On the road to the development of the modern bicycle and the great wheel craze of the 1890s–a mania so powerful that biking survived even the eventual rise of the automobile–there were some false starts. One such example was the Aeripedis, or Pedomotive Carriage, British inventor’s G.R. Gooch’s cumbersome 1842 “walking machine,” which supposedly made the act of ambulation markedly easier, reducing effort and stress. It was the Segway of its day, manual though it was, and even less successful. By 1850, Gooch himself had all but given up on his creation. From an article in the July 5, 1896 Brooklyn Daily Eagle: