Bicycles on the other hand have been around for a while. Why didn't they see more prolific use in Europe between 200 and 1800? I speculate lack of good enough roads. An oxcart road would not be the most pleasant place to ride an old-fashioned bicycle.
Indeed, the work source was a major factor: before the 18th century, there was no efficient and mobile source of work... outside of people and beasts.
> Bicycles on the other hand have been around for a while.
Nope. The first recorded and verifiable ancestor to the bicycle dates back to the early 19th century: Baron Karl von Drais's Laufmaschine in 1817. It had two wheels in-line and could be steered. But users ran on it, propelling it by pushing the ground with their feet (hence the name "running machine"). Oh, and it was solid wood (22kg)
The next elements we associate with an actual bicycle only appeared in 1863: cranks and pedals attached directly to the front wheel.
And in 1885, the "rover" with its chain drive to the back wheel and equally-sized wheels would be the first one you'd recognize as a modern bicycle.
And it's a pretty good story as well.
If you gave someone a bunch of gold, the ability to speak fluent Latin, and kicked them back into ancient Rome, I am sure they could commission the creation of a bicycle. It wouldn't be very good (no rubber for the wheels for starters, maybe replace that with several layers of leather? You might be able to make a leather belt-drive too.), but the general idea should have worked.
Another example is the phonograph. You can make a rudimentary phonograph with some very very basic clockwork, some wax, a needle, and a sheet of something taught and thin (I bet parchment would work fine.) The biggest issue would probably be figuring out how to present it without being burnt as a witch. But nobody did it until the late 19th century.
Over cheaper modes of animal transportation (donkey and cow?), the bike would probably have a speed advantage.
The real downside in both cases is cargo capacity and manual effort, but I think it could have made sense as a poor-mans transport. Barring that though, it could just be a toy for the rich.
If you ever get up close and personal with a stage coach, you'll likely find the suspension interesting, though most in my experience are spring-loaded but undamped. There are reasons long land journeys weren't generally looked forward to.
Citation needed.
And even at that, the race started at 1980, but the first time a man on foot won the race was in 2004.
One "man on foot" win in 24 races and that man being a marathon runner, does not bode well with the idea that man in general can outrun horses for long distances.
It is rare for humans to actually be physically capable of it these days, but chasing animals until they collapse from exhaustion is something hairless sweating bipedal are built for. The very best horses could still do it, but attempting persistence hunting on horseback with most horses would probably injure the horse.
Of course horses have been selectively bread for endurance for thousands of years so arguably their achievements are human achievements, but that's beside the point. ;)
Look at those times: the best time ever is 1 hour, 57 minutes (horse) for a 22 mile race. That is trivial to beat on a bike.
Once built, a bike requires minimal maintenance, is vastly cheaper than a horse, can be ridden with minimal skill (and only the rider, not the bike, requires training), and can be stored in a house or small shed. Bicycle manufacture is highly amenable to mass production techniques (horses, not so much). Other than reinflating tyres and oiling chains, little maintenance is required. On good roads, a bike can easily be ridden 20-40 miles by even a cyclist of moderate skill, and single-day rides of 200-300 miles are attainable. Even loaded with camping gear, a bike can be ridden 60-90 miles per day, continuously, reasonably. Cargo bikes can carry substantial loads locally. Bike jitneys compete with horse-drawn vehicles for human carriage.
Horses or oxen, particularly teamed, can carry much heavier loads. In parts of the world, oxcarts, fitted with modern truck wheels and axles, still compete with automobiles for drayage.
This latter period is sometimes called the Second Industrial Revolution and is characterised by the invention of interchangeability, assembly lines, automated jigs for machining, and the use of electricity and non-coal petroleum fuels.
While the first industrial revolution produced coal and water powered machines, these machines were still themselves made by craftsmen. The introduction of interchangeable parts meant that it was no longer neccesary for a craftsman to hand fit the various components* together - you could make thousands of bicycle wheels and thousands of bicycles and fit them all together with almost no difficult to learn custom fitting. Automated jigs made it possible to mass produce standard sized parts.
(*) It's not even clear that the idea of a 'component' is a very useful one before interchangeable parts were invented because turning a barrel (even if it had already been bored), a stock, and various parts of the action into a rifle isn't something that a non-gunsmith can do. These were 'components' only in the sense that a felled tree is a 'component' of a timber house.
There's a video on Youtube of a gunsmith making a rifle the way it would have been made in the era of the American revolution - in the very early years of the first industrial revolution - and you can see how difficult and finicky it is.
That said, history is interesting.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations describes mass-production techniques, including specialization, special tools adapted to single sub-tasks, and a style of production approaching an assembly-line (work produced at stations, with the pieces moving from station to station. In 1776.
The Chinese were employing mass production techniques in the manufacture of crossbos in the Warring States period (475 BC - 201 BC): http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/aaa/2008/0000000...
Modern mass production dates to 1803 and production of sailing blocks (used to raise and lower rigging on ships) in England, from which it spread to the US for clock and armaments manufacture. Eli Whitney (of cotton gin fame) attempted mass armaments production in 1798 but failed to achieve quantity output for another 8 years. Refinements in metalurgy, scientific management, steam and electric power, etc., produced further advances -- as with most developments, the seeds were planted early and incrementally developed over time.
As I note in another post, the two specific advances that really made the bicycle possible were advanced metalurgy and vulcanized pneumatic tyres. Both of these weren't particularly feasible until they actually emerged. That said, high-quality Damascus steel dates to 300 BC. The Greeks and Romans had and used coal (used in the production of both steel and synthetic rubber). Rubber was known as far back as 1600 BC, but among the Mayans in South America (it wasn't introduced to Europe until 1736): http://www.essortment.com/history-rubber-21100.html
But the biggest trigger for widespread bicycle adoption was probably socioeconomic, not technological. By the late 19th Century, a middle class with both discretionary income and free time had emerged. And though bikes were used for utility (commuting, errends, light transport), the real driver was recreation. The presence of intense socioeconomic stratification, slavery, feudal systems, and the like, had a serious damping effect on both creation and adoption of new technolgies and products.
1) Husky Airless Street = from $19
2) Amerityre Flatfree = from $35
http://www.bikemania.biz/airless-no-flat/husky-airless-stree...
Really the best way to go is just pack a spare tube. Only takes a couple of minutes to change it on the road once you've practised a few times in your living room. Whenever I get a flat I change it out with my spare, then patch my spare later that day.
Airless tire with decent (though not great) cushioning, but terrible rolling resistance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jYcX_D09ig
Without the development of the crank, the idea of spinning wheels with pedals or gears would not occur to anyone.