
PLACE OF BIRTH	Keir, Dumfries and Galloway
DATE OF DEATH	23 January 1878
PLACE OF DEATH	Keir, Dumfries and Galloway