Bicycle is one of 101 gadgets that changed the world

It's always nice when a favored contraption gets a little respect.

In its list of 101 gadgets that changed the world, IOL Technology credits the bicycle as a useful gadget for becoming a widespread form of transportation and a vehicle toward the emancipation of women.

Justifying its claim, the magazine explains:

“First devised as a gentleman's play thing in the 1820s, the push-powered hobby-horse quickly evolved to become the most classless form of transport, trundling by the millions along highways and byways all over the world. The French vélocipède, invented in 1861 by Pierre Marchaux, is widely considered to be the first true bicycle.”

Early feminist Susan B. Anthony also endorsed the bicycle as helping to give women more freedom. Her entire quote:

“I'll tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than any one thing in the world. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a bike. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood.”

A couple of other useful bicycle-related gadgets made it onto the list.

The earliest, of course, would be the wheel, developed in about 3,500 BC. Another technological advance most of us have in our wardrobe is the breathable, yet waterproof, Gor-Tex, developed in 1972.

The nemisis of the bicycle, the automobile, did not make it onto the list; the internal combustion engine did, however.

“It may have fallen firmly out of favour in today's green-aware world, but the importance of the internal combustion engine is impossible to overstate. Without it, we could not drive, fly, travel by train, build factories, motor across oceans, trim our lawns..”

Interestingly, it was developed two years before the bicycle in 1859.