NEW ZEALAND'S HALF-MILLION BICYCLES

Evening Star, Issue 23349, 19 August 1939, Page 6

NEW ZEALAND'S HALF-MILLION BICYCLES

CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS IN SEPTEMBER The direct 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 Schoopl. “ I met a man fleein’ through the air on wheels,” cried a shoemaker when he encountered the first bicycle in action, “ and if it wksna’ a man, then it must ha’ been the De’il himser.” . The plaque is to be placed on :the wall of Kirkpatripk Macmillan’s smithy at Couir thill, in Dumfriesshire. It is estimated by the British cycle makers’ union that in the world today there are 61,000,000 descendants of this first bicycle. Last year Great Britain sent 576,458 abroad, of which total 156,166 were sold to foreign, countries—a record figure, representing in value £486,306.