How Did a Volcano Help Invent the Bicycle?

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In April 1815 a volcano in Indonesia erupted so violently that people heard the explosion two thousand kilometers away.

The following summer, it snowed in New England in June. Harvests failed across Europe and North America. Food prices soared.

And somehow, all of that may have helped lead to the bicycle.

The volcano was Mount Tambora. Its eruption was one of the most powerful in recorded history. Volcanic gases formed tiny particles high in the atmosphere that reflected sunlight and cooled the climate. 1816 became known as the Year Without a Summer.

The harvest crisis put enormous pressure on people who depended on horses for transportation. Horses ate oats. Oats were scarce. Historians have proposed a connection between that crisis and what happened next.

In 1817, in the German state of Baden, an inventor named Karl von Drais demonstrated something new: a steerable two-wheeled machine that needed no horse at all. No pedals. You sat on a wooden frame and pushed yourself along the ground with your feet. He called it the Laufmaschine. Some historians connect its appearance to the food and horse crisis that followed Tambora, though the link is compelling rather than proven.

Pedals were added in the 1860s. The modern bicycle design with equal wheels and a chain drive came in the 1880s. The lineage traces back to Drais and his two-wheeled machine from 1817.

And that same strange summer of 1816 produced another piece of history. Mary Shelley was staying near Lake Geneva, where the wet miserable weather kept her group indoors. They began reading ghost stories. Lord Byron suggested each of them write one. She began the story that became Frankenstein.

One eruption. One strange summer. And two pieces of history connected to its aftermath.

What you will find in this episode:

What Mount Tambora did to the climate and why 1816 was the Year Without a SummerThe horse and harvest crisis and why historians connect it to the bicycleWhat Karl von Drais actually built in 1817 and how it workedHow the bicycle got from the Laufmaschine to the modern design over sixty yearsThe Mary Shelley and Frankenstein connectionDaniel's closing line about Tambora's legacy