As we should all know by now, this year the club celebrates its 130th anniversary. So, what was actually going on in 1891 and what were the bikes like then?
Well, Queen Victoria was on the throne and Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, was enjoying his second term as our Conservative Prime Minister. The UK had a population of 33 million, the Boer War was still 8 years away, a pint of beer cost a shilling and a 4 bedroom house was around £650.
On the cycling front, the 1890s really saw the bicycle craze take off, following the development of the safety bicycle with its chain-drive transmission and the subsequent invention of the pneumatic tyre. Before that, bikes like the Penny Farthing, launched in 1871, were the most common. The first well known chain-drive bicycle was the "Rover" produced in 1886 by John Kemp Starley (pictured above) which is on display at the British Motor Museum, Gaydon.
At the time, nearby Coventry was very much the world's bicycle city and during a 100 year period there were over 450 bicycle makers in the city. In 1891 a new Cogent Safety Bicycle would cost you £12.10s.0d. as advertised below.
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