Muscle on Wheels: Louise Armaindo and the High-Wheel Racers of Nineteenth-Century America

The majestic high-wheel bicycle, with its spider wheels and rubber tires, emerged in the mid-1870s as the standard bicycle. A common misconception is that, bound by Victorian dress and decorum, women were unable to ride it, only taking up cycling in the 1880s with the advent of the chain-driven safety bicycle. On the contrary, women had been riding and even racing some form of the bicycle since the first vélocipèdes appeared in Europe early in the nineteenth century.

Challenging the understa...