PEDAL BICYCLES
CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS IN SEPTEMBER The first ancestor of New Zealand's 500,000 bicycles is being commemorated by the unveiling in September, of a plaque to mark the hundredth anniversary of the invention of the first bicycle to be propelled by pedals. The inventor was Kirkpatrick Macmillan, a Scottish blacksmith', and he was 29 years old when he mounted his bicycle and rode off to Glasgow to see his three brothers, one of whom, a former tutor of John Bright’s was rector at Glasgow High School. “I met a man fleein’- through the air on wheels,” cried a shoemaker when he encountered the first bicycle in action, “and if it wasna’ a man, then it must ha’ been the De’il himsel’.” The plaque is to be placed on the wall of Kirkpatrick Macmillan’s smithy at Courthill in Dumfrieshire. It is estimated by the British cycle makers Union that in the world to-day there are 61,000,000 descendants of this first bicycle. Last year -Great Britain sent 576,458 abroad, i of which total 156,166 were sold to foreign countries, a record figure representing in value £ 486,306.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/BOPT19390821.2.49
Bibliographic details
Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12825, 21 August 1939, Page 7
Word Count
184PEDAL BICYCLES Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12825, 21 August 1939, Page 7
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