The Victorian Inventor of the Wheelie

The Star bicycle [0] was around in the 1880s, a bicycle with the small wheel in the front so as to make it more difficult to go over the front (a common problem). It's difficult, due to the ratcheting pedal mechanism, but it can be wheelied. The Eagle [1], which used conventional pedals (well, conventional compared to the state-of-the-art at that time), can easily wheelie. In fact, my experience has been that one needs to be a little careful not to fall off the back. (Source: member of The Wheelmen [2], an antique bicycle club, since a kid. Have ridden both Eagles and Stars, as well as other death-traps of the day.)

Point being, there were bicycles before the "safety" that could be wheelied and probably were (I'm confident there's a picture somewhere, period or modern, but a quick search didn't find anything). So I'm skeptical that Canary was the first to ride a bicycle on its back wheel.

Now, that's not to say that Canary wasn't an impressive rider. I've put thousands of miles on bicycles from that era, and not only are they difficult to ride well, they're so dangerous that there's no way they could be sold today (EDIT: come to think of it, everyone I know that has put any serious miles on highwheelers has been seriously hurt at some point, including myself. The 1886 Columbia I currently own I bought from my uncle after it nearly killed him.). Riding down the Capital steps on a highwheeler? Not on my most bold and daring of days. The pictures from the article demonstrate that the man knew his way around a highwheeler. But I doubt he was the first person to ever raise the front of wheel of a bicycle.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Star_Bicycle [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Bicycle_Manufacturing_Com... [2] http://www.thewheelmen.org/