---
title: "Which came first, the bicycle or television?"
description: "the bicycle vs television: the bicycle came first, by 108 years — 1817 against 1925. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/bicycle-vs-television/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the bicycle or television?

**Which came first, the bicycle or television?: the bicycle**

1817 — 108 years before television

the bicycle came first, by 108 years. Karl Drais rode his running machine near Mannheim.

## Side by side

|  | the bicycle | television |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1817 | 1925 |
| Date | 1817-06-12 | 1925-10-02 |
| Category | invention | invention |
| What happened | Karl Drais rode his running machine near Mannheim. | Baird transmitted the first moving greyscale image. |

## the bicycle

The first two-wheeler you could balance and steer was Drais's laufmaschine of 1817, which had no pedals — you pushed with your feet. Pedals arrived in the 1860s, the chain-driven safety bicycle with equal wheels in 1885, and the pneumatic tyre in 1888. The bicycle is younger than the steam locomotive, younger than photography's first experiments, and roughly contemporary with the stethoscope.

## television

John Logie Baird transmitted a recognisable moving image of a ventriloquist's dummy in October 1925 using a mechanical spinning-disc system. Philo Farnsworth demonstrated fully electronic television in 1927, and it was that approach, not Baird's, that every subsequent television used. Regular public broadcasting began in 1936, which means television is younger than the talking film and older than the ballpoint pen.

## Common questions

### Which came first, the bicycle or television?

the bicycle, by 108 years — 1817 against 1925.

### When did the bicycle start?

1817. Karl Drais rode his running machine near Mannheim.

### When did television start?

1925. Baird transmitted the first moving greyscale image.

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## Sources

- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Smithsonian Institution (https://naturalhistory.si.edu/)